LMac's Catered Crops

Snuff Pocket Fun

I had so, so much fun making this card. I just giggled all the way through it. I made it in response to a Splitcoast challenge (here) and to a request by my upline's upline (yeah, gotta obey her) to share a demonstration from the Houston Regionals using bleach.

Can you see it? I couldn't resist. This is Texas after all. I had to include a can of snuff in the pocket.

Even though this is a knock-off of the Houston demonstration, I still consulted this web site, Color Combo, for the colors. If you want to try this bleach/aqua painter technique, here are the ingredients to make this card. Don't get mad at me, I got a bit carried away.

• Card stock: Brocade Blue, Ruby Red, Summer Sun, Old Olive, and Sahara Sand
• Stamps: Pocket fun.
• Background stamps: Linen on the Brocade Blue pieces, Paisley on the Ruby Red, and Aida Cloth on the Summer Sun piece.
• Tools: Color Spritzer, Cutter Kit for distressing edges, stylus, Tool Kit for paper piercing and eyelet setting, art sponge
• Markers: Night of Navy with Spritzer;  Signo White Gel Pen and Basic Black for frog's eyes
• Inks: VersaMark or Ruby Red, Basic Black, Night of Navy, Brocade Blue, Summer Sun, Whisper White Craft
• Accessories: Metallic eyelets, circle chipboard piece

To make the denim pocket I first used the Linen background stamp with Brocade Blue ink on the Brocade Blue card stock. Then I used the Color Spritzer tool with a Night of Navy marker and then again with an aqua painter filled with household bleach. If you've never used the spritzer tool, here's some help.

The Color Spritzer is one of my absolutely favorite tools. It can turn any Stampin' Up! marker into an airbrush, but It can be tricky. First you have to make sure the marker is placed right up to the tip of the tool at a 45 degree angle. Your little splatters of ink can be affected by how close to the paper you are and how hard you press the air chamber. Amy of Prairie Paper & Ink fame put together these pictures for you.

It's a little hard for me to capture, but with (A) I held the spritzer tool very close to the paper. At (B) I held it farther away. You'll definitely want to practice on some scrap paper. After I airbrushed Night of Navy onto my Brocade Blue/Linen piece I changed the marker in the spritzer tool for the aqua pen filled with bleach. A couple of important tips:

• Remove the Spritzer tool's inner chamber to get the aqua painter to fit in the tool.
• You can't see the bleach results immediately because the paper lightens only after the bleach begins to dry. If you feel like you bleached your paper too much, you can spritz it more with your Night of Navy marker.
• When you're finished making this card, empty the bleach out of the aqua pen. There are rumors that bleach will explode when exposed to light. Yeah, not good for your aqua painter.
• After emptying the bleach out of your aqua painter, be sure to clean your brush tip well so bleach doesn't affect your next project.

As you airbrush your paper with bleach and it begins to dry, it will look something like this.

 

Loves, you just made your own, custom, designer paper! You rock! Then, you can stamp your blue paper with the pocket from Pocket Fun using Night of Navy ink. I cut it out with a good 1/8" margin around the image because I also wanted to distress the edges with the Cutter Kit to make it look a little like a torn pocket.

Okay, now the really fun part. We need some snuff. I just put a small round chipboard piece under my pocket and traced it with my stylus (dry embossed it), hugging the chipboard piece very closely. I then swiped the raised edges just a little bit with the white craft ink and an art sponge.

You can finish your pocket with some silver eyelets and a little Sahara Sand tag.

Now we need a frog. He's made by just stamping the Pocket Fun frog image on Old Olive paper, but, to get those really bright eyes, I colored in the eyes with the White Signo pen. Looks kind of weird in the process, but after the white pen ink dries you can add back the pupils with the black marker. (I wish I could give you the name of the woman who demonstrated this project in Houston, because this was her suggestion for the frog, a great suggestion.)

The rest of this card is pretty easy.

