Creative Inklings

New Mini Book - He{art} Felt Creation

This book I'm showing today is made entirely from scratch, and came together over a few days. To start, I selected a piece of gorgeous Michael Miller fabric and some felt that I wanted to work with, and a pile of scrap chipboard pieces that were 5" squares. I had a few themes in mind for the book, but after going through hundreds, no thousands, of photos in iphoto, I decided on focusing on the relationship between Rowan and Molly through the years. I created a folder in iphoto to collect all the photos of the two of them, then decided on the best ones from there. They had to be able to be cropped to a square shape to fit in the book, so that eliminated a few that otherwise I would have picked. Next, I spent hours selecting various quotes that I thought would work with the photos. I enlisted the help of my husband for this part, and together, we found eight quotes that spoke to us. For the cover, I created my own Ali-style digital element in photoshop, using some definitions of "siblings", a bracket, and the words "growing together". Next, all the quotes and the cover title were printed on my new FAVORITE product, Claudine Hellmuth sticky-back canvas. LOVE this stuff. The title element was then die cut with my QuicKutz circles. The inside pages were carefully constructed, and handsewn together. Each quote was sewn to a piece of fabric, then adhered to chipboard pages directy. The "Happiness" quote on the inside cover is a stamp by Stamping Bella, and the initals are cut from "Yogurt" QK alphabet, and hand stitched on. Here are a few shots of the process and the finished book, but for a slideshow of the whole thing, please check it out HERE on 2 peas in a Bucket. Have a great week!

Finally, a few cards to share

I know I haven't been posting much - I've really been terribly unproductive and un-crafty - but I feel my groove coming back (especially after my trip to da Bella store today!). My cards for today are a few I've been working on this week. The first is a very simple note card, made with some gorgeous Stamping Bella images. I bought the scribble trees quite a while ago, but hadn't used them. I LOVE them, so many cool possibilities. The sentiment and bird are also by the Bella, and I though worked well with this design. After much fussing, I finished the card up with a couple of mirror backed baubles.

The second card was so much fun, and came together really quickly. This one uses images by Amuse, some simple punched circles and a few brads and stickers. I coloured the monster with my copics.

The last card took forever, and I'm still not content with it. The images are so cute, and are from a Studio Calico kit a few months ago. I printed the pun using Word, and printed it on white cardstock. The heart rain drops are stamped in red and pink ink, to match the super cute American Craft valentine paper.

Hope you like these...oh, one last thing. Here's a few shots from my day today - two of my favourite people (Nicky and Emily -A.K.A Nickabella and Da Bella Herself), and my haul from the boo-tique today!. Love my iphone - great for taking shots of unsuspecting and shy victims!!

 

Make Your Own Chipboard Buttons

I noticed a bit of a trend lately, and one that's been a bit hard on my wallet - chipboard buttons. They are the cutest things, and I have seen them put out by Love Elsie, Chatterbox, Making Memories, among others. They didn't look too hard to make, so I decided to see if I could make my own. I was prett pleased with the results, and they're really easy. I decided to go with making shiny buttons, like the ones by Making Memories, so that's what I'm going to show you how to do today.

Here's what you need:

1. Ultra thick embossing powder (UTEE), o glassy glaze enamel by Stampin' Up!
2. QuicKutz cookie cutter cutter dies (or just scissors if you don't own any)
3. 1/8" hole punch
4. Coaster weight white chipboard (the thin stuff)
5. Versamark pad
6. chalks, copic markers, stamps etc.

Here's what you need to do:

1. Lay your dies out on your revolution machine, and place chipboard overtop. If you have a similar machine, try with that, but I recommend the Revolution.
2. Punch your die cut shapes out, and colour with markers if desired.
3. Stamp your image, and add more colour. Alternately, you could colour with chalks, inks, or whatever you have. To apply chalk, first shmoosh your cutout in versamark, than apply your chalk.
4. Shmoosh you coloured piece in your versamark pad. If your piece is really small, add the holes now before embossing, using the 1/8" hole punch.
5. Dip shape in UTEE, and melt with a heatgun. Let cool, then repeat the shmooshing/UTEE/heating again.
6. PUnch your holes if you haven't done so yet, and re-heat your piece, to smooth out holes, and to fix any cracks made when punching.
7. Let cool, thread with ribbons, threads etc and add to your project!

