For the first week of the #StashCraft19 challenge I decided not only to craft from my stash, but also complete a project I’ve been meaning to do for a few months, now.
I began work on a doll room over the summer and made the first of the benches then. It turned out so well that I knew I needed to not only make another, but also share how easy it was.
As far as the challenge is concerned, this one is 100% stash–not a single cent was spent in the making of this bench and I still have enough supplies to at least do another bench or ottoman before having to scrounge up some more foam core.
The video includes the supply list and full instructions on how to make the bench for a 12-inch (or similar) doll.
Hi there! Imagine is teaming up with So Suzy Stamps for a blog hop and I’m absolutely in love with the stamps I chose! Make sure you read all the way to the end for how to enter the giveaway!
They’re sold individually, but when I saw the Goddess of… seasonal stamps I couldn’t NOT get all four because I had to do at least one project with the full set of these sleek, stylized ladies in their seasonal splendor.
So today’s project is a 5-panel card, using all four stamps, and since each has their own color combo there are a LOT of products used in this project. Because of that, I’ve opted to list the products for each panel separately to keep the list from getting completely overwhelmed.
Basic Ingredients:
Cardstock – 12″ White (cut into two 5.5″ tall strips and scored at 4.25″ and 8.5″–the remaining 3.5″ sections of each are overlapped to create the center panel; accordion fold)
Hot Press Watercolor Paper – 5 panels, approx. 3 1/2″ x 4 5/8″ panels (I stamped first, trimmed after, hence the approximate)
Acrylic Blocks VersaMark Ink Embossing Powder – White
Darice – Heat Tool
Plastic Plates
Water
Paint brushes Tear It! Tape
Memento Markers – Elderberry, Lulu Lavender
Cardstock – Deep Purple
Now, as per the usual with hops like these, there are giveaways going on from the two sponsor companies. In order to be entered into the drawing for the $25 gift certificates from Imagine and Crackerbox/Suzy Stamps you’ll need to leave a comment on **each** post in the hop for the day. If you do both days, you have double the chances.
It’s Blog-Hop time! This month Imagine teamed up with Stencil Girl for a product/design team collab as well as a giveaway (more details below–make sure you scroll all the way to the bottom!).
I had a lot of fun working with my new tools from Stencil Girl and used them to put together a mixed-media canvas. It started with an acrylic paint base and then–why I don’t I show you, instead.
As you can probably guess, I took my biggest inspiration from the peacock feather stencil and chose colors that worked with that idea. I was more amused than I necessarily should be that I turned the dancing figure into a fan dancer, but it worked (I think?).
Once I had all the basic layers in place, I ended up leaving it on my work table for almost a week, trying to decide how to finish it. The overall look was really bright, which is not my usual goal, and I wanted to add a stamped phrase but I wasn’t sure of the best way to do that at first.
I ended up adding a couple layers of ink buffed over the creative medium bits to highlight the textures and then stamped the message onto vellum, applied it with the Shimmer Artist’s Medium, and called it done!
Here’s the full product list for this project (any amazon links are affiliate links, thank you for supporting this blog!)
One lucky winner will receive both a $25 Gift Certificate to StencilGirl Products AND a $25 Gift Certificate to Imagine Crafts! Visit the fabulous designers from both teams and comment for your chance to win! The more blogs you comment on, the more chances you have to WIN! (One comment per blog please.) You have until Sunday, July 23rd at 11:59PM Central Time to leave your comments. Winner will be announced on StencilGirl’s Facebook page and Imagine Crafts’s Facebook page
on Monday, July 24th.
I’ve actually had a few of those, lately, thanks to making time for myself and various projects I want to accomplish. But the afternoon I’m talking about, today, is the one that happened about a week ago when I got into the Blissful card kit from Simon Says Stamp and made a good stack of cards from this gorgeous kit!
