Monthly Archives: January 2015

How do you store your ribbon?

I posted some pictures last week of the custom made storage boxes that my father and brother made for me – perhaps in the hope that with better organisation there’d be room for a cup of coffee on the kitchen table. My brother had made my sister a ribbon holder recently and I decided that I needed one too. Caro’s is a bit like a paper towel holder – handy if you don’t want to take up much space. Mine actually doesn’t take up any real estate on the table – at least not due to the ribbon.

ribbon holder

They made me a sort of drawer to keep “things” in – haven’t planned it all out yet, but so far as you can see, it’s holding twine, embellishments and piece of die cut card stock. I often cut out words in card stock in various colours before deciding which one should go on the card. The extras end up in an old stamp set case for later use.

The knobs on the right hand side are glued to the dowel and the ribbon can be removed if needed, by removing the left hand knobs. My father made these on the lathe – I think that they are made of cherry.

cherry knob on dowel

I had not been very successful in using ribbon on my cards. I’d get it out and look at it and put it away again. Since I’ve had the ribbon in front of me, I’ve used a number of pieces. I’m hoping that this will continue. Either way, I think it’s an awesome piece of storage.

Technique Tuesday – Emboss Resist

I have only used my large background stamp, the Stampin’ Up! Swallowtail set a couple of times and I decided it was time to play with it again.

Stampin' Up! Swallowtail

I used the embossing buddy on the very vanilla paper and then stamped the image in versamark and used the clear embossing powder. After heating the image, I used rich razzleberry and using a sponge, started in the centre of the image letting the ink fade as I sponged to the edges. The thing to remember about sponging is that you can add ink, you can’t remove it so it’s best to blot the sponge on scrap paper to get a sense for how much ink you have. The embossed image resists the ink (hence the name of the technique). After I’d sponged the entire paper, I used some daffodil delight to gently colour the middle parts of the butterfly. I mounted this onto a rich razzleberry base.

Perpetual Birthday Calendar – May

My perpetual birthday calendar is progressing nicely – I’m up to May. The Stampin’ Up! Perpetual Birthday Calendar kit comes with everything you need, in fact, more than you need to produce your calendar but of course you can substitute your own supplies. As I’m doing! I focused on the April showers for April so it made sense that May should be all about flowers. I took my inspiration from the All Abloom DSP stack and stamped May in strawberry slush and the flower images in strawberry slush, blushing bride and daffodil delight. I cut a few shapes out of the paper that inspired my colour choices but I wasn’t happy with the look. I even tried ribbon! In the end I decided to let the flowers stand on their own!

Perpetual Birthday Calendar - May

Stampin’ Up! Lotus Blossom

I think that that the Stampin’ Up! Lotus Blossom set is going to be the most popular of the Sale-a-bration free items. There are a lot of good things in the brochure, but the Lotus Blossom is awesome! The detail created by the 3 step stamp process is amazing.

Stampin' Up! Lotus Blossom

I belong to a small online step club where we have competitions and try to encourage each other to step more. For the last 3 years, I’ve run a year long challenge where the goal is to end the year with an annual average higher than the previous one. This year hasn’t been so good for a lot of people – injuries, illness and so forth – and only four of the dozen or so members achieved the goal. I decided to send a card to each of the people who met the challenge.

Karen is amazing. She’s a walker which means that she can get a maximum of around 6,000 steps per hour; runners can get closer to 9,000. So the fact that Karen is our highest stepper in a club that contains runners, most of whom do marathons, is quite outstanding. She has averaged over 22,000 steps per day; to do that consistently is quite a feat.

So the sentiment from the Painted Petals seems apt. And I was still trying to make happy lotus blossoms and finally succeeded. I thought I was using the colours from the All is Calm paper but today discovered that this DSP has Soft Sky, not Pool Party. However I really love the combination of lost lagoon, pear pizzazz and pool party. I stamped the first (smallest) petals in lost lagoon and then the second stamp in lost lagoon after stamping off once. The final flower image was done in pool party. For the stem I did the first image in full strength pear pizzazz and the second one after stamping off once. I matted my very vanilla in pool party and mounted it on a square of lost lagoon.

Thanks for a work of art

I’ve been trying not to neglect my stamp sets from the annual catalogue and so I was rather pleased with this card which combines sets all three of the last catalogues – Stampin’ Up! Painted Petals, Papillon Potpourri and Work of Art.

Stampin' Up! Painted Petals, Work of Art, Papillon Potpourri

I started by stamping the swoosh from Work of Art in crumb cake on a crumb cake card stock. Then I rubbed the embossing buddy over the card and stamped the butterfly in versamark. It’s not obvious from the photo, but it’s embossed in gold. The sentiment from Painted Petals is stamped in early espresso. I had half thought of matting this in gold foil but the early espresso looked better. I decided on having a large outside crumb cake frame rather than my usual 1/4 inch frames.