Meanwhile.... Back at the Ranch

Last night I sat down and was going to make some tags but it was like I was using someone else's hands.  And that someone else was not a papercrafter.  After several different attempts went awry, I called it a night and decided to address The Holiday That Shall Not Be Named cards instead.  Thrilling, that.  It did get me thinking about what will I do after all the holiday cards are made?  I'll have to find some new mischief to keep me out of trouble.

Meanwhile, back at the reindeer ranch, here are the remaining reindeer cards.  Check out that last card--that is a FOURTEEN BLING reindeer. 

 The Fine Print: Yeah, same as yesterday really.  Maybe tomorrow will bring something more exciting.  But don't hold your breath.

A Thundering Herd of Reindeer

On Saturday, I posted my Tale of Two Reindeer that you can check out HERE if you want.  To quickly refresh your memory, I said one of those two stamps did not do it for me.  A friend emailed and asked which one.  I’m not giving up that information that easily.  You'll have to guess first.

After making those two cards to show you the stamps I decided to pull out my Rule of Five and make more reindeer cards.  Here are 4 of the 8 I made.  I’ll share the other ones in a future post.

The Fine Print: Reindeer in scarf by Hero Arts, Other Reindeer by Savvy Stamps, greetings by A Muse Studio, scalloped edge punch by Fiskars, corner rounder by Marvy, stamped in Momento ink and colored with Copics.

Reruns and Repeats

Hello, My Name is Popsicle and I will be your guest columnist again today because my momma has lumpies in her belly.  She wanted to show you some reindeer cards but that can wait until she's feeling betters.  Today I will show you what she maded yesterdays after her belly was aching.  Maybe you've seed some of these cards before but now they have some stories.

This card is a tag card that she was going to do a series on showing you folks who don't like tags outright that you could put them on cards and they would look prettys.  But she never made more than this one card so that didn't happen.  She really liked this card though and had more of that background paper so she decided to make more.  Those threads in the tag are embroidery floss and it is 5-1/2 inches long.  Mom said that was good info to know.  This is a good card to make to use up some of those bigger blings too.  Anyways, she had enough papers to make 12 more cards like this but that was too manys, so she made 6 more.

This other card Mom made and thought it was cool.  The card itself is printed with that background.  Mom just happend to find some more of those cards in her stash so she made some more of them.  She had 4 more cards like that so now we have 5 all the same. I was going to say more about this card but I forgotted.  Oh yeah, It says "Season's Greetings" on the inside so you can send it to people who are allergic to the words "Merry Christmas."

This other card Mom made a long time ago but she finded another piece of paper just like the first one.  This card is deceptively hard to make.  It was hard to color the edge of the greeting because it was a brush pen and my Mom is twitchy.  Those holly leaves were hard too because we didn't have any dark green papers but little bitty scraps.  It is a die cut thingy that is all long with berries and we had to put our scraps on just right and then cut them up.  When we made the card a second time we did betters because we learned from the first card.  Now Mom has an original Copic marker with a firm tip and she colored it before cutting it out.  Also, we had lots of dark green papers in the Christmas box and Mom is a pro at cutting out them holly leaves now.

So maybe the point of this story is when it is almost time to mail out cards and you don't have enough, you should make some reruns over and over because you already know how to make them gooder.  Mom and me have 73 Christmas cards now including the one with the naughty dog pee-peeing on the snowman, so maybe we can't send that one to nobody, but that's a lot.  73 is more crunchies than I got probably all week.  Well I have to get back to my bird watching now.  I am good at identifying them which I hear is what bird watchers do.  I saw some brown birds and I saw some gray birds today.

The Fine Print: Don't eat an apple when your belly is already aching, Mom says that is good info to know. Snowman, greeting and blue ribbon by A Mews Studio, blue paper by DCWV, and blings by Recollections.  Coffee snowman by A Mews Studio and greeting by Hero Arts, die cut  eyelet square by Spellbinders, card by DCWV, and scraps ribbon (how can it be scraps when you have 3 rolls, Mom?). Holly berry die by Sixxiz, Tis the Season and red ribbon by A Muse Artstamps, blings by Recollection, and paper by Basic Gray.

One Layer 72 Challenge

This past Wednesday, Susan posted the latest One-Layer challenge.  You can read about it HERE as well as see all the other entries (in her sidebar).  I love Susan's Simplicity blog and find a lot of inspiration in her posts, which as soon as you look at my blog and my cards I'm sure makes you say, "Huh?!"  Yeah.... so I don't actually make simple cards like she does, but I do so find them so awesome to look at!  It is kind of like how I love going to people's houses where they live a minimalism lifestyle--lots of open space; cool, clean lines; lots of wallspace; tonal colorings; minimal furnishing.... but I don't live it.  I love my cluttered, filled to the brim, yeah-well-so-it-doesn't-match, multi-colored, everything is everywhere house. 

Challenge #72 was to make a one-layered card (obvious that).  And we could only utilize a sentiment for the image--no other stamps or embellishments were allowed!   And we had to use a non-standard size for our cards.  And we had to make at least two cards using that same sentiment stamps but varying something (color, type of ink, technique, placement of the stamp, size of card, etc.).  AND we had to stand on one leg while making it. AND we had to sing the National Anthem.   Okay, I probably made those last two up.

Susan suggested using a sentiment stamp with flair so it wouldn't seem so plain and bland.  I thought about this challenge since it was posted and suddenly the lightbulb came on!  I would use one of my new A Muse Studio sentiments beacuse they were fancy and groovy all by themselves.  I had three to chose from, but after considering the non-standard size bit I setteled on "Noel."

