Home Sick

I've been home sick for the past few days and decided to use up some of my old Stampin' Up paper. This is a very basic card design used by Stampin' Up, sort of like the basic black dress.
The little pig is from A Muse.

Kimono Card

This is the start of my new Asian card design class. I had a custom die made from AccuCut and thought I would make a quick card just to see how well it cut washi paper - which can be difficult at times.
A few days ago I got out my alcohol inks and made several background sheets, which I then put a thin layer of medium gel over. As I started to cut them up, I thought they would make a great background for the kimono. It has a handmade paper look and shows off the washi paper kimono really well.
I don't have a date yet for the class since I still have to make the samples at least three more cards. I have them designed and they are waiting to be put together.

Cronflake Card

This was the card I made for the Cornflakes (card club) tonight. It was another quick (less than 5 minutes) card to make. I didn't stamp a greeting on the front so it could be used for whatever the ladies want it for. I was down in Pebble Beach this morning and I like to stop at the "Quill" in Pacific Grove when I'm in town. It's a really cute card shop that always has something interesting to see. I saw this paper (24X36 sheet) and the sock monkey just screamed at me. I designed it on the hour drive home and was lucky enough to have Memory Box paper that matched. Having oversized scallop circle punches made it one of the fastest card I've ever made.

Cornflakes Cards

Had my "Cornflakes" (card club) get together tonight at a British pub place which looked more like a bordello with all the red velvet booths and wallpaper. :) I think the place was in keeping with the Valentine theme everyone (except Laurie and me) did with their cards. It's great to see what everyone makes and to talk shop about carding making.

A Place to Bark

If you have visited Tim Holtz blog site you will see that he is supporting a non-profit group (really a one person operation) called "A place to bark" which is a no kill animal rescue group. They are in a national contest to see who can get the most donations. Right now they are in second place. It's the number of donations made, not the dollar amount that's important to win the $50,000 prize.
She takes in mainly dogs with a just a few cats.
Two of my buddies (one from my CJ group and one from my card making gang) had birthdays this month so I made two donations in their honor. Purrcy is asking that you make the call and help out those poor little kittens who have to be locked up in the bathroom and also deal with all those silly barking dogs. If you watch the video at http://www.aplacetobark.blogspot.com/ you will know what we are talking about. It's the last video on the blog.

Make A Stack with Penny Black

I will be doing a Make A Stack class using Penny Black floral stamps in February. It's a class where you make each card design three times so you go home with 15 cards. The card style has to be on the simple side, otherwise you would be making cards into the wee hours of the morning. I got the title for the class in my sleep or maybe when I couldn't fall asleep. I had to come up with a Penny Black class but I have used these stamp in several other classes. People have been asking for another stack class so I put the two together. The stamps really work best with the direct to rubber technique. I did embossing on one card just to mix it up a little.

Lucy's Inspection

Lucy came in this morning and decided to inspected the cat cards I was working on. She also heard that Purrcy's picture was sent in to be a pin-up calendar cat and she thinks she so much more photogenic! She thought the card needed more ribbon.

Hero Arts Clear Design - Happy Day Animals

Here's the next class I will be doing with the Hero Arts Clear Design Set - "Happy Day Animals" at Cranberry Hill.

Sunday, February 17, 2008 noon -1:30

Tuesday, February 19, 2008 noon - 1:30

C.J. - 2008

I'm in a Circle Journal group that has been together for over 3 years now! We call ourselves "C.J. Survivors" not because of some deadly illness, but because we have all been involved in some horrible C.J. groups. It wasn't because the creative talent was bad but some of the people in the group were. There would be those who would collect (for lack of a better term) journals and never return them. They would then drop out of sight and never be heard from again. Seeing a diamond in the rough our group leader ( Ms. Whip Cracker) Patty decided to send out invitations to those who followed the rules of C.J. trading and so started our group.

My theme for this year's 2008 C.J. is "The Adventures of Ms. C.J.", sort of a take off on the Flat Stanley story kid's are assigned in school. I knew what I wanted to do for my C.J. for months but one day all the parts just came together. I found the doll (made by a local artist) that just screamed pick me pick me!!! She has fiber hair (I love to shop for interesting yarn but I only know how to knit scarves), has a small crown on her head and has butterfly wings, because she's more a free spirit than an angel. The best part was she is holding a cat! Ms. C.J. (each person will give her a new name starting with the letters C and J) will be traveling around the country so I made up a little suitcase (which I had in my stash of stuff and by luck the doll fit in) for her travels.

