The way out there

I meant to be all organized and have a bunch of posts lined up before my travels this week, but alas, it did not happen. I've been working on some projects while at home, though and will post those next week when I get back.

In the meantime, I had a great time at Meg Loven's Scrap and Stamp Staycation near Champaign-Urbana on Saturday, where I nearly finished work on a blank baby scrapbook that I'm making as a gift. Pics to follow soon!

I spent this week at my mom and dad's, hanging out with Piglet and getting some shopping and knitting done. My mom is the one responsible for my stamp addiction (when she suggested I go to her stamp club in February, I said, I don't know, I don't need another craft right now...famous last words...); she has supplies here for crafting, of course, and so we spent one afternoon being creative. I CASEd a few cards she's made recently that I thought were nifty (pics coming soon!) and made a project for a birthday gift.

All in all, it's been a good week! We are off to Minnesota tomorrow for the aforementioned wedding of my cousins, which should be a good time. We'll see how the babe does with 9 hours in the car tomorrow (18 month toddler with lots of energy + long car ride = oy!). He's a bit sick right now, which may be a blessing in disguise given the long trip tomorrow--he's sleeping a bit more and has less energy than normal (which just means he has enough energy for 2 people instead of the normal 5!)

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

How to Make a custom scrapbook for $30 or less.

My sister called me 2 weeks ago and asked me to make her a custom blank scrapbook for a friend of hers that was having a baby on July 23. She wanted it to be ready in time. I said that I could finish it by the 23rd, but she wouldn't have it in hand until the 26th or 27th. Oh, and she only wanted to spend about $30 on the project. Yikes! She wanted a brag book style album and said just do whatever you can for $30 plus shipping. Okey-dokey, says I. Her friend was having a boy and using a safari theme, so I immediately thought of Tall Tales DSP and the Animal Stories stamp set.

Basically, I used half a pack of DSP, coordinating scraps from my pile, plus some inexpensive ribbon and eyelets that were left over from a custom order. So it came in at $30! And it was fast to make--once I had cut the dsp, the whole thing came together in about 2 hours. I think it's pretty cute!

Sorry about the blurry photos; I needed to ship it in a hurry and couldn't retake the photos.

Supplies:
6x6 ring bound linen (natural) album
Tall Tales DSP (half pack)
Rose Red, Brillant Blue, Old Olive and So Saffron cardstock scraps
Crop-A-Dile
Silver, antique brass, gold and copper eyelets
Modern Label Punch
Ticket Corner Punch
Animal Stories Stamp set
Pumpkin Pie, Brilliant Blue, Chocolate Chip and Close to Cocoa Inks
Close to Cocoa 1/4" grosgrain ribbon (scraps), Old Olivey 5/8" stitched grosgrain (from Pearl Crafts), 3/8" twill tape

Custom mini note cards

Another alchemy order--this one was pretty fast to make, but I had planned to make it in August. The customer wanted 20 mini cards and envies with her logo on the front, 10 pink and 10 black. Then she suddenly decided last night at midnight, after accepting the bid and my having invoiced her (I happened to be online, thank God, or I would have lost the bid) that she couldn't wait that long, even though I was pretty explicit in my bid about timing and such, and wanted to find someone else to do them! So I said, okay, I'll do them tomorrow and ship same day. I should have just let it be, but I couldn't. And she's new to alchemy and I think maybe she'll understand better now how it works. I can't help feeling taken advantage of, however.

In any case, here are the cards. I had to go to Kinko's for supplies because I didn't have enough WW cs for them (which is why I was going to make them in August), but that's what happens when you want them next day. Happened to have the 20 mini envies on hand, so that wasn't a big deal.

Sometimes, I think, why do I do this??

Wedding Card for Suzanne

And the last of the posts related to my cousin's wedding (at least I think so!). I decided to make her card using the double happiness stamp before I mailed it back to her (it and the bright red ink pad were hers) and do an emboss resist card. Plus it gave me a chance to try my hand at the Crop-A-Dile (new in my box last week!) and set some eyelets. I'm so into embellishments right now as I'm starting to acquire a few! (Gotta love those hostess benefits--contact me if you want to learn how to earn them!)

