Holiday Notes

I'm getting started making little Christmas gifts. Here is one that I have so far. This is a Post-It Note holder.

This first picture is the outside. I used the little snowman from the Seasonal Scribbles stamp set. I pieced his scarf with a piece of green cardstock and colored his buttons with the black Souffle Gelly Pen so they are slightly raised. The paterned paper is from Merry Wishes. To cut the notch, I used the Basic Grey Notch & Die tool. I know that a lot of people bought that and didn't care for it a lot, but I have to say that I really like mine!


This second picture shows the inside. The Post-It Notes are from the $1 section in Michael's they were selling these last year so I bought several of them. I will be keeping an eye out for them again this year. They came in a package of 2; not bad for $1!

Had A Great Weekend Stamping!

I got to spend the whole weekend stamping! I packed up some papers, stamps and goodies and headed to my sister's house for the weekend. She lives about an hour from me so it's just easier to stay a couple of days. So while the kids all played together, we spent the weekend playing! She had invited some friends over on Saturday to have a TAC workshop, which was a ton of fun!

Here are a few of the cards that I made over the weekend...

These first three cards are all made with stamps from the Tis The Season stamp set. I'm really loving this stamp set. I just got it last month and it's one of those great stamp sets that has everything you need all in one. I could easily make all of my christmas cards, tags, & bags with just this one set!



In this last one, the 'Joy to the World' stamp in the background is also from Tis The Season. The little tree stamp is from the Cheers stamp set. I colored in the tree with Christmas Red and Green Stickles. Around the bottom I tied some Red and Green Scrapper's Floss. If you haven't heard me say it already, Scrapper's Floss is one of my favorite embellishments. And talk about bang for your buck...you get 30 yards of it for $2.95. It just doesn't get much better than that! I really like how this card turned out; so sparkly and fun!

Double Stuff Embossing Part II

Well, I have done some more playing around with this double embossing with the Cuttlebug. Maggieliz over on GW posted some pictures of some backgrounds that she made with Alcohol Inks and the Cuttlebug embossing folders on her picture trail site: http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view?p=999&gid=18149906&uid=750005 . They are gorgeous! She wrote me and asked if I would play around with what she had done and do a tutorial. So, here goes.

For this one, you will use white glossy cardstock. I do not have any Alcohol Inks, so instead I used my Palette Hybrid Inks. Here are the general supplies for the card I ended up making: Snowflakes Cuttlebug embossing folder, Brayer, Embossing Stamp Pad, White Embossing Powder, Prussian Blue Palette Ink Pad.


Start off by applying the ink directly from the ink pad to the glossy cardstock. Just keep working the pad across the entire surface until you have the look that you want. When the ink is completely dry, place it in the embossing folder and run it through the Cuttlebug. Letting the ink dry is very important to keep the embossing powder from sticking to it later.

Note: You can speed up the drying process with your heat gun!

Next, ink up your brayer with the Embossing ink. I have used a regular embossing pad, but you can also use a VersaMark pad to do this. Roll the ink over the entire surface, until you have all of the raised design inked.

Sprinkle on your white embossing powder. After you have completely covered the area, dump off the excess. You can clean off any excess embossing powder with a small paint brush.

Heat the embossing powder with your heat tool until all of the powder is melted.

When you are done embossing, your paper will look like this. Not only do you have those beautiful, bright white snowflakes, but if you look at the blue in the background, you can see all of the swirling color. In real life you can see all the gloss of the cardstock and it is gorgeous!

Here is the card that I went on to make with my paper. I put it on a white card so that the blue would really pop out. Because the background is so pretty I tried to keep what I was adding on top of it very simple and small so that I didn't end up covering too much of it up.

Things to try: Definitely try the alcohol inks like Maggieliz did, if you have them. On this one I just used a single color. Play around with more ink colors to create different looks.

~Michelle

Double Stuff Embossing!

Well, I have been playing more with the Cuttlebug embossing folders. These things really are a lot of fun to use! This one I have decided to call Double Stuff Embossing, as it involves embossing twice, in two different ways. Dry embossing with the Cuttlebug, and heat embossing with regular embossing powder.

Here are the general supplies that I used for this project: Cuttlebug Snowflakes embossing folder, Scrapper's Floss, Sparkle Embossing Powder, Embossing Stamp Pad, Noir Palette Pad, Prismacolor Pencils, Snowflake Brads, For All Seasons stamp set, Anti-Static bag, small paint brush, Heat Embossing Tool. In this particular card I used white, dark blue and light blue cardstock, but you use whatever you want!



The first thing I did was run my blue cardstock through the Cuttlebug using the Snowflakes embossing folder. Rub the anti-static bag across the paper. Give it a good coat so that you will have minimal excess embossing powder sticking to the paper.


Next, I used the Embossing Stamp Pad and ran it across the top of the embossed design. Be careful not to press down too hard, so that you do not ink the areas inbetween the design. You will be able to see when you have a good coat of ink because it will look wet.

Sprinkle the Sparkle Embossing Powder over all areas that you want embossed. Shake off the excess and use a small paint brush to clear any areas that have unwanted embossing powder. I did find that a lot of excess stays inbetween the designs. Most of it was easily gotten rid of with the paint brush, but some will inevidibly stay.

Heat the embossing powder with a heat gun until all of the powder is melted. This picture shows you the end result. If you look closely you can see the stray embossing powder between the designs. Since the Sparkle Embossing Powder is just clear powder with glitter in it, the strays just add a little extra sparkle! I am going to play with some colored powders as well, to see how they turn out.