Another Get Well Card

A very simple and quick card for my card rack at Cranberry Hill

Flower stamp is from Memory Box. Get Well is computer generated.

Get Well Card

My "get well" section at Cranberry Hill was getting low so I made a stack of cards last night.
I'm finding out that if a do my cards in stages (one section at a time) I can get more done with less stress. Before I go to bed, I stamp images I think I may want to use and add whatever color looks good. In the morning, I finish put the cards together.
I made a series of cards using vintage scrapbook paper (from a huge stash) and an image from A Muse. Everything else is computer generated.

Sympathy Cards

Another set of cards for my cards rack at Cranberry Hill. It's very hard to find many stamp company that make any thing for condolence cards. Flowers stamps are Penny Black and Hero Arts and sympathy stamp is from Stampin Up.

Asian Cards

I have tons of washi paper, so I decided that I should start using it. During my marathon card making day, I made several of these for my card rack at Cranberry Hill. The washi paper is so cool on it's own, the style of card is very simple. Makes for a very fast card.

Valentine's Day Cards

I spent the whole day and most of the night on Friday making cards for my booth at Cranberry Hill. I have to fill up my Valentine Day section! The robot stamps are from Paper Source (a very fun store to visit) and the frog is an A Muse stamp. Words are all computer generated.

Angel Card

Miss Lucy again posing with one of my cards. It 's been a long time since I've done a card that took a few days to do.

For the background I used twinkling H2O on heavy water color paper that has a thick coat of gel medium on it. As I was smearing the gel medium over the paper it started to crack and peel. I thought all was lost so I put it aside. The next day after it had dried, I was left with this great alter look. Where the gel medium had cracked the gold from the H2O paints came through. I used Staz On ink to tone down the silver heart charm the angel is holding. Angel stamp from Stamp Happy.

Valentine Card

This is one of my cats - Lucy. She's much more of a normal cat with all her many attitudes. While I'm working in my studio, she likes to sit on the highest spot under the lights. I just got this spot cleaned up last week. I couldn't take Lucy hissing at Purrcy when he would be napping in the only clean spot in the room. Now everyone has a spot under the lights.
This morning I decided to use he Lucy as a model. She's a great little model and for a cat she has many expressions. I made this card last night using an A Muse and Stampin Up stamp. I made the beaded heart last year for a class. The little hearts in the background are from glitter confetti.

Senoir Center Cards

Cards the ladies at the Yu AI Kai Senior center will make in my class on Thursday.

Late Night Fun

One of the things I look for at auction are old typewriters for a local artist, Renee Berglund of "Monka Paws" who creates jewelry from the keys. I ask her for the guts or striker keys (the parts that hit the paper and ink ribbon) for my alter art booth. She dropped of a type writer carcass and I started last night taking it apart. This is a time gone by where everything in that typewriter was metal and held together with thousands of screws. It took hours to get to all the parts I wanted.

Mr. Purrcy

Mr. Purrcy just can't walk by anything that looks like a box without wanting to get inside it. I was getting ready to fill the tin pail with my wooden stamp blocks (some have little magnets behind them so I plan to display some on the outside of the pail) when he walked in and decided it was something to check out. He liked it so much that he didn't move until it was time for bed a few hours later.

Alter Art Atelier

My Alter Art Atelier booth is now open at Cottage Crafts in San Jose! I wasn't planning on opening it until next month but everything just seem to fall into place even with California being hit with one of it's biggest storms. I was able to get a huge lot of wood block letters and number stamps - very cool, which started the ball rolling. The next day I went to a local auction house and found an antique Victorian bookcase that was the exact size to fit into the booth. I'm now running around my house trying to get everything that are still in boxes waiting to be tagged or interesting items that need to be taken apart. I will post pictures as soon as I remember to take the camera in.

SplitCoastStampers

Split Coast Stampers is a great (if not one of the best) websites to get ideas for cards and techniques you can do with a rubber stamp. I've been going through my creative files and thought I would post some of the Valentine's day ideas I've saved. This one was done by "stamp4funinca", a member of the splitcoaststampers community.

Happy New Year's!

I really wanted to take a family photo this year and didn't think it would be that difficult to do now that my children are adults. Chad was home after a year deployment to the Middle East and Evan was home from college. We had to take so many shots that my niece had to put down the digital camera several times because her arms were getting sore. It was the usual reasons, bunny ears, Chad making funny faces, eyes closed, others walking into the photo etc... I think in this picture I'm pinching Chad to keep him from doing something silly.