Flower Number Two

Ok, short post today. The sun is out, the sky is blue, and we have a few hours before it may thunderstorm again. I've got oodles of lawn to finish mowing, (Again) So, I'm gonna make hay while the sun still shines, so to speak. 
I've just been working my way through my paper flower book and here is the second flower variety I've managed to complete. I can't say I've "mastered" the techniques yet but I'm certainly getting more comfortable with them. So the next flower was the water Lilly style Dahlia. There are three dahlia style flowers and this was just really fun to do. It's much larger than the first rose, but then again in real life they ARE bigger than most roses. I love it! I'm gonna see if I can't get a couple of flowers done later today after chores, and I have a cute little Easter treat I need to finish for my mom's kids at school. I should be pretty busy this afternoon. If I get that finished I'll post it as well.

Thinking of You Card

I've been working on learning lately. Learning LOTS of different techniques which is just fascinating to me. One of my favorite places to learn new things is the Weekly Webisodes over at Paper Wishes I advise you to not venture there unless you are better than I am at controlling the desire to  purchase every cool thing they have on their website.

That said they were actually the inspiration for my wedding invitations that I'm working on thanks to their wonderful Color Me Papers. I've got a whole slew of these papers that I am hand coloring for the wedding invitations. But. In order to figure out what the heck I'm doing I've had to do some playing. The thing I really like about this paper is that Paper wishes/Hot Off the Press has done all the hard work for you, by stamping and and heat embossing the raised image with clear embossing powder. All you have to do is add your color to show off the beautiful designs. So here we have a card that I've recently done with lots of different techniques I've been trying out.

The card itself is from my stash of primary cards from Joann's. The blue swirled paper is the Swirl Color Me. I applied ink from my Surf Cat's Eye with a make up sponge dabbing all over the surface and then wiping the ink off the raised swirl images with a paper towel. My Lady Bug image is from Bugaboo Stamps. This I colored with my chalks and although you can't really tell from this picture the Lady Bugs were topped with Rangers Glossy Accents.

Here's a close up of my circle sentiment. I've been fascinated with these in the last couple of weeks. This sentiment is from the great designers over at Squigglefly.  I love circle sentiments but I have some major issues cutting and so... Well lets just say the embellishments I quilled for this was to hide the fact that I apparently cant follow a line very well. Even with a template. I was rather tickled with my fringed flower. I really like adding the three dimensional quality to things I'm working on. Sure, it makes it harder to send through the mail but it's awful pretty to look at.

Beautiful Paper Flowers

Well I have another paper obsession. It started with the beautiful punch flowers I've been noticing in the last six months or so. I was refusing to break down and buy punches. After ordering a paper blossom hair comb from The Crimson Poppy for a wedding accessory I couldn't take it any more. I'd fully intended to order a punch or two since I was sure there was no way I'd be able to make anything nearly as nice as her flowers.

 Then I found this!

This is an awesome kit by Laurie Cinotto who is an artist up in the Seattle area. I literally ran across this on my way out of Barnes & Noble on Saturday and had to have it. (Did I mention that my honey bought it for me, wonderful guy that he is?)  This is the most awesome kit and Laurie did a great job putting it together and it's new on the shelves there as it was just released on March 25th. There is a very detailed book along with floral tape, stamens, floral wires and  the most gorgeous crepe paper.It's not your dollar a roll party supply stuff this is nice with a great texture and it makes beautiful flowers. If you are interested you can order this directly from Laurie's website which is really pretty or I'm sure you can find it in your local B&N.

 So, here's my first flower!

 Not too bad for skipping over part of  the directions on technique. And Yes, this is in my car. I was waiting for my fiance to finish with the evil dentist. It does take a bit of time and really takes a bit of practice. Needless to say, lack of technique means a flower that won't withstand being messed with for very long and I think I need to rebind it.

 This is my second flower. I made this with the scraps from the first flower. I really didn't want to waste any of that wonderful paper. This time I also went back and reviewed the details on the techniques and got a far sturdier flower. Apparently that's what happens when you follow directions. ;-P I know this picture isn't too great, I was having a difficult time focusing.

This is the same rose as above. I wanted you guys to get a good idea of what the size was comparatively speaking. Now, I'm going to go back and redo my first rose so that I can get the petals so they  won't fall out. Then I'm going to work on another flower. Somehow I think the rose may be the easiest.

Quilled 3D Butterfly "Prototype"

Happy Saturday! I hope everyone is having a good weekend. I thought I'd take this morning to play catch up on a few things and get another post up on stuff I've been working on.

I'm getting married in August and I'd decided that there were several things that I wanted to DIY, you know, to make the wedding and reception mine. There's lots of stuff out there for ideas and it can be a bit overwhelming. But after finally narrowing down the particulars of color, formality, location etc I started on the details. I finally decided that I would make my own invitations and some of the decorations for the flower arrangements and my cake "jewelry." I think that's all but that's really enough. My darling fiance thinks I'm a bit nuts but he's very supportive and has had lots of ideas of his own which is fun.
So of course when you start a big project like this there is trial and error, prototypes and one-offs just to see what the end result is going to be and what needs tweaking, and for me I'm still working on my skills so some practice is in order.

I have to thank Inna's Creations for my inspiration. This woman is phenomenal. She has really good tutorials on her site and her work is exquisite. She has some of the best 3D butterflies out there so I've sat and stared at them for hours.

