More Classroom Fun

This is my spin on a poster I've seen a lot on Pinterest in the last few days.  Sort of a words of encouragement type of thing to hang in the classroom.  I took away some of them and added others that were much more appropriate for art class.  I created this in My Digital Studio.  It took some time because first I had to create the notebook paper.  I'd found a website with notebook paper you can download but it only downloads as a PDF, which as far as I know, can't be uploaded into MDS.  So I started with a white rectangle, then made a square punch in Pacific Point.  I stretched the square the width of my white rectangle, then narrowed it as much as I could.  After that it was just a series of cut and pastes.  I pasted it once, lined it up, made it a group of two, pasted again, lined it up again, grouped the four, and then pasted the group of four until I filled the page.  I did the same thing to make the Real Red strip for the left margin.  After that, I had to make each "We do" it's own text box to make them line up on my paper.  I'm really pleased with how it looks though.  I may try having it printed 11x14 through Walgreen's website so it's more of a poster for my classroom.  That's why there's some extra space on all the sides!

Birthday invitations and lesson plans, oh my!

My son will be turning four in about a month, so I'm in the middle of all kinds of party plans.  He will be having an Angry Birds theme party so I created his invitations much the same as the Angry Bird punch art I made several months ago.  Because we're having a pool party, instead of hiding in a fortress of logs, the pig is floating on an inner tube, awaiting his fate.  I used some torn pieces of Pacific Point for the water.  For the inner tube, I punched large ovals, cut a slit in them, and slid in the pig.  The sentiment is from Look Who's Turning, a retired set I keep specifically for my son's party invitations!

New products!  Before I could go whole hog on the new catalog, I had to sell off some retired stuff, which I can't do until the new catalog is out.  So once all that was unloaded, I got a bunch of new goodies this month!  This card uses two new sets, Decorate a Daisy and A Word for You as well as the new Naturals specialty DSP for the background.  I stamped the daisy with Summer Starfish on Primrose Petals and did the reverse with the center.  The banner and sentiment are stamped on Very Vanilla with Primrose Petals.  In order to make the sentiment fit in the swirls of the banner, I had to stamp it twice - first with "for" and then with "you" so I could tilt the stamp.  The card base is Wild Wasabi with a layer of Certainly Celery.

I've been working on some new plans for next year because my schedule is changing up a bit.  This is my take on a really cool lesson I found online involving koi fish.  The left is a picture of it in progress and the right is the finished work.  I colored the fish in with regular old Crayola markers, then went over it with a paintbrush and water to blend it.  Once it dried a bit, I draw my water splash outline around the fish, colored blue right against the fish, and spread it out again with water.  I'm planning to incorporate this into my art appreciation class.  It will fit well into my Japanese art unit.

Happy You times Three

If you're a stamper, or even a crafter in general, you're probably familiar with the term "CASE."  CASE stands for Copy And Share Everything (although some people substitute Steal for Share!)  A lot of the projects on this blog, while they haven't been straight CASEs, have definitely been inspired or influenced by other projects in the blog-o-sphere.  Well, last week, as I was prepping for my July stamp club (the Peek-A-Baby card), I decided I wanted to use Happy You, a new hostess set.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find a lot of examples of cards with that set.  The Peek-A-Baby was pretty original for me, although parts of it were undoubtedly influenced by other cards I've seen.  I wanted to create some other note cards with Happy You today, because it's a great starter stamp set - there's something in it for everything.  So I just sat down with the set, some cardstock and markers and here's what I came up with.

This was actually the last card I did.  I had wanted to make an umbrella a while back and failed miserably at my overachieving punch design.  So I kept it simpler this time and used the ornament punch to make the shape of the umbrella.  I used a 3/4" circle punch to make the scallops at the bottom.  I free-hand cut the handle.  For the boots, I colored just the boot image with my black marker and stamped it three times.  Then I colored the complete image and stamped it again on the Baja Breeze.  I restamped just the boot on Raspberry Ripple and cut it out and adhered it over the original image.  I added the white polka dots with my white gel pen.  The flowers are colored with Raspberry Ripple, Primrose Petals, and Gumball Green.  Some of the pearls and a knot of ribbon on the handle were the last touches I added.

This was the card that started my day and led to the paper piecing on all the projects.  (Paper piecing is stamping your image on colored paper, cutting it out and laying it overtop of the same stamped image on your background.  Nice pop of color without having to color in everything by hand and a great use of scraps.)  I started with the Baja Breeze background and made the clouds but punching a scalloped oval, using the opening as a template, and sponging white through it.  Then I stamped the kites randomly.  For the kites, I used the 2011-2013 In Colors.  The kites are attached with dimensionals which is why there's such deep shadows under them.

Merry Christmas in July!  Don't be surprised if more than a few Christmas projects pop up this month because a)I'm behind on them and b)July is when I really get into a Christmas mood and start planning my holiday cards and gifts.  This little wreath image in the Happy You stamp set is pretty but small, so I wanted to make it stand out.  I began by cutting  rectangle out of Early Espresso and I used my scoring board to create the panels to make a rectangle. Then I stamped the wreath five times on a piece of Gumball Green using Garden Green ink.  To speed the cutting process, I punched them out with the 1-1/4" circle punch and punched the center with the 1/2" circle.  That made cutting around all the leaves a lot faster.  I left one wreath whole and cut the others in half.  I wound up only using 3 1/2 wreaths - one on the center of the door and 2 1/2 to make the garland.  The last things were the red bow on the door wreath and using the white gel pen to create the berries.  