Now that it is done you can trim it down to the size you want and use in on a card or other project. Here is a card that I made with mine. Glitter doesn't show up all that well in pictures, so this is much more sparkly in real life. It is really beautiful!

This is my first real attempt that this double embossing, and I really like the way it turned out. Those sparkly blue snowflakes are gorgeous and really add a lot of "wow" to the card! I can't wait to try different powders and different embossing folders to see how they will turn out.

~Michelle

Cuttlebug 'Smoosh' Experiment

There has been so much talk just lately about that elusive "Cuttlebug Smoosh" technique that was in a recent Technique Junkies newsletter. Provo Craft even addressed questions about it on their blog. Since I don't subscribe to the newsletter and have only seen samples made using this technique, I decided to do a little bit of an experiment to see what I could come up with on my own.

All of my experimenting was done on plain white cardstock. When inking the embossing folders I used dye ink, which easily rinses out with water.


Experiment #1:

Here is what I used...Snowflake Cuttlebug embossing folder, make-up sponge, and a VersaMagic re-inker.



After I ran my white cardstock through my Cuttlebug, I simply applied the VersaMagic ink directly to the paper with a make-up sponge. Just keep applying ink until you reach your desired color.



Here is the finished product. I added more ink to darken up some areas just to make it look more interesting.

Conclusion: The paper from this first one turned out very pretty, but it does not resemble the 'Smoosh' technique.

Experiment #2:

Here is what I used...A brayer, the Swirls Cuttlebug embossing folder, and a Fruitcake Kaleidacolor ink pad.

I started by brayering the ink directly onto the embossing folder. Notice that I am doing it on the side of the folder that has the Cuttlebug name printed on it. Once fully inked, I put the white cardstock in, and ran it through the Cuttlbug.

This is what it looks like when it comes out. The ink does not get down into the detail, which is what ends up raised. As you can see, it is still white.

To color what was left white I just ran my brayer over the paper directly. For this one I didn't even re-ink it, there was still plenty of ink on my brayer and I didn't want it to be darker than the background.

Conclusion: This one looks really close, to me. I have noticed in some of the samples I have seen online that they seem to be done with two colors of ink. This particular way would allow for that because you could ink your embossing folder with one color, then brayer over the top with a different color. That could be very pretty!

Possible Option: Instead of brayering the ink onto the embossing folder, you could try to sponge the ink on and try to get it down into all of the grooves. Sponging the ink will probably take longer though, and your coverage is more likely to be uneven.

Experiment #3: I used the same supplies for this one as I did in #2. The Swirls Cuttlebug embossing folder, a brayer, and a Fruitcake Kaleidacolor ink pad.

For this one I ran my white cardstock through the Cuttlebug.

Instead of inking the embossing folder, I used my brayer and went over the cardstock after it was embossed. To hit the raised pattern and the background, you really have to push down. Use two hands if you have to, that is what I did.

When you are done, your cardstock will look like this. Notice the white areas. Because the paper was already embossed your brayer will not touch all of the background leaving those white lines around the detail, which I think is a really neat effect.

Conclusion: This one looks really good too. The result is definitely much darker since you are repeatedly going over the paper. One nice thing about this method is that there is a little less clean-up, since you don't ink the embossing folder. Plus, you don't have to worry about staining your folder if that is a possible concern.

In the end: The last two methods that I tried are definitely the closest. Are either of them completely right? I have no idea, but they have to be awfully close. The important thing though, is that I had a lot of fun playing and even if it isn't exact, I have 3 new ways to make interesting and beautiful backgrounds!

Hopefully you will give these a try too. If you do, let me know, I would love to see your creations!

~Michelle

Not Your Traditional Christmas Card

Spoiler Alert: If you are in the Non-traditional Christmas Color card swap over on MWS, then you probably don't want to be peeking at this card!

For everyone else, this is the card that I made for a Non-traditional Christmas Color card swap that I joined. The rules of the swap are that you are to make a Christmas card where you do not use the typical red and green. I tried to stay away from the blue and pink snowflake themes because I figured next to red and green, those would be the next most common. So I went with brown...

Now that it is done, it looks like a cowboy/western Christmas to me. Something about the browns and the inked edges; it just has a really rustic look to it. I used copper brads, which really adds to the effect. I'm going to pull out some gingerbread stamps and use this same color scheme, that should be cute!

For this card I used the new Ornamental Joy stamp from the fall supplement and the background is stamped with a flourish stamp from Curls & Swirls. The card base is basic Brown, and the Joy is stamped on Kraft cardstock. Everything is stamped and the edges are inked with the Burnt Umber Palette pad and I used the corner rounder to round all of the edges.

Let It Snow!

I know, it's only October, but I can dream, can't I? I always look forward to snow in the winter. This card is the combination of 2 different challenges. One was the challenge on Gingerwood to use an image that you haven't used in 2-3 years, and the second challenge is Dawn's sketch challenge from 2Peas. I have had the stamp set that this little snowman is from for about 5 years. It is from a set from The Angel Company called Fall Sampler, and it was one that I got in my starter kit when I became an Angel! Isn't he cute?

Since then, I have bought so many stamps! Especially Christmas stamps. This challenge was a great reminder to pull out the old and make it new again. Now that I have dug the stamp set out again, I plan to put it to good use again.