Summer Frame of Mind

Hi everyone!

Wow, it's been a while.  I've been pretty busy with several things all at once - some paper related, some not.  I'll be posting as much as I can over the next few days to get you all caught up.

I'm going to begin with the project I finished most recently.  Michaels offers a class called Paper Crafted Gift Frame.  This class was first constructed for Christmas.  Sporting the word "JOY", the background papers were the traditional Christmas colors of red, green, and white.  Obviously, I didn't want to put something related to Christmas out on the store floor at this time of the year.  I'm also kind of beyond spring right now - I'm kind of done with the flowers, chicks, and lace.  So, I opted for a summer theme.  Those of you who know me will smile because I've gone with a beach theme - and I love the beach.

Unfortunately, because this is a class that Michaels offers, I'm bound by their public relations policies, so I can't show you this piece in its entirety.  If you live near me, it's on display at the store and you can check it out back in the frames department.

• The flowers, some trim, and tag are handmade using paper from the "Four Seasons" pad by Die Cuts With a View.  I LOVE this pad and plan to use every bit of it - not something that happens with every pad of paper I buy, trust me.  
• The solid colors of paper are French Vanilla, Avalanche, and Turquoise Mist by Bazzill.  
• I sketched in the seagrass using three different shades of yellow green markers by Copic.  I borrowed one of them from the store, so I can't give you the number for that one, but the other two are YG93 and YG95. 
•  The tag is hand lettered using a brown Zig marker.  
• The punch is Martha Stewart's Punch Around the Page in Deco Fan.  
• The large letters were cut on the Cricut Expressions machine using the Jubilee Celebration cartridge.  I think this was a promotional cartridge that was given away last fall with the purchase of two other cartridges.  I couldn't find it on the Cricut site, so if you find it somewhere, please correct me.  :)
• The frame is a 14" x 8" (I think) float frame from Michaels.  It comes in black, but I painted it because - ya know - it needed to be kind of beachy.  :)
• Paints on the frame are by Martha Stewart.  They're Beach Glass and Porcelain Doll in the satin base.    It took several coats of the Beach Glass paint to cover the black, but I love how the frame turned out.  I brushed the Porcelain Doll paint on as a very, very light topcoat.

Sorry for the size and fuzziness of this one, but I cropped it so as not to show too much.  The seashells came from the DCWV pad that I listed above.  I just cut them out and adhered them to a trim strip made of papers and punches that I also listed above.

The word down the middle of the project is "breathe".  I always seem to relax and breathe at the beach - something about that great, uninterrupted expanse of beach and water....

Remember to breathe....

Kathy

Emily's Book

Hi all:

So, after I got all three of my cards done for the Stamping Royalty challenge, I started to focus on other projects that were lined up.

Last year, I experimented with making some small graduation albums for my nieces and nephew.  They measured about 5" x 5", making them small enough to be pretty portable if they wanted to take them to school. I'm not sure if they ever used them (they are teenagers, after all), but the adults seemed to appreciate all of the effort that I put into the albums.  :)

This year, my mom asked if I'd do one for my cousin's daughter, Emily.  I promised her I'd get started with it as soon as the cards were done for the challenge.  Tonight, I finished it.  It was kind of fun to do this album for Emily, as she is graduating from my alma mater.

 That's our little mascot - the Lakota Raider.  :)  I got him off the Raiders' facebook page.  I printed him, cut him out, and then highlighted him with glossy accents.  The words were printed off and cut to fit the matted piece.

The corners of the striped paper were punched with a Martha Stewart punch, then blue cardstock was placed behind the punched corners to bring out the detail.

I like how this page turned out.  The matted areas can be used for pictures, memorabilia, or journaling.  These are different colors of cardstock, one matted on top of the other.  A couple of them were highlighted with patterns using a white gel pen.

I drew the volleyball and then filled it in with glossy accents.  The words were printed out in blue ink and then matted on matching cardstock.

