Love U

I’ve been playing around with Valentine’s Day cards, but not the mushy kind. This was a fun one. I actually made it a couple of weeks ago from a sketch challenge somewhere, but I can’t remember which one!

It uses patterned paper from the Love Me Do collection by My Mind’s Eye, which I got from Kate at i {heart} papers. The Love stamp is from the PTI set Mega Mixed Messages. The hearts were punched out of glitter paper with my SU! punch from one of the Petaloo glitter sheet pads, although Kate seems to be out of stock on this particular pad. The big letter “U” was from a set of silver glittered chipboard letters that I picked up on sale a looong time ago; I just colored it black with my Copic marker – neat trick!

I’m not entirely please with how this came out – I think the balance is off or something. But at least I’m stamping again – I hate when life gets in the way of the fun stuff. I’ll be back again with more – soon!

Don’t Rock the Boat!

I wanted to show you what’s been keeping me busy this last week or so. It’s a cake I was commissioned to make for the 90th birthday party of a man who made and sailed boats. I was given the specs for the boat, and the sails were made by the daughter of the celebrant. Let me tell you, this is a BIG boat: 20” from stem to stern! The sails are about 30” tall.

Some details: The boat itself is molded of rice krispie treats, but made using only half the butter so it would dry harder. And boy, did it dry hard! I had to use a drill to make the hole for the mast to make sure it didn’t completely shatter by trying to force it through. It’s covered in fondant, and I painted the deck to look like wood. The buoys (which show the 3 names he is known by) and life preserver are also made of fondant.

The cake is a deliciously moist yellow butter cake with lemon filling. I coated it in blue-tinted buttercream, and then in blue-tinted piping gel.

Every time I make one of these novelty cakes I learn a new lesson. This time the lesson was that piping gel WILL soften the fondant and make the colors bleed from anything that is touching it. The underside of the hull looked like a bloody mess, and the buoys look like they were melting into the water!

Anyway, I heard the cake was a big hit, and I’m glad to have had a part in the celebration – 90 years is certainly something to be proud of!

New Year, New Calendar (IHP January Challenge)

Our i {heart} papers Challenge Coordinator, Deb, gave us the challenge this month to use these great 4x6 photo cases that Kate has in the store. Well, a new years calls for a new desk calendar, so that suited me just fine!

I did mine in seasons (quarters) instead of month by month. Kinda lazy, huh? But useful for me, actually. I like being able to see a few months at a time. Here’s the current one:
I apologize for the terrible pictures. I’ve been having computer problems and couldn’t edit my photos the usual way.

I made all the seasons the same way, using different 6x6 pads of Basic Grey paper for each one. I selected 5 or 6 different papers from each pad, punched 3/4” squares out of them, and arranged them on a piece of cheap white cardstock in a “random” quilt-like pattern, gluing them down with a glue stick. Then I ran the whole piece through my Big Shot with the Labels Eight Nestabilities die. Using coordinating cardstock or in some cases, solid papers from the pads, I backed the calendar piece and punched ovals. The seasons were stamped with my Just Rite stamps and punched with a smaller oval.

For Winter, I used Eskimo Kisses papers; for Spring, Wisteria; for Summer, Lemonade; and for Fall, Indian Summer. I figured they needed very little embellishment with all these patterns on there, so just a few pieces of bling did the trick. Here are the rest of the seasons:




Go check out the rest of the IHP Design Team’s blogs and see what they came up with:

Amber
Cathleen
Deb
Gretchen
Kate
Kendra
Lori
Lynn
Megan
Merry
Tracy

And why don’t you try making one of your own? They’re fun and easy – and so pretty that you’ll be happy to have one on your desk all year!

Moxie Fab inspired

Over on the Moxie Fab blog there's an inspiration photo (Tuesday Trigger) that really resonated with me. The colors are just delicious. Here's a card that evokes a similar feeling.

The stamp is by Stampendous (Orchid Greetings) and the paper is from the Poppyfinch collection by Memory Box.

The image is colored with Copic markers. I cut a couple of slits in the image layer so I could run the ribbon behind the stems.

Hope your week is going swimmingly -- I can't wait for the long weekend coming up!

I'm back! (sort of)

Well, my computer is still not working, but I've found a reasonably good work-around that will let me post pictures on my blog. I can use the USB cable to get the photos from my camera to the little loaner netbook I'm using, but the problem was the image editing. A little light bulb went off in my head the other day and I looked for -- and found -- a few sites that have online image editing! You upload your photo to the site, do the editing there, and save it back to your computer (or wherever you're saving it to). However, I had trouble with all three that I found, and ended up with a big headache, and ultimately had to work with the very rudimentary Paint program that lives on this Linux machine.

So without further ado, here's a card I'm just so happy with that I couldn't stop looking at it when it was done. I used one of the sweet Pure Innocence images.
All the patterned papers are from the Early Bird paper pack (which I got from Kate at i {heart} papers, but she appears to be out of it), including what I used to paper-piece the dress. You can't see it in this photo, but I used my Sakura Glaze pen to make the black shoes shiny, and there's Glossy Accents on the balloon. The ribbon is from Papertrey.

Hopefully my computer will be back in action soon. In the meantime, I will keep trying to get adequate results with what I have. Please be patient :-)

Carolyn