1. If you haven't already, stamp the Brocade Blue card base with the Linen background stamp in Brocade Blue ink.
2. Stamp the 2" by 5 1/2" Summer Sun card stock with the Aidi background stamp with Summer Sun ink and back it with 2 1/8" by 5 1/2" Night of Navy card stock.
3. Stamp a 3" by 3 1/2" piece of Ruby Red with the Paisley background stamp in Ruby Red ink to make it look a little like a cowboy bandanna. You could ink it instead with VersaMark for a lighter, more subtle tone-on-tone look. Then I used the mat pack/paper piercer to put faux stitching around the Ruby Red piece and slapped on my pocket/frog ensemble.

Was it as fun for you as it was for me? Okay, the only thing that would make this card more fun would be to give it to a have a hunky, snuff-carrying cowboy. 'Snuff said.

A "Getting to Know You" Sing-along

Getting to know you,
Getting to know all about you.
Getting to like you,
Getting to hope you like me.

Ah, if only I could sing like Anna in the King and I, or have fun in those wide hoop skirts at least. Getting tagged by someone so far as the U.K. was such a trip for a little ole Texas girl. Shucks. It made me wish to know the rest of you ever-so-endulgent readers. Please take a second to sign my guest book and help us get to know each other. Readers, don't leave me hanging in this guest book by myself - you'll have to see my mug every few seconds - traumatizing, at least for me!

Haven't you noticed
Suddenly I'm bright and breezy?
Because of all the beautiful and new
Things I'm learning about you
Day .. by ... day.

Swinging Scissor Bling

Several folks have asked me to help them get or make some of the scissor charms my adorable sister made back in March. My Sis says she's got too many other projects going and I'm afraid my craftsmanship isn't worth the postage to ship them. Still, I'll take a stab at it showing you how, but only because I like you.

These charms are really easy once you've mastered wire wrapping. (Sounds like a CIA or hip-hop skill doesn't it?) Most bead stores offer classes, and that truly would be the best way to learn so you can learn the art to twisting the wire for beautiful jewelry. I started to put together a wire-wrap tutorial for you, but it requires some really close-up photos. Every time I'd get close enough for you to see the details, I'd get either fuzzy shots or these really pudgy hands - yuch. So, I did my usually thorough web browsing research and found a tutorial that best matches the way I learned wire wrapping at Austin's Nomadic Notions. Click here for The Bead Shop's wire wrapped loops tutorial.

Once you've got your loop-making skills honed, gather your supplies.

• Round nose pliers. Stampin' Up's tool kit includes bottle nose pliers which will work in a pinch.
• Needle nose pliers.
• Wire cutters. Our craft scissors will work for cutting wire, but a flush, jeweler's wire cutter will give you a closer cut for your final trim.
• 24 to 26-gauge wire. Stampin' Up! Metallic Metal Works 26 gauge silver wire works beautifully. Just remember, when you're measuring wire, the smaller the number, the thicker the wire. (It's like Nurse's syringe needles, you'd much rather have a shot with a 26 gauge needle than an 18 gauge needle.)
• Decorative beads.
• A shrinky-dink charm. I made my two charms with the Love It and Measure of a Life stamp sets. (Let me know if you want some advice on making Shrinky-dink embellishments, it's a lot of fun.)
• Either a really big clasp or one that opens out. If it opens inward you may not be able to get it onto your scissors.

Make your first loop to include the clasp, wrap the wire below the loop and trim off the excess (being careful to point down as you trim so your wire doesn't going flying into parts unknown).

String your decorative beads below the clasp and make your second loop to include the charm.

String on the charm and finish wrapping the wire above this loop. Clip the extra end of the wire, and your bling is ready to swing. Just be sure to point the wire down as you trim because the clipped wire has the bad habit of flying up and over, potentially causing bodily harm.

This is a really over-simplified list of instructions, but the nice thing about jewelry charms is, while they make great little gifts, they are really just for fun. Enjoy your swinging bling!

I've Been Tagged by the UK!

Check this out, this is so totally amazing. I've been tagged by someone in the United Kingdom, Alli. Girls, I get around. She has a lovely blog, but poor dear doesn't realize she's tagged the most boring person in blog-land. Seriously. Well, in keeping with the code of bloggers, I get to share seven things I made up about myself and tag another seven victims, I mean bloggers.

