Art of the Possible

The Gift--A Second Card

Just to add a little interest, I did a torn paper layer on this card.  The beautiful thing is she can choose whether to orient these cards long way or short way.

All Stamped Images copyright Stampin' Up! 1999-2008

The Gift--A Card for Her to Send

To go with my friend's notebook, I used pieces of my single stamped sheet to make three cards which I included with envelopes.  I let the "scraps" help me design the cards.  In this one, I wanted to take advantage of the cool slanted cut that happened when I made the bias piece for the front of the notebook.

All Stamped Images Copyright Stampin' Up! 1999-2008

A Gift for a Friend: A Notebook For Her Ideas

I was privledged to spend a delightful evening last week at a surprise party for a very good friend.  Her Mother and Boyfriend conspired to lure her to a great Vietnamese restaurant near us, Mekong. There, 17 of her closest friends and family were waiting in a back room to surprise her.

She will be traveling to Ecuador at the end of the month on a medical mission to a small community.  This mission is sponsored by Virginia Commonwealth University's Medical College of Virginia (where she is a second year medical student).  I'm so proud of her and very excited about the work she will get to do.  He gifts included travel toilet paper (of all things), heavy duty bug repellent and other items essential to travel in rural South America. 

I decided to make her a group of coordinating gifts, in case she wanted to journal her ideas on her travels or just daydream at home.  The first was this notebook.  I covered a compositon book with cardstock and built black into my design to accommodate the black binding that still shows through.  All of the projects, which I will put up slowly over the next few days, featured pieces from one 8 1/2x 11 piece of whisper white card stock which I stamped all over with two flowers from the Office Ephemera set.  Easy and coordinated--what's not to love?

Ingredients:  inks:  purely pomegranate, bayou blue, bashful blue, more mustard, close to cocoa, basic black, certainly celery.  Cardstock:  basic black, whisper white, certainly celery and purely pomegranate.  Punch:  tab  Stamp Set:  Office Ephemera

All stamped images copyright Stampin' Up! 1999-2008

The Five Most Essential Tools for Stamping

The Five Most Essential Tools for Stamping 

When I started stamping, I didn't have the five supplies listed here.  This led to a lot of frustration instead of a lot of fun.  Besides a SIP (stamps, Ink and Paper), these tools are the ones that make stamping fun, easy and quick. 

Have you ever watched one of those DIY shows on PBS?  An expert constructs perfect reproduction furniture with ease.  Why?  Because he has the right tools.  I am happy to report that the correct tools for stamping are much, much more reasonably priced than those space hogging wood shop beauties.  Do you want to enjoy your crafting more?  Make sure you have the right tools.  Are you prepared to really enjoy stamping? You are ready to start stamping, making cards, scrapbooking, creating beautiful paper crafts.  You are excited by the samples you've seen and the possibilities that you can imagine--even the possibilities of CASEing (Copying and Stealing Everything) ideas you've seen. 

Well, first you need a SIP--Stamps, Ink and Paper.  And really, with that and a pair of scissors, you can create great projects. 

However, in order to have the most fun, your stamping needs to be easy.  And these are the five tools that make it easy--I wouldn't be stamping without them. 

You Need:  A Way To Cut Your Rubber

Our stamps come unmounted and they need to be trimmed in order to work well.  Un trimmed rubber can pick up stray ink and deposit in on your project in places you don't want it to.  The best tool I've found for mounting stamps is our Craft and Rubber Scissors.  These heavy duty wonders cut through the rubber like it was butter.  They are great for a variety of crafting uses (I even use them to cut out the plastic pieces when I build train models, so I guess the disclaimer is:  hide them from other crafters in your house!)

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You Need:  A Way to Clean Your Stamps as You Work

The single most frustrating thing I did when I first started stamping was try to keep my stamps clean.  I would wait until I was done and then clean them with soap and water in the sink.  This did not work.  The stamps couldn't be easily used with more than one color in the same design.  Also, the foam backing and the wood would become wet and I would have to leave the stamps out all night to dry.  This was the number one reason I never did get around to stamping when I first started.

Then I discovered this cleaning system.  The Stampin' Scrub is a case that encloses two scrubbing surfaces.  I simply open the case, spray one side with the Sampin' Mist Stamp Cleaner and I'm ready to clean my stamps as I go.  By scrubbing a stamp first on the wet side and then on the dry, I am able to remove the ink from the rubber and replace the stamp in its case right away.  Stampin' Mist is specially formulated to clean the ink from my rubber while conditioning and protecting the flexible surface of my stamps.  The scrubbing surfaces are easily removed from the case.  I give them a quick shampoo in the sink when they need it, then leave them in my dish drainer to dry.  Because the case closes, I can throw it in my bag to take to crops without worrying about messing anything up.

You Need:  A Way to Cut the Paper for Your Projects

Yes, you can use a ruler to mark your lines and the scissors to cut.  But really, that is not a lot of fun, is it? 