Supply List

Stamps: Happy You

Cardstock: Raspberry Ripple, Gumball Green, Baja Breeze (rainboots card), Whisper White, Baja Breeze, Pool Party, Island Indigo, Lucky Limeade, Calypso Coral, Wisteria Wonder (kites card), Crumb Cake, Soft Suede, Early Espresso, Gumball Green (Christmas door card)

Ink: Basic Black, Garden Green, Raspberry Ripple, Primrose Petals, Gumball Green (marker form), Whisper White craft ink (clouds)

Accessories: Ornament punch, Basic Pearls, ribbon scraps, white gel pen (rainboots), scallop oval punch, sponge (kites), scoring board, Itty Bitty punch pack, ribbon scraps, 1/2" circle punch, 1-1/4" circle punch (Christmas door)

Soft, cuddly, elephant-ness

If you've been reading my blog, you may have noticed that I love elephants.  I've already done a couple of cards that feature them.  When I found this crochet pattern a few weeks ago, I just knew I had to give it a whirl!

This little guy took me about a week.  I don't typically mind crocheting in the round, but this pattern uses a continuous round or a spiral, instead of separate round rows.  When I do this again, I think I'll make the rows separate.  It's easier for me to follow and will make it easier to attach the legs at the end.  I had to reattach the left leg twice because I just couldn't get it lined up with the right, even though I was in the "same" row.  I may also try going up a hook size or two.  Because of the stuffing, I had to keep the stitches really tight, which got to be kind of tortuous on my hands after awhile.  And the tight stitches combined with rounds that were only 8 stitches to begin with on such a small hook made it almost impossible to hold! LOL  Overall though, I'm pretty pleased with how it came out and he's got a little place of honor sitting on my Big Shot shelf.

Peek-A-Baby!

I don't normally post stamp club cards until the actual day of stamp club, but this was simply too cute not to share!  This little stamp is from a new hostess set called Happy You.  The images are small, good for little notes, but I wanted to make a bigger card out of one.  I love this little baby head popping out of the plant so that's why I decided to do a sort of chronological spin on the plant/baby growing.  What a fun card for a baby shower!

Supply List
Stamps: Happy You
Cardstock: Very Vanilla, Gumball Green, Daffodil Delight
Inks: Basic Black, Cajun Craze, Gumball Green, Daffodil Delight (all in marker form)
Accessories: 1-1/4", 1-3/8", small scallop circle punches, Adorning Accents edgelilts, Daffodil Delight 5/8" grosgrain ribbon

For Abigail

A close family friend has a daughter who is turning 2 today.  She LOVES Sesame Street, especially Elmo, so I made this card out of punches.  I've seen lots of examples of this around the internet, so I won't be posting specifics here as you can easily find the directions.  It's basically a bunch of scallops, circles, and ovals.  I used the owl builder punch to make the eyes.  The sentiment is from a retired set called Look Who's Turning.  Its one of my favorite sets to use for child birthday cards as well as my son's birthday party invitations every year.

Father's Day Goodies

Just wanted to share what my son and I created for my husband for Father's Day.

The other night, my son and I wandered around our neighborhood to find some good photo opportunities.  We took along two pieces of cardstock and a black Sharpie and I wrote the letter d on one and the letter a on the other.  I took a series of photos of him in various spots holding each sign.  Once we got home, I uploaded them all and used Walgreen's photo site to create two 5x7 photo collages where I arranged the photos to spell out dad.  I did absolutely zero editing to the photos besides changing some to black and white.  I love Walgreen's photo services - they almost always have a coupon code and it winds up being just as cheap as printing them yourself.  While at Walgreen's to pick them up, I also found these gorgeous matted shadowbox frames to use for the pictures and they were only $5.

In addition to these two prints, I also have a large 11x14 collage of my favorite three shots that will be coming later this week. My local Walgreen's doesn't have the equipment to print that big in store.

Of course, in this house, no gift is complete without a card and I had my son help with that too.  Using just a cheap set of watercolors, I painted the bottom of his feet and had him step on a piece of cardstock.  The watercolor washed right off with no staining, but still left a good impression of his foot.  I wanted to use a recordable card SU! had available for awhile.  It's a 4 1/4x5 1/2 card and my son's foot is now bigger than that!  So I had to make the card front a little bigger than the inside.  I trimmed off as much as I could, although part of his other foot is still visible as well as a misplaced toe, but I kind of like how it balances out the card.  I mounted it on a piece of Pacific Point and attached that to the front of the card.

Once my son recorded a message of "Happy Father's Day!" I printed out this poem that I saw on a project kit in Oriental Trading and attached that to the inside.  The punched start marks where you need to push to make the recording play.  You can see some of the speaker and buttons through the white paper but I didn't want to put anything too heavy over it and mess up the sound.