1. My adorable twin sister and I had a secret twin language, I was her Ging, she was my Doopie. Ask Doopie, she'll vouch. WhatzUp Doopie?
2. I babysat IU Basketball Coach Bobby Knight's very well behaved boys. That's true. The media portrayal of Bobby as a beast, not so true.
3. I sat at the geek table in high school, ate Ding Dongs and Diet Coke for lunch and wore the same purple polyester bell-bottom jeans every day. Oops, not made up, actually true. Hey, it was the 70's, everyone looked ridiculous.
4. All the ladies on my college dorm floor were nursing students but me. I snubbed them because I was a feminist, and of course, more enlightened. Sadly, true. Hey, it was the 80's, everyone was nuts. Jokes on me, I went back to nursing school in my 40's, a mid-life crisis RN.
5. I rode my Trek bicycle across the state of Iowa (RAGBRAI rules!). But, my greater bicycling achievement: I snagged my man on a bike. I had a flat tire, he fixed it, I swooned, I flirted  another six weeks, he finally asked me out. (Remember, I ate at the geek table.) True, and I can prove it. I still ride the same Trek bike and hunky man 25+ years later. We're married, I can say that.
6. Can't talk about myself without a shout-out to my two children. They are more beautiful, smart, interesting, and fun to be with than I ever imagined my offspring could be. Yep, absolutely true.
7. Last one - okay, better make it a good one. Stacy Croninger (PaperCrafts editor at right), take notes. Primedia Inc. Publications President, Dean Nelson, noticed my Catered Crop blog site and asked me to become the founding Editor of a new monthly magazine, Full of Crop. True? Well, don't wake me from this dream.

Okay, that was soul searching but fun. Guess we should subject seven other bloggers to the same self-examination. I stalk an embarrassingly large array of bloggers, so not really going for a population contest (geek table, remember), here's just a random few. Hope you enjoy these as much as I do. Respectfully tagging stampers:

• Leigh
• Aimee
• Dawn
• Natasha

and my CKU sorority scrapper sisters:

• Julie
• Lacey
• Chrystal

Thanks, Allie. This has been a hoot. My little treat tomorrow to all of you for endulging us this silliness is some how-to's for creating beaded scissor charms. Stay tuned.

Linda

Tipsy Tuesday - Magic Pencil

While cruising the net have you seen those beautiful cards with that soft blended coloring, a little like watercoloring but more controlled ? Yeah, me too, and I got tired of seeing those and not knowing how to recreate them myself, so I did a little more net cruising and found some good tips. This week's "Tipsy Tuesday" topic includes these tip jems for colored pencils.

It seems that wax-based colored pencils, like Prismacolor, blended with Gamsol odorless minimal spirits is what they're using. They use them with a fast-drying die-based ink (e.g., Staz-On) on outline stamps and kind of take elementary-school coloring to a new level. After lots of practice (I hadn't colored since before Disco dancing was hot) here's an example of a card using the "magic pencil" technique with the same card pattern we did here.

There are several really good tutorials on the web for the "magic pencil" so I won't try to describe the technique. These ladies have done a fabulous job:

• Sassy and Sweet Notes Prisma Color Pencil & Gamsol Tips
• Splitcoast Technique Tutorials Gamsol Magic
• Debbie Gimbel: The Magic Colored Pencil

Primsacolors have thick, soft, wax-based leads made from light-resistant pigments that make them easy to blend. They're not watercolor pencils, though, so you'll need the Gamsol and blending stumps. The tutorials above include Internet links to purchase the pencils, blending stumps, Gamsol, Emory boards, etc. While Prismacolor pencils are lovely, they're not cheap. They are, however, easy to find at Michaels and Hobby Lobby and often on sale. I had a difficult time tracking down the Gamsol colorless minimal spirits and finally found it locally at Jerry's Artorama.

Before I started my Primsacolor collection I did a little research on colored pencils and, unfortunately for a demonstrator like me, the word on the street is that Primsacolors are more vibrant and blend better than Stampin' Up!'s pure color pencils. But, my heart went pitter-patter when I came across this document that matches the Prismacolor pencils with Stampin' Up!'s colors, so we can still match them up with our ink and papers. You can download it by clicking here:

             Download prisma_su_colors.doc

Or, you can go to Splitcoast Stampers, where I received the chart by clicking here.

