Red Altered Cigar Box and Mini Album

I've had a really pretty little piece of hand marbled paper for years, and hoarded it because I didn't want to use it. Finally I decided to use it on this very nice cigar box. The box had black enamel on the latches and a black, gold and red label. I cut the marbled paper and some metallic gold paper for a mat, and left a bit of the original black label showing under them, then used deep red pearls, gold mirror card and leftover pieces of the marbled paper cut with some Spellbinders to decorate the front.

There wasn't enough of the marble paper to decorate the sides with, and I haven't been able to find a red paper I have liked the shade of for years. Most of what I can find now is either orangey, faded looking or purpley. Years ago, an art supply place near us had red paper in a very deep rich shade, but unfortunately, I don't know what company made it, and I've never been able to find it again. I wish I could have gotten the red to look the right color in this photograph, because I managed to make a sheet of my faded looking red look almost that same color by using Distress Barn Door all over the sheet. I applied it with one of those Tim Holtz foam square things, and kept applying layers of the ink all over it. It looks orangey in the photos, but in real life, it's pretty. The red was matted with black, and I used Dresden trim on each piece.

After decorating the inside of the lid, I made an album using CS, origami paper, and various other handmade papers inside. I also made a bunch of tages with origami paper on the fronts and plain handmade paper on the backs. You can see the tags on top of the album in this photo.

This is the back side of one of the tags with the hand made paper.

This is the front of the album inside the box.

Underneath the album, I made dividers with a place for a pen and other items.

Flowery Happy Birthday

Today I decided to use one of my old Anna Griffin background stamps and color it with my Copics. The design was stamped with VersaMark, and embossed with gold EP. I stamped onto Core'dinations pearl CS so the Copics would shimmer. The sentiment is from JustRite, and was cut with Spellbinders.

The card was matted with Green CS and a pearlescent pink CS, then I edged each layer with a gold Gellyroll pen. The sentiment was also accented with the gold pen and mounted dimensionally onto the card.

Now I need two refills for my Copics. I ran out of R81, and YG63, which are two colors I use all the time. I almost didn't get the whole stamping colored. I guess it's time to get the refills and a few new colors!

Butterfly Bush Birthday Card

I have a lot of hand made paper I have collected over the years. A few weeks ago, I was going through it, and decided to use this piece to make a card. The paper has grasses and flower petals in it. The grasses are rather delicate looking, and I wanted to use a stamp that also looked fairly delicate, so I chose this one from Our Daily Bread Designs. I stamped it twice, then cut out one of the stampings with the matching ODBD die. I didn't color it because I wanted to keep the outline look, and also wanted the card to be only yellow and green. The butterflies were fussy cut from the second stamping, and were applied over the first butterflies with their wings raised.

Last, I used a JustRite stamp to add happy birthday, and cut it with Spellbinders Labels Ten. The butterfly bush was mounted dimensionally using glue dots, and the sentiment was mounted using dimensional tape, and green half pearls were added. It's not one of my favorite cards, but it's different from my usual style.

Another Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse Card

I haven't had a chance to make cards or visit blogs since last week, so I'm putting up a card I made before that. Since I sold most of my nautical cards a few weeks ago, I had to make another lighthouse card. I don't ever make two cards exactly alike. This time, I used Memento Black to stamp with, but once again, I colored it with Ranger Nibs and sponge daubers, using ink from various stamp pads. I'm really liking the subtle colors I get when I use this technique on lighthouse cards.

The stamping was matted with green CS, antique gold Cs, and some white CS I shaded with sponge daubers, then I added a square knot at the top, and a carrick bend to the bottom.

Butterflies and Dogwood Easel Card

This is the first card I made with the Sizzix/Hampton Arts stamp and die set. Now that it's finished, I think it's a bit busy for such a small card, but it is what it is.

All the butterflies and flowers are from the stamp and die set, and the squares and fancy borders were cut with Spellbinders dies.

All the paper is Core'dinations white pearl CS. The pink part of the card is shaded with a brilliance pink ink, and the butterflies and flowers are colored with Copics. The stamping was done with VersaMark, and embossed in gold, then pink Liquid Pearls were added.

