More goodies, this time at Hobby Lobby

We don't have any Hobby Lobbys in Maine, but I finally got to one in Webster, NY. I got two more binding things for my Cinch. I finally found Spellbinders tags three, now I only need tags two. There was a Christmas letterpress set on clearance, so I got that as well.

Then, I have always wanted some Graphic 45 stuff, and they had one of the paper packs I wanted the most, so I got that. I got seven more Copics, and two Anna Griffin card packs that I really wanted.

I also got a three cube high wire rack thing to hold 12 x 12 scrapbook paper with a 40% off coupon. I really needed that!

I am having a wonderful scrapping Christmas vacation!

still on vacation, but got more goodies!

I really wanted the Cinch Bindery for Christmas, but it wasn't anywhere in our area of Maine, and it was too late to order one on line. I managed to get one here in Rochester. They only had a couple of binding wire things, so I bought the four they had. Now I need to find some place to order 2:1 wires on line. I'm also wondering if the Cinch will punch mat board. I cut mats for my photography, and have tons of leftovers large enough for albums but not for my photography. Mat board is so much nicer than chipboard, and is acid free.

Today I got to Michael's. We don't have a Michaels any where near us, so it's always a treat to go. I finally got MS stamp around the page, a punch around the page, and a punch all over thing. I've looked for those for a long time, and this is the first time I've seen them.

Another thing I've wanted for a long time and never found were liquid pearls. I got three packages!

Then I found a ton of small flowers in bottles. I got seven bottles. In Maine, all I've been able to find are Prima, and there were more really large flowers than small. The two kinds of Primas I like are either really difficult to find or are discontinued, so I was really happy to find these.

I never found any of the Spellbinders I want the most, the Martha Stewart punch I want the most or some branch punches I've been looking for forever. Oh well, I'll be here for a few more days, so maybe I'll find them someplace, and I did get my Cinch!

Easel Card Sticky Note Holder

This isn't quite finished. I want to add matchbox drawers beneath it so who ever gets it will be able to store paper clips and things right in the same place. Unfortunately I don't have any match boxes, so I will add them and rephotograph this when I get back from the holidays.

I didn't use a pattern for this, I just made an easel card with a 1/2" fold to accommodate the pad and pen, (I haven't got the pen yet), and made a slit for the ribbon which will hold the pen. I sort of messed up though, because I put the ribbon too high. Oh well, it makes a good prototype and I will do better on the next one.

The patterned paper is from the Mariposa stack, I couldn't believe the bird image was exactly the right size for a 5x5 card! The white is Core'dinations pearl, and the green is ordinary green CS. The butterfly is Cheery Lynn, and I accented the card with diamond Stickles.

We're leaving in the morning to visit the kids and grandchildren for a couple of weeks, but I want to wish all of my blog friends a wonderful holiday season!

No card today, but I was productive anyway

Instead I was going through all my small green scraps and making leaves. I have a ridiculous amount of scraps, so sometimes I just sit down with punches and dies and make flowers, leaves, and small shapes.

It's quite boring, but saves time when making cards if I can just reach into a zip lock bag and take something I need out rather than hauling the dies and cutters out and making them. Now I have quite a few leaves, stems and vines in different shades of green and different sizes and shapes.

I also have fewer scraps.

Sticky Note Holders

This is the first time I've made these. I don't have the pens yet, but since I am going away to visit the kids and grandchildren for Christmas on Thursday, I probably won't have the pens until I get back after the new year.

I followed this tutorial. I made the blue one first, and made it fancy, then made a less fancy green one after that. They were really fun to make! Sorry the photos are so blurry, but we have compact flourescent bulbs, and it's really dark around here at night now, even though they are supposed to be equivalent to 100 watts. Can't read and do crafts using them except during the day, and photos don't come out very well with my phone and so little light.

For the blue one, I used floral paper from my stash, blue pearl cs from an art supply store and ordinary white card stock. I used Spellbinders for the center square, and Marianne Creatables for the flower.