The chart doesn't include the 2006-2007 In Color ink colors, so here they are:

SU Bucky Blue is the same as Primsacolor Slate Grey (#936)
Cool Caribbean is Light Aqua (#992)
Cranberry Crisp is Henna (#1031)
Marigold Morning is Goldenrod (#1034)
True Thyme is Green Ochre (#1091)
Vintage Violet: none

My other invaluable tip about magic pencil - just practice, practice, and enjoy the results.

Inspired to Create

I hope you had a little fun with Saturday's suggestion for a pre-inspiration ritual or wardrobe like my rockin' Design Mojo Shirt. All that brought to mind the terrific class Donna Downey taught at the Houston Creating Keepsakes University (CKU) last September, so I thought I'd show you what we made. It's even relevant, how 'bout that? Donna Downey has such a great "embrace your art" philosophy: enjoy the process of creating and your creations for what they are, an expression of you. I love it, Carpe Artem. I'm so not a professional graphic designer, photographer or journalist; I just enjoy creating or maybe just playing with new toys and making messes.

Ms. Downey asked us to bring our favorite picture, here's mine:

Second only to this one:

We won't say how old these pictures are, suffice it to say the baby is in college and that's my original hair color. Yikes! This was just a fun afternoon in the front yard of our little starter home, and it captures the joy my two babies were and are to me. So . . . out of these pictures we made this, my all-time ever favorite project.

Creating this out of canvas pieces was, yeah, such a process I don't know if I can properly reteach it to you. We ripped pages out of a phone book, slapped them onto the canvas with glaze medium, pulled even some of that off the canvas with masking tape, and covered what was left with an acrylic paint/water wash and chalk ink. It's embellished with Heidi Swapp rub-ons, chipboard and ghost letters, and some huge Prima flowers and Bazzel brads. I took this off the wall for the picture, but it usually hangs above my craft desk and just reminds me to embrace my art for what it is and embrace my family for what they are to me.

Happy Creating! Carpe Artem

Oh . . . p.s. I was so celebrity struck at CKU, so you know I had to have a picture with Diva Downey, and, since we both just got new green-green glasses, well, we embraced the green!

Hanging up My Stethoscope

Warning - this is one of those self-indulgent, all-about-me posts. But, hang with me . . . I will get to some craft related dialog.

Thursday I hung up my stethoscope. I gave up my job at the hospital as a staff nurse. A big part of me is very sad about this. I know I'll miss my patients and the way they let me be such an intimate part of their lives. I already miss the dear friendship of my fellow nurses, the true heroes of the hospital who throw all their mind, heart and body into their work. I mean really, how many people do you know who work in a job that keeps them so busy they can't even eat or pee? But, after losing Mom I made a choice not to return to full-time work at the hospital but to instead take a more traditional 8 to 5 route - seems I like eating and peeing. I also like evenings with my family and, well, money (trying to remember my Dad's lessons about retirement planning). So May 1st I'll be a nurse reviewer helping the State of Texas regulate Assisting Living and Nursing Home facilities. Hopefully it will allow me to help ensure others have the same excellent care my Mom received. I'll still be a nurse, but I have this terrible feeling I'm going to miss being a hands-on nurse, so don't be too surprised if I come at you with a stethoscope. You're safe as long as I'm not missing my shot-giving skills and come brandishing a syringe.

The good news (and not a small factor in this choice) is that a more predictable schedule will hopefully give me more opportunities for stamping and crafting. Which means I get to wear this more often.

This, my darlings, is a Design Mojo Shirt and absolutely every scrapbooker and stamper must have one. It's that article of clothing that puts you in the knock-em-dead design mood, well, you know, like a good sexy negligee might put you in a different mood. This is:

The Anatomy of a Good Design Shirt

Exhibit A: You'll notice from the onset that its huge, nice and roomy. It covers the hole in my jeans I don't want anyone to see and lets me eat all the chocolate I want without bulging through my huge shirt.