Yes, it's pink Jill. :-)

Gold and Butterflies Congratulations Card

When we went to JoAnn's last weekend, I wasn't surprised that there were only a few old Spellbinders, but I was very surprised that they actually had two new Sizzix dies. They haven't had any new Sizzix in ages. Both were Hampton Arts Stamps in a kit with matching Sizzix dies. I got the set with dogwood and butterflies, and I love them! The butterflies on this card are from the set.

Everything was die cut from Core'dinatins white and gold pearl papers, and a piece of the handmade gold embossed paper I got a few weeks ago. I also used Spellbinders Labels One, Grand Labels One, Decorative Lavels One, and Labels Ten.

The sentiment layer is from JustRite, and all stamping was done with VersaMark, and embossed with Gold EP. All shading is done with Delicata Gold, and I used Liquid Pearls as accents.

WOYWW #210

I'm so sorry I missed the last few weeks of WOYWW. My mother is selling her house in Massachusetts and moving to Maine permanently. We have been back and forth a lot, as well as helping her to get unpacked. Plus, I have been getting our summer shop open and watching it. I will try to visit as many people as I can, but with things so busy here, it may not be very many, since she is due back with more stuff this weekend. (She's 82, so I try to help her as much as possible). I may take a little break from WOYWW until fall, since I don't think it's fair for me to participate if I don't get a chance to visit as much as I should.

Anyway, here is how I have things set up in a room behind my shop at the moment. Right now, I have a set of shelves sitting on the counter with jars of flowers and bows in them. The large jars with the red covers on them are instant coffee jars our supermarket used to sell. They were wonderful for storing all sorts of things, but alas, the supermarket has changed to cheap plastic jars, and we can't get these any more. The rest of the jars are a couple of antique glass cookie jars which belonged to my grandmother, and a very old blue Mason Jar. There are also a few flat plastic containers with more bows and flowers, as well as assorted stuff.

On the left is my precious wooden box with scissors and other things I use every time I make cards, (the tape is what I use to tape down dies. It's easier to remove from that, than from the tape dispenser), as well as my wax paper for die cutting. On top of that is my favorite Core'dinations Pearl paper. I hope they haven't stopped making it, because I haven't found any other paper I like as well, and JoAnn's has stopped selling it. The paper is sitting on my sponge dauber box.

Next is a small notebook from Staples with JustRite stamps in it. On my cutting mat is a card I am working on. Behind that is a plastic container with embossing powder in it, and behind that are my cups of pencils, brushes, blending tools and embossing styluses, and some jars of Ranger Nibs.

Leaning up against the wall, are my Grand Calibur plates, trimmers, my scoreboard and various other cutting mats and things. On the right are a bone china cup I found in the stuff my mother is selling on a yard sale, (Her stuff is all in that same room). A decorated cigar box I am finishing is behind it with my ATG on top, and my Really Useful Box organizer thingy is to the right of that, with some other boxes I have stamped and am painting. Usually the Really Useful Boxes aren't right there, but I put them in the photo because I know Shaz Silverwolf likes them too! You can also see the end of my heat gun peaking out from behind them as well as scissors and a stamp on an acrylic block.

If you want to see what WOYWW is all about, go visit Julia at The Stamping Ground, and find out how you can snoop into people's craft rooms all over the world!

Oh, it's quite neat because I am so used to having to pick everything up all the time at home. Sometimes I leave everything out, but I am trying not to do that. I will try to do some visiting tonight. I was supposed to open the shop 15 minutes ago, but I haven't even left the house yet!

Blue Butterfly Card

A few months ago, I made a pink butterfly card using some paper I had stamped and embossed in gold using an old Anna Griffin background stamp I had. I really liked that card, and decided to make a blue one just like it.