I decided to add Stickles for sparkle, but then the outside corners looked blank. I always save some of the fancier punch outs from my Spellbinders dies in Altoid tins in case I need extra accents on a piece, so I looked in there and found these little ones which I added and put Stickle in the corners of them.

The green one was done using some card stock I bought quite a few years ago. It has dark green mulberry paper on one side and light green on the other. Since I'm planning on selling these, I wanted this one to be simpler, so I added a Spellbinders Sunflower die and the leaf from it. I used pebbles chalk creams to stencil the leaf and the sunflower. The leaf really isn't that shiny light green, it just reflected the flash from the camera. It is really a slightly darker shade of green and isn't shiny at all. The leaf and the sunflower were applied flat on the card, then I used a second cut out sunflower over the first, mounted on dimensional tape to make it look more like a real sunflower.

Sliding Easel Card

This is the first time I have made one of these cards. I have always liked them, but never found a tutorial for them except UTube videos, which I can't view because of my slow internet connection.

There is a tutorial at SCS, but it only shows measurements by using a Fiskars cutter. Unfortunately, my Fiskars cutter has never worked right, so I couldn't use it. After trying again to make the cutter work, I finally just made a template as best as I could figure out,and managed to come up with this. (I think the Fiskars one has a defect in the clear ruler thing, and it is too old to return). I'd hate to buy another cutter, even though it would make things so much easier, because I already have three cutters, and they are expensive.

I'm not terribly happy with the card, but at least I finally got one made. It is a lot of work when you aren't really sure what you are doing, and I'm not happy with how I decorated it. Maybe I will try another one sometime.

If anyone knows of a good tutorial for these cards that isn't a video and doesn't use Fiskars measurements, could you let me know, pretty please?

The card is made with Core'dinations light and dark gold pearl CS and Bazill pearl linen CS, Spellbinders, and K & Co die cuts. The pearls are Queen & Co., the little gold flowers are dresden paper and the stickers are from my stash. The saying is from Anna Griffin stamps, and stamped with peeled paint distress ink.

I just found a beautiful new blog to explore!

So far, I'm only on the first page, but everything I see is gorgeous!
 It's Elly's Card Corner . I think I'm going to be visiting her blog for quite a while.

Easel Card with Marianne Creatables and Cheery Lynn

This card was made using a 5" square of Core'dinations light gold pearl CS and applying Marianne Creatables Anja Style Corners around a tag by K & Co.

Surrounding the light gold pearl CS is gold mirror card, pink linen textured pearl CS by Core'dinations and white CS. The flowers are Prima, and the butterfly is cut from a Cheery Lynn die. The sparkly accents are stickles.

Iris Card with Spellbinders

I wish I had decided what I was going to put on this card before I made it in blue. The only things I had that looked right on the sides were these irises. My husband likes the contrast, so maybe it isn't that bad.

The middle section is raised up, and to close the card, you push the sides inward. About half of the side pieces show up when the card is closed, making a six inch square card.

To make it, I cut a 12" square piece of CS (Linen Stack) to 6"x9". I then scored the card at 3", 4 1/2", 7 1/2" and 9", and mountain folded the two inside scores, and valley folded the two on the outside.

Then I cut three strips of ordinary cream colored CS to 5 3/4" x 2 3/4". I used a Fiskars corner punch in each corner.

The light blue is very heavy CS I got at an art supply store. This was cut to 5 1/2" x 2 1/2", and the same corner punch was used.

The center was done with a Spellbinders Fleur de Lis Shapabilities die. I cut and embossed the light blue, then embossed only the cream and dark blue. The light blue was mounted on the cream and cut around with scissors leaving a margin, then I mounted them onto the dark blue, and cut around that, leaving a margin on that as well. I applied this diagonally to the raised center portion and used K & Co. die cuts to decorate the card.

Napkin Fold Card with Spellbinders and Marianne Creatables

I made this card from this Stampartic tutorial. I decided to put the napkin fold inside a card rather than using it alone. I made the napkin fold the same size as the tutorial, then cut the card out of a 6 1/2" square, and a 6 1/2" x 7" square. I scored the larger square at 6 1/2" and 6 3/4", and glued the larger piece to the smaller one, since I didn't have any paper large enough to make a 6 1/2" square card.