The paper lace was cut out with a Fiskar's punch called "lace".  The tag was cut with a spellbinders die.  The pearls were colored with a copic marker and the words are handwritten.  The page on the left is actually a pocket page.  I like to include pockets to catch things the folks might not want to glue into a book.

Just cardstock and blue glitter letters.  I included all of the textspeak to make it more teen friendly.  :)

Emily was in the school play this spring.  The rose under glass is hand-drawn.

 The paper with the lace edges is punched with a Martha Stewart "Punch Around the Page" set.  The word is printed off and then adhered to the page.

I hope Emily enjoys filling this with all kinds of memories from her senior year.

Take care ~
Kathy

Crafting with Martha

Hello, everyone!

"This is the day that the Lord has made.  Let's rejoice and be glad in it!"  Psalm 118:24

This verse resonates with me today, not only because it's Sunday, but because my son narrowly escaped a pretty frightening accident on Thursday night.  He lost control of the Jeep and hit a tree, but escaped with only a few cuts and sore muscles.  God had my boy in His hands that night...

On to the crafty side of life!

I'm getting ready for the Open House at Michaels next Saturday.  Michaels instructors will be on hand from 1-3 to discuss class offerings and offer you a 25% discount off of the classes in which you enroll that day.  To my knowledge, it's the only day the classes are on sale all year, so I hope you can make time to get there on Saturday.

This week, I played with my Martha Stewart Scoring Board.  I love, love, love this tool and you'll see why.  Back on February 9th, I bought the board and posted a video demonstration from madebymomo.  This week, I finally got around to using the board to make a card, an envelope, and a box.  They turned out sooooo well!

Here is the scoring board and the pieces that come with it.  The triangular piece sits in the corner of the board when you want to make envelopes.  The other small tool is for scoring and folding.

The envelope guide is a little difficult to understand.  I know that you have to label the envelopes somehow, but if  you don't know what the labels mean, it's kind of hard to know which size you need.  I didn't know the difference between a #1 and an A6!!  Obviously, the sizes are listed in inches, so I kind of knew where to start.  I played with the A2, 4 bar, and #1 which made the smallest three sizes.  The one I ended up using for my card was the 4 bar.

Since these were pieces for work, I continued using the Four Seasons pad from Die Cuts With a View.  I choose a spring-like lavender and purple page, full of pansies.  And here are the finished products:

The Box:

This is the top view of the box.  The white paper demonstrates the Martha Stewart Punch Around the Page punch in the Vintage Floral pattern.  Yes, I created the lacy edges using a punch.  :)  Isn't that pretty?   The recipient's name, a significant date, or other well wishes can be written in the center of the white paper.

Side view of the box.  I used the Vintage Floral punch along the edges of the box lid, too.

The Card:

Here's the card.  The Vintage Floral punch was used along the front edge.  The pansies were cut out of the sheet of paper I chose and adhered to the card.  The words were printed in dark purple in ivory cardstock.  I chose a Mother's Day theme as it's timely and seemed to go well with the papers I picked out.

This is the inside of the card.  Again, pansies and leaves were cut out of the papers, words were printed on cardstock, and edge was punched with Vintage Floral.  When the card is closed, the pretty lavender print along the bottom of the inside of the card shows through the punches on the front of the card.  (I forgot to take a picture of that - so sorry...  :(   )


The Envelope:

I made the envelope out of regular copy paper, using the instructions on the Martha Stewart Scoring Board. Because the card has a little bit of thickness to it with the pansies, lace, cardstock, etc., I had to adjust the measurements of  the envelope by 1/8" to make it a bit bigger.  Nailed it the first time!  Whoo-hoo!!!

Then, I used the corner punch from the Vintage Floral set to add the cute little trims on the envelope.  I rounded the corners on the sides of the top flap.  The card fit inside of the envelope perfectly!

Card and envelope...

This is the only picture I got of the whole set - not a very good one, but I didn't think of a picture with all of them until just now.


I used the scoring board to score the folding lines on the box, envelope, and card.  It really helped with the measurements, getting all of the lines in the right places, and folding them neatly.  I will use this board again and again, I'm sure!  :)

Kath