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)