To see and hear how these cards came together, check out the video, below, or head over to my YouTube channel:
Like most of the Simon Says Stamp kits, this one has sold out, and the stamp set it’s built around is out of stock at the moment, too (though you can sign up for the waiting list to be notified when it’s available again). Still, a supply list is the thing to do for a post like this, so here you go! (the following list may contain some affiliate links)
SSS Blissful Card Kit (out of stock) which included:
While I generally enjoy crafting with the Simon Says Stamp kits, my favorite part of this kit (and all the kits so far) were the Daniel Smith watercolors. They were an absolute dream to work with and I have added some more of the dot sheets (like the one linked above) to my shopping list. While there were only 4 colors included on the dot sheet, I was able to paint an entire sheet of stamped images and get a good number of color variations by mixing tiny bits of those little dots.
This weekend I spent a little over two hours creating a batch of cards. Not for a deadline or project or because I needed to send one out the next day, just because.
Because I had a cute kit (Simon Says Stamp, February 2017) that I hadn’t used yet. And because Donut Day (last Friday) reminded me I had it. And sometimes it feels good to craft for no other reason than to do it.
Of course, since I’m me and I’d decided to go ahead and use the kit anyway, I figured I’d go ahead and film it and see what came of it.
The what being a 20 minute video of me rambling a bit, but it’s done and uploaded and I think it’s pretty cool. Again, it was nice to have the time and space to put the cards together and then, by some stroke of magic, get it edited, voiced-over (voice-overed?), and exported all in the same day.
The last video I tried to export, that being the CSI Scrap With Me, took 2 days, multiple restarts, a graphics driver upgrade, and a software upgrade, and a few more hoops just to get the blasted thing to export, much less anything else. This time, however, things went more smoothly and I have to say, major kudos to Premiere Pro for updating it’s title tool (finally!).
Last week (and the week before) was a bad tech week for me, in general. Work computers were wonky, my home laptop was threatening to fail (I was seriously thinking about replacing it during the holiday sales weekend), and then I was extra clumsy Wednesday morning and dropped my phone. Twice.
Apparently it’s better to drop a cellphone where it bounces of a corner instead of landing flat (face up or face down doesn’t matter, and it’s not like we choose to drop our expensive handheld devices one way or another, of course). Because when you drop it flat, the chances of some very important pieces detaching increases astronomically.
First the screen took on this sickly greenish tinge. Then I noticed the touch-screen (which is 99% of the function of a smartphone) wasn’t responding. I figured I was doomed no matter what, so I smacked the phone against my palm and the color corrected. Yay! But the touch screen still wasn’t responding.
Or, I should say, it wasn’t responding how I needed it to. It was doing it’s little zzzt! vibration, like it was registering a command (I have my phone on silent and work and, since I get so few calls anyway, tend to forget and leave it that way at home for days–ahem, weeks–at a time) but it wasn’t getting past the lock screen.
So I did the logical thing: I took out the battery to do a hard reset. After a few moments I gave the phone back it’s battery and then nothing. Absolutely nothing.
I can vividly remember a time before cell phones and it wasn’t even all that bad. Even a time before smart phones. Again, not that bad. But my word, driving to work without a cell phone? That sucked. I couldn’t listen to my podcasts or music (thank goodness for some CDs I had in my car, saving me from drive-time djs). I couldn’t search for the nearest Verizon store. And I couldn’t see if maybe Costco might have better prices on phones. It was pretty horrible, she says from her perch of technological privilege.
It was, however, perhaps the quickest I’ve ever been in and out of a Verizon store: 30 minutes for a new phone and various accessories. Of course I was a year early for an upgrade, but Todd’s contract was up in about 4 months so I was able to buy out the rest of his and then sub in a new phone without drastically changing our bill. And based on my rash of bad phone luck, I did not leave without a case and a screen protector (which I had the sales rep install for me, just in case) and within two days I’d purchased a pop-socket, because the new phone is larger than my old one, and having something slightly more secure to hold onto makes incredible sense.
That’s what I’ve been up to, more or less. What about you?
Now, as per the usual with hops like these, there are giveaways going on from the two sponsor companies. In order to be entered into the drawing for the $25 gift certificates from Imagine and Crackerbox/Suzy Stamps you’ll need to leave a comment on **each** post in the hop for the day. If you do both days, you have double the chances.