Exhibits B and C: It's already grungy, so I don't mind getting it grungy. You can barely see it but there's an orange paint stain (B) from a fabulous class with Donna Downing where I learned  decoupage with a Heidi Swapp paint wash. And, there's the bleach stain (C) from experimenting with Future floor wax and Pearl Ex.

Exhibit D: My shirt has the seal that brands me an Alumni of Creative Keepsakes University and reminds me of the absolutely over-the-top fabulous time I had with my scrapbook sorority sisters when CKU came to Houston last year.

Clearly I don't wear this out in public unless I'm with other scrappers who relate. But, at home, I roll up the loose sleeves, crank up Tony Bennett's Duet album, point all the good lighting I can get to my desk and, well, hope inspiration follows.

I would love to hear what you do to get "in the mood." What helps get you in the mood to design that project everyones talking about? Or, what odd-ball pre-inspiration ritual do you have that has people talking about you?

Chirp Up - We Have a Winner

With the help of www.random.org, we have a blog candy winner. (Click here for the original blog-candy post.) Cheri Furr, who I met through Splitcoast Stampers, sent me an e-mail explaining she was struck with Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy, similar to M.S., and it has altered her life for the last six years. She was eager to help others by making a donation for Sue's bike ride. Thank you to everyone who responded, it's been tremendously rewarding to me to receive your thoughtful notes. We'll touch base with Sue after her ride this weekend and see how things have gone . . . that is, we'll find out if she's able to sit down again without a donut pillow!

In honor of Sue's sore bottom - here's just a real fun card Melissa Smith taught me. What makes this card fun and unique is the way it closes, from the bottom out, which isn't obvious in the first picture. Here's another view so you can see how it opens. It's kept closed again by the pop-up circle

To make this card I used:

• Very Punny stamp set
• Simply Scrappin' Friends and Flowers papers and stickers
• Tempting Turquoise, Chocolate Chip and So Saffron card stock
• Tempting Turquoise, Rose Red and Certainly Celery ink with blender pens and Staz-on Timber Brown ink
• White Grosgrain Ribbon
• 1 1/4" and 1 3/8" circle punches
• Poppin dimensionals

Step 1: Cut the Tempting Turquoise card stock to 4 1/4" by 11" and score at 5 1/2" and 1 1/4".

Step 2: Decorate the card base with your designer papers cut to 2" x 4 1/4" (flowered piece) and 3 1/4" by 4 1/4" (striped piece).

Step 3: Add ribbon to the 1 1/4" top flap, fold down the flap and adhere it strongly into place. Add the fringe from the Friends and Flowers sticker selections to hide the fold. If you want, to keep the flat firmly held down, you can staple the flap just under the ribbon.

Step 4: Using the 1 1/4" circle punch, punch out a 1/2 to 1/4 circle shape out of the top of the front of the card just above your ribbon knot.

Step 5 (last): Punch your circular image out with the 1 3/8" circle punch and adhere it to the card with poppin dimensionals. I used the 1 1/4" punch to make the So-Saffron circle and framed it with a Chocolate Chip circle. I added two poppin' dimensionals for extra strength.

Here's the card again, this time also using Petals and Paisleys paper from the Stampin' Up! Spring Mini catalog.

Thank you again, everyone, for helping me help Sue. You can, of course, continue to donate by going to Sue's site, here. We have beautiful weather in Texas this weekend, so, here's wishing Sue - bottom's out and up!

You Crackle Me Up - The Sequel

Yesterday you learned how to use crackle medium to create a fun, unpredictable cracked wood look. Using the same technique but just changing colors you can get also get an aged leather look.

This suitcase box from Hobby Lobby has brown as its base coat and burgundy as its top coat over the crackle medium. It's embellished with Stampin' Up!'s Simply Scrappin' Tickets and Tokens paper and stickers and covered heavily with glaze to give it that smother leather texture and sheen. The sentiment is  "You Are World Class," and I made this for my daughter Caitlin when she went on her senior trip to California. Another really fun thing about this suitcase box is that our 6x6 brag book albums fit perfectly in them to place trip pictures and souvenirs, so of course I decorated one of our albums for Caitlin with the Tickets and Tokens kit.

