July 31, 2010

Christmas in July? Midweek Throwdown....


I have friends who start on Christmas cards in February but I've always been a "do 'em at Thanksgiving" person.. being my first year doing the cards for heros, this Christmas card in July thing is new to me BUT if it will break the nasty heat waves we have had this summer, I'll do 'em 24/7!

So a friend had some gorgeous card fronts done with a resist technique I hadn't seen (and we also played with this technique at her stamp-a-stack) so thought I'd try at home. We used new "Liquid Pearls" in opaque to play with, but I had to change it up and try it with the silver Liquid Pearls = not! I like the opaque better!

How do you do it? Put a dollop of the liquid pearls on a plastic plate, aluminum foil (anything not porous) and spread really thin and quickly with your fingers. Ball up part of a plastic grocery bag and dab the pearls onto glossy paper - a pretty good coating but not "even." After it dried I used Distress Ink in the green pine color (Distress Inks works best), swiping the inkpad over the pearly coated paper and then quickly rubbing the ink off with a paper towel - voila! Legal patina and shine without glitter to ship overseas! Like I said, after using the silver pearls, I think I'll use the opaque next time to make it shinier. You can also use a rubber stamp dipped in the liquid pearls to stamp images and I'm going to try that with a new snowflake stamp and a light blue distress ink. If you use stamps with this technique you have to stamp quickly and clean off the stamp even quicker so the pearls don't harden on it. The stamp I used on this NOEL card is one of the "Big on Christmas" set from Stampin' Up! that I got specifially for OWH cards. I stamped, colored and cut a second ornament for the "O" to make it "stand out" a bit and and glitzed up the ornament hangar on the original stamp image with a glitter pen...but the forest green background paper still looks "black" no matter where I photograph it or how... oh well!

It's Halloween Already? The Other Half of "Half and Half"



There's an ongoing challenge due some time in August on the OWH Stars and Stamps blog to make 10 (I think) "general" cards and as many holiday cards. Not really a big Halloween cardmaker but I finished the other "half" of the challenge weeks ago with my marathon scrap-using weekend so decided to make some Halloween "holiday" cards for the other half. Just started cutting and gluing and stamping and lo and behold, ended up with 13 cards! I'm not superstitious, are you?

My friend Louanne taught a card "folding" class last month and with some help from Steve who can figure anything out, I also did early Halloween cards for nieces, grandkids etc. The card on the right is one of them! I love this kind of card because it stands up so easily and will definitely be using for Christmas cards...

July 27, 2010

Sketch Challenge 27







Been in a Copic kind of mood lately and coloring way too much for a person of my age. Experimented with some "watercolor" effects that I need to improve on as you can see. I love this stamp "Country Morning" from Stampin' Up! and found a paper pack at Target for a ridiculously low price that lends itself to fall cards!