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!

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 :)

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.

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!

welcome, autumn

I can't believe the autumn is here already - with all its crispness and beautiful colors! We spent a wonderful weekend with our granddaughter, visiting a farm full of pumpkins and other harvest goodness. She had loads of fun and we did as well, as if discovering this season again through the eyes of the child.

Much is also going on at the craft table, including Christmas goodies... for now, I'm going back to a few French door cards, which open in the center and my customers say it's a nice, fun design :)

Also, since my birthday is coming up in October... here is a birthday cake!

cupcakes and cherries

A few weeks ago I got this little acrylic stamp - a cupcake in the size perfectly suited for the focal element of cards. So, I've been baking... somewhat literally, because the examples below feature hot embossing, which of course involves the use of a heatgun.

Before we move on to cupcakes, let's start with a cherry - I really like this little cutout and I wish I had more, but so far no luck finding them.

And here are the other sweets:

On the last three cupcakes there is an extra layer on top of watercoloror - I added Fran-tage, which is an embossing powder mixed with larger grains and glitter, so when it melts, it created an interesting texture, very fun to touch. One caveat is, though, that the paper has to be heated from underneath in this case, because otherwise most of this goodness will just fly away!

And then I'm working on more sticky note purses, and some Christmas stuff already, and a few mini-albums... lots of work, craft shows are coming up!