The best portable paper cutter I've found is this one.  I love the easy to read metal surface.  The orange cutter blade switches out with another that serves to score cardstock, so it is a double duty tool.  The swing arm allows me to measure and cut even larger pieces of paper without adding to the size of the tool.  This one lives in my bag--I take it to all my classes, crops and all other away from home stamping fun.  It is thin, lightweight, durable, accurate and easy--what more could I ask for?

You Need:  A Way to Make it All Stick Together

Stampin' Up! offers several kinds of adhesive, but this is the one that I reach for over and over.  snail adhesive is a two sided tape dispenser.  Unlike many other two sided tapes, however, there is not sticking and peeling.  The paper that carries the adhesive rolls back onto an internal spindle so all that is applied to your project is a sticky strip.  This tool is fast, neat and easy to use.  And when you use up the adhesive, you only throw away a cartridge--less waste and less expense.  The refill pops in easily with no threading or fiddling required.

So That's It. 

With these five tools to compliment your ink, stamps and paper, your are ready to really enjoy stamping.  If you have any questions, or if you need to add these tool to your supplies, please contact me. 

Stamp Club from December: Oops, I forgot to show you

These are the projects that we did on our Stamp Club Fun Afternoon in December.  The center of the flower is made using the oh-so-cool build a brad kit.

All Stamped Images Copyright Stampin' Up! 1999-2007

Christmas Cookies

I made these cookies for the members of the choir at my church and for my extended family.  Each cookie is a giant sugar heart.  Once they were slipped into Stampin' Up! cello bags and tied with a hand stamped card and ribbon, they made an impressive gift.  I also tied a tag onto my baasket so that the whole effect would be festive. 

All Stamped Images Copyright Stampin' Up! 1999-2007.

Valentines for School

For Valentines Day, my son and I made these cute, simple lollipop covers.  Each one is just a 5 1/4" x 2" strip of scored cardstock.  We used the heart from Boatloads of Love and my son patiently (well, maybe not so patiently after a while) wrote the names of each of his classmates in the design.  Fun and simple--the whole project took 44 minutes less than it took to do his valentines last year:

• 12 minutes:  Drive to the drug store, park and go in
• 11 minutes:  Select just the right package of valentines
• 9 minutes:  Wait in line and pay for the valentines
• 12 minutes:  Drive home
• 5 minutes:  try to figure out where we put the valentines once we were home for a while.
• 40 minutes:  Select a valentine for each member of his class, fold them up, write on the name.

This year:

• 10 minutes:  Stamp the hearts
• 25 minutes:  I fold the covers and attach them to the lollipops while my son writes the names

Thats 1 hour 29 minutes versus 45 minutes.  Now, granted, he is a year older and writes faster.  But his class is bigger this year--6 more students.  I think that's pretty good!

Remember, it might seem like a lot of work to make your own cards, gifts and other items.  However, once you factor in driving, parking, selecting, waiting, paying and driving into the equation, stamping is much, much faster.   

Stamp Club for February

Stamp Club met on Sunday, February 10 at my house.  We made these projects.  All club members are invited to attend these monthly free gatherings and make either the two projects or the two page scrapbook page.  If they want to make both, they can for just $12.   What a deal.

Do you think you might like to join us?  Our next Fun Afternoon will be Sunday, March 2 at 3:00 pm.  I encourage everyone to try it just once, with no obligation.  Click Here for the Club information page,  Please contact me for further details.

Silver Leaves

I always forget that you can stamp an image on top of another image.  I'm glad that I remembered when I made this card.

The silver leaves on the black background were made by rolling a jumbo wheel across the silver ink pad.

So what size card fits in a standard envelope?  How do you figure out the layout and theme for a card?  What is the magic of layers?  And what about color?

If you are ready to learn some basic card skills, please come to the Card Making Basics class on Sunday, February 24 at 3:00 in the afternoon.  To reserve your space or get more information about the class, please contact me at Jennifer@ArtPossible.com. 

Ingredients:  Card stock:  certainly celery, basic black, blue bayou, whisper white  Ink:  Certainly celery classic ink, basic black, silver  Ribbon:  5/8" certainly celery grosgrain Rhinestone Brad:  from Pretties Kit  Jumbo Stampin' Around wheel:  Leaves a la carte  Stamp Set:  Carte Postale

All Images Copyright Stampin' Up! 1999-2008

Weathered Flowers--For the Love of Bleach

You didn't know that you needed to hold a workshop, did you?  This is the level 3 Hostess only set Time Well Sent.  And only Hostesses can get it.

I used markers to color the center flower.  The background flowers were stamped on tempting turquoise paper with stayzon ink, then painted with bleach using my aquapainter.  It makes a great, weathered look.

Ingredients:

Card stock:  tempting turquoise, barely banana, whisper white  Ink:  Black stayzon  Misc: bleach, aquapainter pen  Stamp Set:  Time Well Spent.

All images copyright Stampin' Up! 1999-2008