Paper: Creamy Caramel, Pumpkin Pie, Red Riding Hood, More Mustard, Ivory linen cardstock (non-SU)
Ink: Chocolate Chip, Pumpkin Pie, More Mustard, Kiwi Kiss, Red Riding Hood, red Martha Stewart craft ink (courtesy of Suzanne)
Stamps: Double Happiness stamp from Paper Source, Baroque Motifs (inside card: Together Forever (mr. & mrs. stamps) and Hugs and Wishes (congratulations) back of card: Together forever flower stamp)
Technique: Emboss Resist
Accessories: Copper eyelets, Crop-A-Dile, sponges, clear emboss powder, heat gun, white gel pen

(I stamped the sentiment inside and on the back in pumpkin pie--it looks nice on creamy caramel!)

Birthday card for the Highest court in the land

My husband, when he was just a young pup lawyer, clerked for Justice Kennedy at the Supreme Court and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Last summer we had the chance to go to one of the clerk reunions at which the Justice and his family were present and then to a casual BBQ at his house in Maclean. It was lovely and I admit I was a bit awestruck by the celebrity of Justice Kennedy, who is indeed a humble and lovely man (see photos: first is of 3 of the 4 clerks with wives in my husband's year--we are the middle; second is at the BBQ with the Justice and my son and husband). Justice Kennedy is quite famous, though, and I felt intimidated by the august company.

So when my husband casually said last week, as he was on his way out the door for a weekend conference in DC, "Oh, can you make a birthday card for Justice Kennedy? I need it by Tuesday," I will say I was a bit flustered. Make a card for the man himself? What do I do? Something classy, something understated, but what? Yikes!!

I immediately thought of this card again, and decided to properly CASE it this time, since I had Baja Breeze. I made a few changes and used Great Friend instead of All Holidays (since I don't have it!) but I think it turned out well!

Paper: Baja Breeze, Whisper White, Parisian Breeze DSP, Whisper White
Ink: Chocolate Chip, Baja Breeze
Stamps: Pocket Silhouettes, Great Friend, Together Forever (on the back for a watermark--used the flower stamp)
Accessories: 1/4" chocolate chip grosgrain ribbon

Suzanne's Wedding Programs

After a bit of angst about whether my cousin would be happy with her programs in the new and "improved" format, my worries were unfounded. She was extremely happy with them! So here they are, all a bit different. Most of them are in the style with one skinny strip on the edge, but then there about 25-30 or so of the ones with 3 boxes at the bottom and just one of the diamonds at the bottom (it's the special one of the bunch!) They are double sided, with the song lyrics and wedding party on the back side in the same copperplate gothic font as the front.

Again, made using photo scraps from her wedding invitation photo, posted yesterday.

Suzanne's Wedding Invitations

I had nothing to do with these, but I thought I'd share her invitation because I thought it was so creative and completely Suzanne. Since she was quite young she has created these amazing pen drawings that are highly symbolic and stylized. I thought she might use one as her cover, but she surprised me with this great photograph instead. I like the casual yet classic feel of the invitation.

The front


The inside--the red sheets had rsvp instructions (on a website) and directions to the park where the wedding will take place. The back of the invite had the same double happiness stamped at the bottom in the middle.

Wedding Programs & Thank Yous

My cousin Suzanne is getting married on August 1 in Minneapolis and I had offered to make her invitations, programs and thank yous. She ended up making the invitations herself (she is extremely talented and creative!) but decided that was enough work on that and asked me to do the programs and thank yous. Of course, I said yes. She had a very specific idea in mind for both and even included samples and pre-cut paper! Her invitation had featured a photo of a Chinese cloth with beads, coins and orchids strewn across it in a very artistic way, and she wanted the same photo cut up into pieces to use on the programs and thank yous. All I had to do was cut photos, stamp and assemble!

These are the thank you notes--she wanted the Chinese character for double happiness on them somewhere, so most of them have it stamped on the back, but a few have it on the front. It was kind of a theme stamp for her wedding stationary. All the thank yous are a bit different--there were two basic designs, and then a little riffing on them with what I had left over so she could have some extras.

Prayer Book

A friend of mine from college days has begun investigating the Orthodox Church, to which I belong. We've not been close since graduation, but Facebook has reconnected us in recent months. I was quite surprised to hear of his journey into Orthodoxy, although not the reasons for it, once we traded some lengthy e-mails. In any case, I wanted to make him something that would perhaps help him along the way. I find most Orthodox prayer books to be overwhelming if you are just learning about the faith, so I decided to make him one that used selections from the Big-Daddy of prayer books, The Jordanville Prayer Book. It has good translations and more importantly, is available full-text online, so it was easier to manipulate the text in Publisher.

