The weather is getting cooler and the leaves are changing colour. For me, that means it’s time to cozy up and prepare for winter. This is the season to wrap yourself in your most comfy knitted sweater, make a cup of tea, slip your feet into those slippers and do some holiday crafting.
The only thing that would make my holiday crafting even better is a gas fireplace in my craft room! That would be glorious! It’s not a realistic goal, by any means, but I do wonder if I could make room for a small electric fireplace. My crafting studio is in the basement, so it gets chilly. The ambience and warmth of a fireplace would be so delightful, don’t you think!
As You See It Challenge
As a part of the As You See It Design Team, I get to share another card inspired by today’s As You See It Challenge blog.
It begins with a sketch!
Events & Classes
For the past couple weeks, I’ve been having fun creating with the Peaceful Place Specialty paper. I showed my September technique class how to make a very special fancy fold card using this patterned paper along with the coordinating Cabin Dies. My technique cards and tutorials are exclusively available to those who purchased the class. That means they get VIP Access to the tutorials for two months. After that, I get to share the projects with you! So keep watch for that fancy fold card to show up here on my blog in November!
To find out more about my virtual classes (only available in Canada) or about purchasing VIP Early Access to the technique class tutorials, go to my Events & Classes page.
Since I’ve had the Peaceful Place patterned paper on my mind AND on my desk, it made its way into this design.
I LOVE this paper!
The Cork Specialty Paper and the Knit Together cling stamp have been waiting so patiently for me to bring them into a project. They both offer such a warm and cozy texture. Stamping tone-on-tone with Gray Granite ink on the Gray Granite cardstock works beautifully with that stamp.
I wasn’t sure what colour of cardstock to use for this design. Many of the neutral colours that I considered were too drab, while some colour options seemed too loud. Finally, I tried the Evening Evergreen.
It was perfect! Neutral enough to feel calm, but rich enough to feel cozy and inviting.
Also on this design, you can see the soft layer of Vellum, the white embossed sentiment from the Snowman Season stamp set, and the red stitched ribbon from the Playful Pets Trim Combo Pack.
Give this sketch a try and share your final take on the As You See It Challenge blog. We love to see what you design with that creative brain of yours!
Do you do anything to occupy your mind when you’re doing a task that you don’t enjoy?
I dread doing any kind of maintenance chores, like folding and putting away my laundry, making dinner (ugh), planning meals, cleaning my craft room, (cleaning pretty much anything, actually), and grocery shopping. To avoid boredom and reduce the torture of performing some of these tasks, I will often binge a show on Netflix or Prime. I find that 20 to 30 minute episodes work best and they can’t be a show that I have to pay to close attention to, since I need to actually accomplish the unpleasant task at the same time. I’ve tried watching some of those home improvement or organization reality shows, but those aren’t working at all. They’re nice to look at, but really boring to listen to, LOL!
The shows that keep me company and make my tasks a bit more bearable are my tried and true favourites. I just come back to them over and over. They’re fun and light and always help to lift my mood.
The Office (my son bought me the complete box set for Christmas!)
Brooklyn 99 (absolute gold!)
New Girl
The Good Place
I’ve watched some other shows that I’ve enjoyed as well, of course, but these ones are a few of the ones that I can listen to while I work and I know exactly what’s happening without looking at the screen most of the time because I’ve seen it before. They’re my friends and they always make me smile.
The one circumstance on my list above where I have to give my full attention, is grocery shopping. Maybe listening to music with ear buds would help? Kind of like my own personal movie soundtrack!
How do you endure the unpleasant and boring tasks in your day? Do you have any special tricks that dust a little bit of gold over the dull and dreary parts?
Of course, some of the shiniest gold that’s scattered throughout my week is when I get to play in my craft room! AND PLAY, I DID! As usual, the card I have to show you today begins with some creative inspiration from the As You See It Challenge Blog! It’s a sketch!
My Gilded Leafing from Stampin’ Up! has been quietly waiting for me to play with it since I bought it over a month ago. I have to admit, I was a little nervous to even open the container after being warned that it will expand or make a horrible mess. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for ACTUAL scattered gold to be all over my craft room! But for my card today, I’m happy to report that my Gilded Leafing has been a wonderful and fun art experience that definitely needs further exploration.