The blue paper for the card was made by taking some white moire paper I bought a few years ago at an art supply store, and painting over it with some watercolors I made from two shades of PearlEx. I ran out of sheets of Gold Mirror card, and only have scraps left. The mirror card is really hard to find, and the new owners of the craft store where I bought it are terrible about ordering, so I used some gold gift wrap I bought years ago at a paper mill outlet store for the matting. The butterflies were cut from my scraps of mirror card using Cheery Lynn Exotic Butterflies, then I used those Angel wing things to cut some blue paper for behind the wings. I still hate those angel wing things, and wish they were whole dies instead of half dies though. Usually I have to run them twice through the Grand Calibur to get a whole butterfly. This time, I used lighter weight paper, and folded them, but the bodies came out thinner than the bodies on the filigree butterflies and didn't quite fit. Anyway, after gluing the butterfly layers together, I used a sparkly Gelyroll pen to color the blue in the wings a little bit deeper shade of blue than the background.

The label is from Spellbinders, and is cut and embossed from more scraps of mirror card, then I gold embossed a JustRite stamp on blue paper for the sentiment. This was stamped with VersaMark, and the whole label was mounted dimensionally.

I'm really sorry I haven't been around to visit much lately, it's still pretty busy here.

Gold and White Special Day Card

I thought I had enough nautical cards made up, so I decided to use some new paper I had to make a white and gold card. I finished this one, and started another non-nautical card. Then some women came into the shop and bought all my nautical cards, so it looks like I will have to make more nautical ones when I finish the one I started after I finished this one. I'd rather make flowery cards than nautical ones.

When we went to Rockland a few weeks ago, I stopped at a place in Camden, Maine which sells artist supplies. They had some really interesting paper there, and I got a few packs of assorted handmade papers. The gold and white paper on this card was in one of the packs.

I used white Core'dinations Pearl CS and gold mirror card for the layers, then used JustRite stamps, VersaMark and gold EP for the design. The stamped design was die cut with matching JustRite Spellbinders dies, and painted with watercolors I made from Pearl White PearlEx, and is very pearly and sparkling in person.

When I was holding the die cuts over the card to decide where to put them, it looked kind of plain, so I decided to add a piece of ribbon, then mount the die cuts dimensionally over that.

PSX Marshall Point Light Easel Card

Here is another nautical card from and old Marshall Point Light stamp by PSX. If you've ever seen the movie Forest Gump, this is the lighthouse from the movie. It is located in Port Clyde, Maine, near Rockland.

I stamped this onto K&Co DP using brown ink, then embossed it with clear EP. The sentiment is from JustRite. I used my Ranger nibs to color it with white and various shades of brown. It was matted with generic CS in shades of brown and mounted onto an antique metallic copper colored card, and K&Co dimensional stickers were added.

Isle Au Haut Lighthouse Card

I hope you're not bored seeing another lighthouse card, but since I live on an island, I need to make more nautical cards for my shop.

This one is a very old stamp of Isle Au Haut, by a company, which I think is out of business, because I can find nothing about it on the internet. This lighthouse is very close to us. In order to get to the island where it is located, you have to take a mailboat from our town. My father-in-law used to run the mailboat before he passed away. The lighthouse was a bed and breakfast for quite a few years, and I wonder if the people who made the stamp stayed there, since it is a very obscure lighthouse. The company that made it was in California.

I made this one exactly the same way as I made the Portland Head one yesterday, using various stamp pads to color it using Ranger nibs and sponge daubers. This is a really difficult stamp to get a good impression with. So far, the only ink I've ever gotten a good one with is Stazon, so that is what I used to stamp this card with.

PSX Portland Head Light Card

I finally got a chance to make a new card. My shop is pretty well set up for the summer, even though it will be a few more weeks before the tourists arrive on our island. I don't have very many nautical cards, so I figured I'd better concentrate on those for a while.

This one is done from my old PSX Portland Head stamp. I was planning on coloring it with Copics, so I stamped it with Memento Black, then I remembered the soft coloring I got when I used stamp pads and Ranger Nibs on another card a few months ago. I liked the softer colors, so I used various inks to color this one with the nibs as well. The colors aren't quite as bright as this in real life, and the red is much less bright.

The blue around the lighthouse, as well as the wider blue mat were done using VersaMagic Aegean Blue with a sponge dauber. The narrow mats were done with a dark green and an antique gold metallic. The anchors were punched from the same antique gold using a MS punch, and the square knot was tied using hemp cord.