I chose a shortened selection from the Morning Prayers, Evening Prayers and added the Prayers Before and After Meals, plus a few other little things like St. John of Kronstadt's meditation on the Jesus Prayer. It's short and sweet and pocket sized. I did the binding myself and I'm pretty happy with it! I even managed to use one of the ribbon ends to form a book mark--how about that for fancy-schmancy? I'm also including a diptych from Sofrino that I bought a few years ago and had in the delivery room with Harry--we have a surplus of diptychs lying around and I figured my friend would probably like to have one. It works well with the prayer book! I was hoping we had a spare chotki lying around as well, but my husband is prone to losing his and so he can't even find his right now, much less a spare one!

Anyway, here it is:

Supplies: Black Italian book cloth, Ballet Blue Cardstock, black 1/4" grosgrain ribbon, silver raised letter stickers, cream cardstock, Crop-A-Dile (to punch holes in the chipboard on the hinge), sewing needle with huge eye for ribbon sewing, hole punch, bone folder, Book glue, wide flat brush, left over icon print of SS Joachim and Anna for inside cover.

Fly-Fishing Retreat for Breast Cancer Survivors

A woman on etsy asked for samples to give as gifts for this organization called Casting for Recovery that sends breast cancer survivors on a fly-fishing retreat. They are all over the U.S. and in the U.K. now as well. The NJ one is at the end of July, which is the event I made 14 samples for. I CASEd the card from the Stampin' Up! Idea Book for this year, but changed the Soft Suede to Close to Cocoa and the Dusty Durango to Really Rust, plus a few other little deets. I really like how it turned out!

Paper: Close to Cocoa, Very Vanilla, Old Olive, Really Rust, So Saffron, So Saffron DSP
Ink: Old Olive, Tangerine Tango
Stamps: Inspired by Nature, Good Friend (butterfly)
Accessories: 3 flower punch, white garment buttons, cotton thread (off-white), non-SU satin skinny stitched ribbon, paper snips (yay for paper snips!), glue dots (for button), top note die

Custom Stamped Twill Tape

Another alchemy order: custom stamped twill tape. It was actually quite fast once the materials arrived. A woman on etsy wanted twill tape with her shop url stamped on it, so I ordered a custom rubber stamp and some close to cocoa craft ink and a LOT of twill tape. I should have taken a picture of the packaging because it was purty!! Since she only wanted 3/4" twill tape (9 yards), I cut the middle part off the card that the three widths come on and rewrapped the stamped tape and then put all three little rolls into a cello-bag with a tag on the top in Raspberry Tart Dsp (that is a seriously great way to use up little scraps of DSP) and a square punch out that was stamped in Regal Rose "For You" from Great Friend with the little branch in Kiwi Kiss. I didn't think to take a picture before packaging it for mailing, though. Oh well.

Anyway, here is the tape:

Icon Cards for Elena

My Romanian friend, Elena, was headed to Romania last week for two weddings and asked me to make two cards using two different icons of Joachim and Anna, which she provided. I used the colors in the garments and backgrounds for matting and backing and I think they turned out well! She was happy with them, which is what really counts. The photo is a little fuzzy on the second one, but it was clear in actuality. I was photographing in a hurry since it was a rush order.

Paper: Bravo Burgundy, Night of Navy, Bordering Blue

Paper: Ballet Blue, Handsome Hunter, Mellow Moss (or perhaps Sage Shadow--I get them mixed up)

Baroque Motifs Emboss Resist

More emboss resist! This one uses Baroque Motifs and owes a particular debt to Michelle Zindorf's Layered Floral Illusion card, shown here.