 

Hand-made party Favour Ideas

I had a class on Firday night where we made a whole bunch of party favors and table decorations. I thought I would share some of these with you all today. I will also try my best to give you clear directions for some of these projects. If you have any questions, please just email me.

Here's the projects:
1. Vellum tealight holder. This project could not be too much easier.

• Cut a piece of double-sided patterned paper to 3" by 8 1/4". Score the paper at 2", 4", 6" and 8".
• Mark the centre of each panel, and using a small Stampin' Up! tag punch, punch out the centre of each panel.
• Punch out four large tags using the larger tag punch, and stamp and emboss with desired images. Glue over tag cutouts.
• Fold along score lines, and use sticky strip to glue last panel to edge fold.
• Use either a tag corner punch or scissors to angle edges.
• Place a battery powered tea light inside.

2. The next project I thought was called a sour cream holder, but everyone at the workshop referred to some treat I had never heard of called "Lolas". Anyway, the tutorial for this project can be found here on Splitcoaststampers.

3. The next set of projects I thought would be really cute for a little boys' pirate party. I bought some colourful chocolate covered sunflower seeds at the dollar store, and thought they'd work great as "parrot poop". I scooped about two tablespoons into a 3 by 3 bag, and made a little bag topper using my ahoy matey set. Really, really easy!

The other pirate project was a tad more time consuming, and I'm still working on tweaking it, but it is a treasure chest filled with gold chocolate coins. I will post a tutorial for this later when I've worked on it a bit more.

4.  The next project was again really simple. I bought a bunch of colourful jellybeans and filled an icing bag from the bulk barn. I siply twisted the top, and topped it with four daisies I made with the stampin' up! scallop circle punch.

5. I made a lip gloss holder that I had seen over and over again on splitcoaststampers. I couldn't find s tutorial for it, but they are really quite easy.

• Cut a piece of cardstock to 3" by 4 3/4, and a piece of coodinating patterened paper to 2 3/4 by 4 5/8.
• Score at 2" and 2 3/4"
• Using an exacto blade, slice horizontal slits in the cardstock to slip the chap stick into.
• cut a length of ribbon about 10" long, and use a glue dot to attach to the cardstick around the middle.
• Adhere patterned paper over top, and tie shut with ribbon.

6. Mini milk carton. This is again super cute and easy, and is just  a variation of the good 'ol 2,4,6,8 box.

• cut a piece of patterned paper to 4.5" by 3.5".
• Score at 1", 2", 3", 4" and adhere that flap with sticky strip.
• Fold the bottom edges in and adhere with a glue dot or sticky strip.
• fill box with small candies, then pinch the top sides together, and tie with ribbon.

7. Tea bag purse and holder. For the purse:

• spoon 2 tablespoons of loose tea into  a 3 by 3 bag. Punch a scallop circle with the Marvy Giga scallop circle punch (or whatever cutting system you have), and layer it with a smaler plain circle.
• Cut a n 8" length of ribbon, and tie the ends together.
• Fold the circles in half, and layer over the ribbon to make a handle, and  attache to cello bag with a staple.
• Hide the staple with layered punched flowers

    

8. Seed packet card. Again, really quick and easy.

• Take a standard A4 sized envelop and seal it.
• Cut the top third off, and run it horizontally through a crimper.
• Stamp the bottom half of the envelop as desired, and place a packet of seeds inside.
• Place crimped top inside of bottom hlaf, and finished with a ribbon.

9 Miniature chocolate box. This project is just adorable, and the tutorial for it can be found here, on the creators blog, Mocha Memories.

I hope you enjoyed these projects. I'm currently working on a bunch more for Halloween, whichI should be able to share with you in September!

