work in progress

The weekend was quite busy - I'm beginning to feel the pressure of leaving on Saturday for a two-week trip to Poland. Cleaning, laundry, organizing... not sure that I'm a big fan of this stage of traveling...

Anyway, I managed to find some time for the craft table. Some time was spent on cleaning, and also for preparing a few birds based on cardboard cutouts. Painted them with gesso first, then red paint, then glitter paint, one-step crackle and finally golden accents. Whew! Plus drying time after each of the steps, so it takes a while.

Then the menagerie continues with some dog characters...

...and, finally, there are Christmas trees cut out of a giant tree in an old greeting card.

So many ideas, so little time!

Mountains in art journal

Art journal pages don't require the kind of discipline that must be present when I work on cards or an item that will potentially be used by someone else. Things don't have to be nice and even, I can use ANY words I want, and even if I feel like I've messed up, the project won't be thrown away. Lessons will be learned, and the page will find its place on the giant binder rings.

The page below has two sort-of mistakes: one is the size - all other pages are 8.5x5.5, and when I started this one, for some reason I didn't realize that I had grabbed a larger base. Too late now - the page stick out. Maybe I should make a few more pages in random sizes and pretend it's all been done on purpose.

The second unsatisfactory item is that misty object on the left - not sure if it belongs, but oh-well, I can't scrape it off.



The project was inspired by a page from a calendar. It featured the famous reflected view of Grand Teton, so it first brought back the memories from our trip to Yellowstone, which also included a drive through the awesome Tetons.

The top quotes the first two verses of Psalm 121:

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.

The blue words next to the buttons list three important Biblical mountains - Hermon, Carmel and Olives.

I find it a very pleasant way to memorize some new Hebrew vocabulary and practice my handwriting, which to a real Hebrew speaker would probably look crooked and childish. As long as it's readable, I'm happy :)

Real estate thank you notes

We closed on a condominium last week and since we received a ton of help from our awesome team, we wanted to send everybody a thank you note. Luckily, I had a set of stamps just perfect for this purpose! The only problem was deciding if I should use the little house or the sofa.

The house won. The sofa has to wait for another occasion. It will probably be used very soon - a girlfriend at work will be moving at the end of this month :)

Oh, deer

Here comes the first batch of Christmas cards! No red and green yet... but I'm working on it :)

A lot has been happening over the last few months and especially the last few weeks - it felt like paperwork, loans, banks etc. took away all the inspiration for crafting, writing, taking photos... I only did what needed to be done in order for the household not to fall apart.

Now I feel like a sack of potatoes has been lifted from my shoulders. At the same time, a cold moved in... but I'm getting over it as well, and ready to go back to the creative table, which I cleaned last night. Yay! Sometimes, I guess, it's good to go through a difficult process to appreciate the time where such burdens are absent.

As usual...

...I'm experiencing problems with the standard Christmas colors, namely red and green. I make myself use them - otherwise, all my cards would be pink, mint, blue, coral...

Dropping a line

I've officially started making Christmas cards (five are ready to go, between the brand new ones and stuff started last year), but before presenting those, here are non-identical twins based on a stamp with a fish.

baby boy cards

A friend at work asked for a baby boy card - this turned out to be a bit of a challenge; I can't think of the last time I dabbled in the baby theme!

 

Once again, I was grateful to the inventor of Pinterest... I saw some cards with little playful giraffes and remembered that I had one of those stamps we pick from the dollar baskets (aka last temptation of a crafter), while waiting for the checkout.

 

And here it is!

 

I also made a classic one, with a footprint (someone had given me this stamp loooong time ago and I never used until yesterday).

And this was the first one, kind of experimenting with the colors and the animal theme - to me it seems a bit too crowded, but I'm not going to throw it away :)

Next in line are a few general cards someone ordered for a gift... and then moooving on to Christmas! I actually made the first bauble already :)

watery

Inspired by a recent trip to the beautiful state of Michigan, and the lighthouses we saw on The Thumb, here is a card with... a lighthouse :)

 

 

More to come with the same stamp, I'm sure - I have three more copies heat-embossed and planned in my head :) Papers are waiting, buttons rolling around on the craft table!