So here's my first butterfly prototype. I think I did a pretty good job for the first time. I know it looks pretty big and I didn't take a picture of it with something to reference the size but the finished butterfly was about 3 inches. Not very big at all. I'm not completely happy with the body as I'm going to end up wiring these guys for both the flower arrangements AND the cake so we'll see if I can get the hang of the bodies. It's a little harder than I expected so I think a little practice is in order.

Stella...

So the thing about blogs is that if you are going to have one you need to keep it updated. So here I am, finally. I have several things I've been working on but I'll start with the last thing I finished and go on from there.

This is Stella... I'd love to say I came up with her but nope, she's the brain child from Jodie over at Bugaboo Stamps

She is my first attempt at using digi stamps in my cards and things. Don't you just love her hat? This is going to be the first of several "Stella" cards cause Jodie has a ton of Stella images and she totally appeals to my evil sense of humor.

I think I'm in love. For this particular card I used my chalks from The Stencil Company. At first I was thinking "I'm coloring!" While I like the first one OK; by the time I got to the fourth one I had refined my technique and developed how I was going to get the color on the card stock. It was fun.

Things I learned along the way...start with the lightest color and do the darkest/brightest last, and if you insist on using your fingers make sure you wash your hands so that you don't get fingerprints on your card.

I also used cards from my stash and papers from my DCWV Mango Frost mat stack. Let me know how you like it.

Paper Rosettes

Let me say how hard it is to stay focused when all the blog candy on the web is really enticing. So I sit at my desk checking the work volume and surfing Splitcoast Stampers and You Tube for technique tutorials. I'm learning quite a lot. Really.
A few weeks back I learned how to make paper rosettes AND how to make a never ending card. (More on the card after I find my pics.) So. My work desk has been covered with bottles of glitter glue, scraps of paper and all sort of other crafty implements. I've decided that I think I really need a small circle punch to help with the rosette making cause I can't cut a circle to save my life. Well actually I can't cut a straight line either, but that's a whole other topic.
So below are a few of the rosettes I made. I used My Mind's Eye papers from a really cool paper pack that I got last summer as a freebie in a Cardmaking & Papercraft Magazine, and some strips of paper from the beautiful K and Co Valentine pack I picked up a few weeks back at Michael's.

I amaze myself, just kidding. I was really pleased with how things turned out after a few attempts and realizing that I needed paper longer than two inches. Now what shall I embellish?

Will You Be Mine?

So it's a little past valentines day but here is the valentine card I literally threw together for my fiance after my brothers 2 year old grandson got his hands on my first fish. My concentric circles were beautiful. Not so much on the second go around, I was working fast.

This was inspired by the really cute stamped card on the cover of January issue of Cardmaker Magazine. I saw it and knew I had to do it. Not only that but I spent about an hour coming up with other combination's for other quilled V-day cards like Aa Lion and the sentiment, "I'm not Lion! You're Grrrrreeaaattt Valentine!!!!

And I had no stamp for the sentiment and didn't think about printing one... next time.

I used 1/4 inch paper that I got from Denise over at Custom Quilling and I mounted my little fish on a white label which was actually a card I cut with my Cricut Expression and my Sentimentals Cartridge. Then I mounted it on some awesome K&Company Kelly Panacci double sided valentine paper that I purchased. The whole stack is wonderful...then I threw it on a red card from my stash that I got from Joann's. Oh and my little red heart "bubbles" are heart shaped Jewel Dazzle Stickers from Hot of the Press and Paper Wishes I love that company.
I hope you like it.

My First ATC

I got laid off from my job and I'm torn. I'd like to be worried and a little freaked out but I'm not. I'm somewhat concerned but I'm really happy. My supervisor (who also happens to be one of my older cousins) said to me "when one door closes another opens." So we'll see what happens. He also said this would give me time to work on plans for my upcoming wedding and I suppose that's true but I have some other projects I'd like to do. Like quill, work on cards and get that Pooh Clock made for another cousin's baby that's due in the next couple of weeks. I have lots of things to do. Now to figure out how to finance it without me having to get a 9 to 5 leave the house job.
I've worked from home for several years now and I like it. It allows me to get lots of things done that would never get done otherwise. So we'll see what happens.

In the meantime I've been learning things. Below is a photo of my first ATC.

It took me forever to get this done and thank goodness for the tutorial over at Splitcoast Stampers. The coolest thing I think I learned is that while glitter glue is pretty it doesn't always dry the way it looks when it's wet. So in this photo it my look like the sparkly frosting on the cake is puffy dimensional, but it isn't, it dried flat.
This was an awesome Wedding Cake dig-stamp I picked from The Digichick Shop and the background paper is from The Sweet MatT Stack from DCWV. I love those guys. well this is it for now, there will be more to come.

Happy New Year!

Well the holidays are over and I have to admit I'm glad. Glad to be getting back to normal and hoping my work gets back to normal as well. Working from home can be a bit of a drag when you can't rely on a steady workload.

I did have a wonderful holiday though and hope everyone out there did as well.

So in the next couple of weeks I'm going to get this blog whipped into shape with my list of blogs I follow as well as some photo's of some of the things I worked on during the holidays. I have to admit I think holiday crafts tend to be the prettiest and inspire me the most and I think in order to have a happier holiday I should work on some Christmas crafty something every month so I'm not scrambling in December. Maybe that will be a category that I'll have. We'll see how that works out. Keep your fingers crossed. Now if only all those other awesome crafty bloggers would stop making things I need to try to make myself!

Next up, I have a ton of cards to make...