I used the Art Gallery Bundle, which, if purchased between now and February 28th during Sale-a-bration, will allow you to choose a free Sale-a-bration item. Coincidentally, I also used the Oh So Ombre Designer Series Paper on this card, which is a free pack of 6×6″ patterned paper with a $60 CAD purchase. I used one of my new Blending Brushes with Bermuda Bay ink to sponge a little extra colour behind where my flower was going to be. The stem and leaves were stamped with Shaded Spruce and I stamped the two steps of the flower on a separate piece of the same paper using Pretty Peacock and Night of Navy ink. After adding some Wink of Stella to the accents on the flower, it was die-cut with the coordinating die.
Before attaching the die-cut flower, I played with my Gilded Leafing and some Multipurpose Liquid Glue. I had NO idea what I was doing. That’s what made it fun (and a little bit scary, too!). I wondered if I could create a splatter kind of effect by mixing a small amount of water with the liquid glue on a paint brush, then tapping the brush on my finger over the paper to splatter the thinned glue on the surface. Then I would apply the leafing to the glue. This didn’t go as planned at all because I applied the gilding while the glue was too wet. It smeared the glue, resulting in a less defined placement of the gold leaf. If you make sure the glue is completely dry (remember, this glue stays sticky when it’s dry!) before you apply the leafing, you will not get the smudged gold like I did. The splatter the the left of the flower was dry, while the splatter to the right was too wet when I applied the leafing. See the difference?
The final elements on my card are the Fine Art Ribbon and the white heat-embossed sentiment on the black die-cut label. The sentiment and label are from the Many Messages Bundle. This bundle is really cool because it has a bunch of different sentiments on one large background stamp AND they line up perfectly with the ONE die that cuts them ALL OUT AT ONCE! Oh my gosh! Talk about a time saver for making multiple cards for multiple occasions! I think that will be my next project – make a set of cards using all the sentiments from this bundle. Ooooh! I can feel the creative wheels gaining momentum! Yup. That’s my next project, for sure!
But before you go, don’t forget to share with me any tips and tricks you have to scatter gold
(or smear it, LOL!)
over the dreaded tasks you have in the day. What is your dreaded task and how do you get through it without dying? Or is it just me? Am I the only one who feels like it’s torture to do these things? I tell you, if I was a wealthy person, I would pay good money to have all of those things done for me!
I don’t know why this particular sketch was so difficult for me, but I just couldn’t get started and was struggling for ideas. Nothing seemed to be working and all I wanted to do was eat ice cream and binge watch The Office (again). However, I did finally find my stride and am happy with how my card turned out.
My final design brought me to using a Basic Black cardbase with a Stitched Rectangle die cut center on the front. I stamped the leaves from the Bird Ballad stamp set on the card base with Whisper White Craft Ink.
I layered some strips of the Bird Ballad Designer Series Paper (retiring) and Basic Black cardstock and attached it over the cut out. On this, I tied a piece of Linen thread with a trinket from the Bird Ballad Trinkets (retiring) and added the leaf that was punched out of Mossy Meadow cardstock with the Leaf Punch (sold out, sorry!)
I stamped the bird from the Bird Ballad stamp set with Momento Tuxedo Black on Whisper White cardstock and coloured the image with Stampin’ Blends Markers. Then I cut the image out with one of the smaller dies from the Stitched Rectangle dies. This was layered on a piece of Basic Black cardstock with Stampin’ Dimensionals.
The sentiment is also from the Bird Ballad stamp set, and was stamped with Coastal Cabana ink through the opening in the front of the card, onto the Whisper White cardstock that lined the inside of the card.
I’m really sad that the Leaf Punch is no longer available for you to purchase. It was on the retiring list, but appears to have sold out and is no longer available. I would suggest trying the Sprig Punch as an alternate to the Leaf Punch. It would be my second choice for this purpose.
Some of the products I’ve featured on this card are discounted on the Last Chance Products List. Head on over to my ONLINE STORE and have a look at what else Stampin’ Up! has for you.