 

And speaking of watery creations, we are moving to a more sea-themed pair - and a different color scheme:



heart cards

A while ago I was given a present - a bottle of One Step Crackle. I went ahead and experimented with some hearts - and here are the results, just in time for Valentine's Day!

celebrating a new home

I'm working on a number of items for the craftshow this weekend (yikes, the day after tomorrow!) Yesterday I took a break from purses, boxes and tags to make two cards to celebrate a new home, as requested by a friend.

Got to use two brand new stamps - the house was still in its plastic wrapping, and the nest had been waiting for months, if not years, for the first use... the time has finally come.

And now - back to the purses :)

Blizzard paper - another sample of WIP

A girlfriend at work (thank you, Anita!) has given me a few sheets of marble paper - kind of whitish-grey. My first thought was: this is a blizzard, perfect for something snowy, possibly an exploding box!

So - I got out pinturas acrilicas and started with stamping large snowflakes, in white pearlescent paint mixed with glitter paint. Nice! Then I stamped smaller, more detailed snowflakes in silvery ink and put silver glitter dots in the centers.

Here is the sheet...

...and here is a close-up to show the details of this experiment:

I'm planning another layer - either white or translucent heat-embossed snowflakes, but I have to wait till the existing treatments dry; otherwise, the embossing powder will stick to everything.

It turned out that I had a surplus of the paint mixture, so I used it up on the brown bags which also go to the craft show as packaging for my paper goodies:

On a different front - the exploding boxes are getting the more detailed decorations. I think this is my favorite part of the process:

How's that made? Boxes WIP*

In preparation for the next event in two weeks, I'm working on a few exploding boxes, since they stirred considerable interest last week. I had a little adventure yesterday, carrying papers to the car, so that I could cut them on the industrial cutter at work (way faster, than my trimmer at home) - long story short, it is much easier to clip the folder shut, than to run around collecting sheets on nearby shrubbery and reach under parked cars to dig out other mischievous pieces!

Anyway, work is progressing well - last night I watched the reports from NYC, worrying about some friends in the hurricane's pathway... and spent a few hours creating these three:

They still need more decorating, especially the 3d paint and glitter dots, and  I need to add the quotes. All three boxes will be garden-themed, and then I have squares chopped for two more - books/reading and music.

And I really, really want to make one about SNOW! Next in line, right behind the first five :) After that I should move on to the little post-it-note purses.

*WIP - Work In Progress

snowy, shimmery baubles

Working on Christmas cards a lot... among a few other items for the Saturday craft show in Carol Stream. Let's start the presentation with one of my favorite holiday motif - baubles! Of course, Poland has a long tradition of hand made/hand painted glass baubles, mine are just paper... And then there are snowflakes, another favorite.

I used the French Door fold in this series - it looks like people find it interesting. And I love the symmetry.

I had to try to make an almost-white card ONCE AGAIN - I try every year and somehow my attachment to vibrant colors steers me away :)

So then the blue series appeared...

and the standard colors, red and green:

soap card

No, there is no actual soap in the card... but some time ago a got as a gift a few bars of hand-made soap, wrapped in brown paper decorated with a string and a blue hydrangea-like bloom...

... every fellow crafter will agree that it is extremely difficult to throw anything away; so, even though the blue flower had to wait a couple weeks after avoiding the garbage can,  it finally made its way into a celebratory card. Blue and green, my favorite color scheme. I've always preferred cool colors, both in clothing and craft.

explosive quotes on reading

Amidst Christmas cards and catching up on travel scrapbooking, I have finally finished the exploding box with quotes on books and reading. It's really a simple concept but the details may be rather time-consuming and if i don't finish the whole project quickly, it tends to linger forever.

So, here is the outside, including the lid with a precious stone...

..and, once you take the lid off, the box opens and reveals the quotes - I dyed them in coffee so they would gain the old-book look:

There is another box like this waiting to be finished - in pinks and purples, and the theme will be friendship.Quite flowery, I must say.

hummingbird cards finished!

It turned out that apart from the hummingbird purchased recently on Ebay, I also had one in the bird-and-butterfly Inkadinkado set purchased long time ago. It worked great with black embossing and watercolors - I just love these bright hues!

And here is how these little inchies were incorporated in the cards:

The hummingbirds from the previous post got a layer of Glossy Accents, so they looked enameled, and not like paper any more :)

Right now I'm mostly working on Christmas cards... as usual, I started with the blue/silver/white color scheme, but I really need to move on to the classic green-and-burgundy!