An alternative, quick and not-so-dirty (sans crackle medium) way to create an aged wood look is to use Stampin' Up!'s Weathered background stamp, which, you can imagine, is one of my favorites. You can ink up the stamp with Versamark for tone-on-tone subtle cracks or play with different color combinations for more pronounced weathering. This card used Always Artichoke ink on white card stock.

And, finally, one more way to achieve that weather look doesn't involve ink or paint, but rather Stampin' Up!'s Weathered Timeworn Collection Paper.  This card displayed at the February Houston Stampin' Up! Regionals is a beautiful example.

There are so many fantastic ways to create a distressed look but that at least concludes our primer on crackle.

Don't forget, I'll be drawing names for blog candy on Friday morning. You can read about it here. (Sue says I get free massages for life if you guys deliver . . . so get those contributions in!)

You Crackle Me Up

I love the aged, distressed look. Honestly, it's because imperfections make it perfect, and I'm certainly not a perfectionist. Huh? Anyway, I especially like the look of aged cracked wood. So, today I'm sharing with you my very favorite technique, crackle.

This little paper mache box (you can find at Michaels or Hobby Lobby) has crackle on the big tag and suitcase (yellow on red) and on the letter V (white on red). Your base can be almost any surface: stained, painted or raw wood, plaster, but it's especially fun to put on chipboard and paper mache shapes.

A few general tips to start:

1. Crackle medium definitely has a mind of its own. That's part of the fun of it to me, so just be prepared to enjoy the process (carpe artum).
2. If you've never used crackle medium, its a good idea to do a practice piece or two to get the feel.
3. Keep you brushes nice and wet, but not so wet that the paint or medium drips. Dry brushing doesn't work well. Also, don't over-brush when applying a top paint, i.e., use lots of strokes. Single, long brush strokes work best.

Let's get cracking (sorry, couldn't resist). Here's what you'll need.

• Foam and bristle brushes.
• Acrylic paint. I used Making Memories buttercup and chocolate colors.
• Crackle medium. I tried several kinds and luckily the cheapest worked the best. You can find Delta Creamcoat Crackle at Michaels and Hobby Lobby. And, if you lose these directions, the instructions are on the bottle. If you use a different brand, be sure to follow their directions.
• A gloss, glaze or varnish medium. I happened to use Liquitex but even ModgePodge will work.

And, of course, you need something to paint. I'm using just a small round piece of chip board for illustration, and we're altering a card-keeping kit created by Caputo's Kits. I'm very sorry to say she's going out of business and the kits aren't available. But, of course, you can easily apply this project to the Stampin' Up! art journals and books.

Step 1: Apply your base coat with a foam or bristle brush and let it dry completely. Be sure to get the edges, too.  

Step 2: Use a bristle brush to apply an even coat of crackle medium. A light coat will give you thin, subtle cracks and a heavier coat will give larger, bolder cracks. Let the crackle dry until there's an overall sheen to the surface and it feels sticky/tacky to touch, about 15 to 40 minutes. The timing may vary depending on the room's temperature and humidity. If your crackle is too thick and wet when you put on the top coat, the top coat will just mix with the crackle medium and not crack. If it's too dry, you'll just get an unaffected top coat.

Step 3: This is the really fun part! Apply the top contrasting color (yellow in our case) in even strokes and avoid over brushing. Be careful not to overlap or re-stroke the area. Work as fast and smoothly as possible. Cracking begins almost immediately. The cracks in your top coat will follow the brush strokes, so if you want random cracking you can cross brush, more uniform cracking will appear if you use even, one-direction stroking. Let this dry completely.

Step 4: For extra credit you can apply a gloss or varnish. It helps give your piece a more finished look and I think also keeps it from peeling later. And, if you're just a distressing maniac (that would be me), you can ink the edges with art sponges in the original base color.

Here's the back of today's project.

And, here's the front of today's project in all its glory, embellished with Stampin' Up! stamps, paper and hardware.

 

Well, if you got this far along reading this long post, God bless you. You are my kind of seize-the-art, carpe artum reader. Tomorrow I'll show you how to use the same process to get an aged leather look and also how you can get a similar weathered look without the paint and crackle.