Paper: Chocolate Chip, Really Rust, Ruby Red, Whisper White
Ink: Chocolate Chip, Red Riding Hood, More Mustard, Versamark, Versamarker
Stamp: Baroque Motifs
Technique: Emboss Resist with clear emboss powder and sponges using a square mask
Accessories: White gel pen for accents

A Calm Fall Morning Emboss Resist Card

I love this technique, thanks to Michelle Zindorf's lovely blog tutorials! This card definitely owes a debt to her lovely creations as well as to Renae Wilson's card, which was in turn inspired by Sandy McIver's card. Whew! Okay, so now that everyone has credit where credit is due, here's the card! I don't have a brayer yet, so this was all done with sponges using a circular rubbing motion. I also used Michelle's technique of loading the stamp with versamark first and then with classic ink (wow is that a savings on all those craft inks!) I actually made two cards, but you'll have to wait until tomorrow to see it!

And for the recipe:
Paper: Chocolate Chip, More Mustard, Red Riding Hood, Whisper White
Inks: Chocolate Chip, More Mustard, Red Riding Hood, Old Olive, Pumpkin Pie marker, Brilliant blue, Bashful blue, versamark
Stamps: Pocket Silhouettes, Flowers in Silhouette
Accessories: Heat gun, clear emboss powder, sponges, white gel pen, 1 1/4" circle punch for mask, torn paper scraps for masking

Custom hang tags

More custom work...the woman who runs AJSweetSoap (ajsweetsoap.com) wanted 100 scallop circle hang tags to attach to her dessert soaps. I guess they look so real that people have tried to eat them! So one side had her shop name and web address and the other had a nice but stern warning not to eat the soap! I think they turned out well! It took a bit of doing to get MS Publisher to format the double-sided tags with everything centered on both sides, but I used some junk paper before printing "for real". Then I spent about 30 quality minutes with my scallop circle punch!

Paper: Close to Cocoa
Accessories: Scallop Circle Punch

Custom Bound Wedding Guest Book

Another custom item I finished earlier this week was a custom wedding guest book with Japanese ribbon binding. It was fun to do some book binding for a stamping break. The gal had this gorgeous deep red Uruyu paper and wanted brown and ivory to be the accents, so that's what I did! I'm really happy with how it turned out (not the least because the amount of very vanilla ribbon I had lying around was exactly the amount that I needed for the book.

Materials: Brown Italian book cloth, Red Uruyu paper from Paper Source, Very Vanilla grosgrain ribbon, chipboard
Glue: Sobo and Methyl Cellulose
Textblock: Cream-colored cardstock (non-SU)

RSVP cards, different colors

Here are the other samples I made, all the same idea, but different color combinations for variety. I'm starting to get the hang of Baroque Motifs, I think!

Paper: (1) More Mustard, Very Vanilla; (2) Not Quite Navy, Very Vanilla; (3) Red Riding Hood, Very Vanilla
Ink: (1 & 2) More Mustard; (3) Red Riding Hood
Stamps: Baroque Motifs

Birth Announcement, Boy

Here's the boy version of yesterday's announcement. Simple and sweet, I think!

Paper: Bashful Blue, Whisper White
Ink: Bashful Blue, inkjet printing
Stamps: Puns from the Past
Accessories: 1/4" grosgrain ribbon in bashful blue

Birth Announcement, Girl

Here's another sample I made for the custom order, this time of a birth announcement for a girl. I didn't have pretty in pink ink, so I used Red Riding Hood instead; I think it is a striking contrast! Although I think Pretty in Pink would look nice also. The information is all fictional, but we have friends who are having a girl in September who plan to name her Ellen Marie--isn't that pretty?

Paper: Pretty in Pink, Whisper White
Ink: Red Riding Hood, inkjet printing
Stamps: Puns from the Past
Ribbon: 1/4" grosgrain ribbon

Buried under alchemy

My posting has been somewhat sporadic the last few days as I've been somewhat buried under an avalanche of custom orders. I've barely had time to think, much less stamp creatively! Yesterday afternoon, I finally got free of some of the rubble (i.e. the big wedding invitation order is FINISHED!!) and did some stamping for another order. A gal is throwing a party and wanted some samples for it, so I made up a few. Here's one that I'm really proud of--I think it would be such a cute baby shower invitation or birth annoucement.

Paper: Baja Breeze, Whisper White, Red Riding Hood DSP (I think Candy Lane)
Ink: Red Riding Hood (plus inkjet printing)
Stamps: Darling Dots, Together Forever, Puns from the Past
Accessories: Filigree brads, 1 1/4" circle punch, 1 3/8" circle punch, ticket corner punch, 1 1/2" circle template (cut out by hand)