Evolution of a design

I'm taking a course right now on card design, and it's been a really good exercise for me. It forces me to think and rethink my deigns. I made a card yesterday, keeping in mind some key points that have been emphasized by the instructor, Julie Ebersole. I actually re-did the card about 8 times, but here are the final three versions. As soon as I photogrphed the first of these, the one with the pinkish outer scallop frame, I knew the design was off. The pink just did not work - it was too harsh a contrast. So, I redid the card, this time using the colour from the second cupcake bottom for the scallop. I just coloured my frame with the same copic maker as I did for the cupcake, and I liked the result much better. The softer outer frame allowed the eye to focus on the main image, without competing for attention. After sleeping on the design overnight, I decided that the colours of the cupcake icing was off. I changed the colour scheme to make the cupcakes "chocolate", and I think I am pleased with the final result. Other design aspects I considered in making this card were the ribbon (using organdy swirl ribbon reminded me of cupcake frosting), the sparkly fluorish (the placement of the flourish drew the eye to the sentiment, but by keeping it colourless, it didn't compete with the main image. The flourish also matched the swirl pattern on the ribbon, and sparkliness worked with shininess of the main image), and the focal image (which was punched out with scallop frames, and embossed with UTEE to give a candy-coated appearance).

Mini Baby Album

Today I have a cute little project to share with you all. It's a miniature hand-sewn baby book. I love how this turned out. I used papers from the Baby Girl Stampin' Up! simply scrappin' kit, and some mini envelopes for the pocket pages. If you would like to see a tutorial on how to make this book, please just leave a comment on this post. Here's the book:

QuicKutz Banners

I showed you all the banner I made myself last week, using the triangle QuicKutz cookie cutter die (from Merry and Bright), and my larger scallop rectangle nestability die. I made several more for my craft show yesterday, as they are too much fun to make. I am posting more samples and some of the assembly line process of making them. If you would like a full tutorial on making the banners, please just leave a comment with a request on this post. Have a great day!

 

Cute QuicKutz Banner

As many of you know, I'm a big QuicKutz fan. A few times a year they put out "collections", which are a fabulous deal, assuming you like what's inside. I loved the Merry and Bright Alphabet Collection that was released just before Christmas this year. It's a set of cookie cutter dies, that inlcudes two fonts, and nesting triangles. As soon as I saw it, I had the idea to make a banner using the triangles. They just looked like mini pennants to me. This week seemed like a perfect time to make the project I had in my head, since I'm doing a craft show this Sunday. In addition to using the Merry and Bright set, I also used my large scallop rectangle nestabilities, assorted amuse polkadot note cards and whisper white cardstock for the scalloped edge. I inserted two eyelets into each pennant, and strung them on white taffeta Stampin' Up! ribbon. I can't wait to make more of these!

For those of you in the Toronto area, you wont want to miss the QuicKutz release party on Thursday night of the latest (and amazingly awesome) die sets at Scrapbooks by Design.

Stationary Boxes

I've been having tons of fun lately designing stationary boxes (so much fun that I keep forgetting to blog!)/ I get the plain wooden boxes at the dollar store, and then alter them and design cards to go inside. I have several to show you, starting with the one I made for my hostess club last Friday. I had my club meeting in my "studio" so that the girls had access to all my stuff, and could create what they wanted based on my project. For my box, I used the Rose Cottage Simply Scrappin' kit as a starting point. I used the colours, patterned papers and die cuts, which made the whole thing very easy. Normally, if I were giving this as a gift or selling it, I would keep the cards to one or two designs, but I made several designs for club night so they had a lot of choices from which to CASE. Here's my project:

And here's some pictures of the girls and the ir creations last Friday....

 

This is another set I did, thinking of giving this a gift to a new/expecting mom. It's a set of 5 onesie cards (Lauren Meader originally designed this adorable card, and she has directions on her blog), and a little note book. I used the Summer Picnic  paper in the occasions mini, and my bind-it-all toll for the notebook.

Using what's on my desk....

How many of you have dozens of bit and peices collecting on your desk, not ready to be thrown or filed away because "you may use that". I have several items like this on my desk, including quite a few stamped and coloured images that I like. For today's card I followed the sketch challenge at Splitcoaststampers, and used a watercoloured image I have had on my desk for at LEAST two months. I loved todays sketch, and this card actually came together crazy fast. I trimmed my main image (penguin paradise, watercoloured using dye inks) down, and matted it with a black scallop frame. The layers of the card are created from the new Spring Break papers by stampin' up!. The flower embellishment is by Maya Road, and the build-a-brad in the centre is created from more Spring Break paper. I couldn
t find the right sentiment for this card, so I created my own using leftover rubons that I got at CHA last year (by Junkitz).
    I had actually planned on posting a cute project today, but didn't get a chance to photograph it, so it will ikely be the subject of tomorrow's post - stay tuned!