My cards are both 4-1/4" square.  What you can't see in my scan of them--and it's really a pity--is that this is not plain white cardstock.  It has a very subtle blue grid pattern on it.  You can't see it in person until you are close up on the card and I think that gives it an added zing.

Susan also suggested that if this challenge gave us huge palpitations, we should make the card, scan it for the challenge and then go back and add more to it so we could use it.  Once I read that, I thought that would be the route I would go.  Now that I've made my clean and simple Noel cards, I'm not so sure.  I am quite pleased with them the way they are.

Two questions:  What would you think to receive this in the mail?  Do you say "No-El" or "No-Well"?  Having twin cousins named Nick and Noel (No-El) I say it No-El.

The Fine Print: Noel stamp by A Muse Studio "Vintage Holiday Greetings," green ink by Memories "Hunter Green," red ink by Marvy "English Red," sorry no idea where the mini graph paper cardstock came from.

A Tale of Two Reindeer

I have stamps to sell or trade all the time and I know that flummouxes many people.  "How can you stand to part with even one stamp?" I am asked all the time.  Well, I have an awful lot of stamps, you see.  When I mention that I'm often told, "Well, I do too, but I don't dare get rid of any of them."  I do dare and I have no problem downsizing the ones that don't work for me.  Sometimes my taste change, or a get a similar stamp I like better, or sometimes I bought them on a whim in the first place, or sometimes I'm just tired of them, etc.  And here is how it often goes down:

I have these two reindeer stamps.  They were both bought on a whim.  One came from Michael's Craft store and I was pleasantly surprised to find a nice stamp there that appealed to me.  The other one came from an internet store that has a variety of stamps and I was just browsing around.

I liked them both equally at first, but now that I've used them I have a distinct preference for one over the other.  I like how both can be jazzed up with bling and I like how they both are thick lined stamps.  I like the striped scarf on the one reindeer because you can give it more color that way.  The other reindeer has unusual antlers that I find appealing (and that you could add more bling to!). Yet, one of these stamps really "does it" for me and the other does not.  So one of these days when I'm weeding through holiday stamps I'll pick out the one I like least and toss it into the sale pile.  If someone buys it, I won't miss it.  After all, I'll still have the other great reindeer stamp to play with.  And if someone doesn't buy it, then I'll have it around to play with some more to see if I've learned to like it any better.  Either way I come out a winner.

Now I'll share with you a quick fix.  I'm sure we've all done this at some point, where you've got the entired card completed and you decide to stamp a greeting on the inside and you louse it up!  Oh no!  All that work!  In this case, I dropped the stamp at the last second.  And it isn't horrible, but it isn't acceptable either (well, by my standards, I've received cards like this so I know other people aren't as picky, especially for an inside greeting). 

To fix it, I'll just re-stamp the greeting on another piece of cardstock and glue it over the first one.  To keep it from looking like a "fix" I'll probably do it in a colored cardstock, preferrably a color that matches something on the front.  Often I'll round the corners or use a funky edger on it.  Now see, it is all better!  I added the red lines for a little more excitement, but they weren't necessary for the fix.

The Fine Print: Reindeer in scarf by Hero Arts, Other Reindeer by Savvy Stamps, greetings by A Muse Studio, small scalloped edg with decorative scissors, large scalled edge by Fiskars, corner rounder by Marvy.

Sled Girl

I made this card earlier in the year, when I first thought I would be awesome and start cards when it was still hitting 100 degrees.  It was really hard to think of The Holiday That Shall Not Be Named at that time of the year so after a few cards I fizzled out.

But!  Never fear, more sled girl is here!  I brought her out for my final Rule of Five this past weekend.

For these cards, I stamped, punched and colored the images first and then went back and decided what papers and embellishments would go good with them.  The reason I did these ones differently is that I had the cat asleep on my lap.  So I worked with what I had within reach, which was the stamps, the punches and the Copic markers.  Cat lovers will understand.

The Fine Print: Like I really need to tell ya: stamps by A Muse, shape punches by Marvy, corner punch by EK Success, snowflake die by A Muse, paper flowers by Making Memories, papers by DCWV, and cat etiquette determined by Poppy.

More Rule of Five

This first card has some Washi tape on the outside of a card just to prove to people that I do use it.  It has been on the inside of all the cards I’ve shared lately, but you wouldn't know that unless I told you. This is from the A Muse Studio Holiday Washi Tape set, which is currently 20% off (can’t beat that with a stick!).

The snowflake on this card was made with a Marianne Design Creatable die.  I’ve had this die for awhile but apparently I never used it before.  If I had used it before would have discovered what I did this time and never used it again--ugh!  It does not have any little poke holes in the back of die in which to remove the paper out of die with!  That means good luck getting your diecut free of the die.  I had to poke and pull and prod this one with a straight pin and it took quite awhile.  Maybe that process doesn’t annoy other people, but it does me.

 Here are a couple more cards with similar layouts.  I really, really like the green and blue striped card with its ribbon with multiple smaller ribbons tied to it.  The penguin’s caps are bright green like the ribbon but look yellow in the scan.  

My original plan had been to do all the penguin cards in blue since I have a lot of blue paper.  A lot.  No, really, A LOT.  Wait, I think we had this conversation already…  Anyway, I couldn’t do it.  This red and green polka dot paper wanted to come and play too and that’s okay.

The Fine Print: stamp by A Muse Studio “Winter Wishes” set, punched shapes by Marvy, scallop border by Fiskars, and papers by DCWV.  And yes, a preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.