The white paper is a linen textured CS from my stash, the flowered paper is from Walmart, and the yellow paper is moire textured paper I bought at an art supply shop. So far, I have never seen an MS punch around the page in a local store, so I used one of her border punches to make the paper look like lace. The die cuts are Spellbinders and Marianne Creatables Anja Corners. The Butterfly and the diecut inside are K & Co.

Gatefold Card using Marianne Creatables

I feel really lucky to have been able to upload three photos today. The free download files were larger, and wouldn't upload.

This card uses a pearlescent blue CS from the linen closet stack and white pearl Core'dinations CS. All dies were Marianne Creatables except the leaves which were Spellbinders. I used stickles to outline the little roses I made from Creatables and attached the ones in the center with blue brads. The corner ones were attached with silicone glue. After I photographed this, I realized that I didn't add centers for the corner flowers, so I will add them now, either by placing a small pearl, or no holes beads, whichever I like better. The hydrangea inside is from K&Co.

Easel Card with Spellbinders and Prima Flowers

I still can't get any files to upload for the free graphics, but I managed to upload some smaller files of a couple of cards I've done recently.

For this one I used Core'dinations pink pearl card stock and ordinary white card stock. The labels were cut out with my Spellbinders dies and stenciled using the dies with Pebbles cream chalks. The saying was stamped with a pink Anna Griffin stamp pad and one of her stamps . The flowers are from Prima. I wish they still made the tiny roses. They were called mini roses and came with 24 per card for $2.99. They had green cloth covered florist wire stems, which could be coiled for extra dimension, and were tiny enough to use anywhere. I only bought two colors, expecting to be able to buy more later, but I didn't know that they had been discontinued. There were some in beautiful shades of yellow which I never got.

For a while now, I have seen tutorials suggesting the use of silicone glue for attaching things dimensionally. I decided to try it to attach flowers on all of my latest cards since since they don't always have flat bottoms. The silicone glue will actually form a little "cup" around the bottom of the flowers when you attach them providing more contact and dries clear. I am really happy with it.

Internet is still broken

I have done a bunch of really beautiful cards, and zipped up some files for you all to download, but I still can't get anything uploaded. I try and try for hours while I do other things, but they always fail not matter where I try to upload them to. Pages also still take forever to load, and frequently have no graphics on them unless I refresh them a bunch of times.

Lately I have been doing a lot of coloring with water color pencils and one of those paint brushes that holds water in the handle. It's quite fun! I tried my Copics on some of my Just Rite stamps, but I can't get fine enough detail with them. I think I should have gotten the original rather than the sketches, because I am trying to get really fine details. Does anyone know if you can put the fine nibs into the sketches?

I still can't get anything uploaded

My telephone company did something to the box outside again today, and now my connection is so slow I can't get anything done. I wonder if it's a coincidence, but they keep calling me to see if I will upgrade to a much more expensive internet plan.

Even Google Mail keeps switching to the slow version because the regular pages won't load.

I found another wonderful blog

If you go there, keep clicking on older posts. Marianne at Stampartic has posted some really gorgeous Christmas presents to make, along with all of her wonderful tutorials and beautiful cards.

I'm hoping that I will be able to upload to my blog again tomorrow. Today my phone Company was fixing something on the box on the telephone pole across the street from my house. Our phone has been really statically lately, enough so that it's difficult to have a conversation. It's probably also the reason I couldn't upload or get my internet connection to work. After they left, I picked up the phone and no more static. I also have internet again. I'm hoping that's where the problem was.

I am still having internet problems

Fairpoint told me it was my router, so I bought a new one. Well, it must be a Fairpoint problem, because I am still not able to upload with either router, with either computer, and from other people's houses who are also on Fairpoint. Internet is still slow and intermittent.

I have tried for so long to add new cards and files for you, but it seems to be hopeless. :-(