Thing-a-day.com

A few days ago I saw this tutorial on Crafty Chi’s blog about making rubber stamps from old corks.  I meant to do it then, but other crafts called to me and after seeing Kimberly Pye’s Korkinesse yesterday I was reminded that I hadn’t yet to try making the cork stamps.  So today I made one of a little bird.  

The image reverses when stamped, something I forgot. Luckily, I chose something that didn’t matter. Carving into the cork was easier than I anticipated, but it did make a mess and I had to be careful around the more narrow areas.  The cork surface isn’t the best for stamp.  It’s uneven, and the holes need to be filled in.  I’d have to get a matching ink pen to fill in the gaps, and as you can see I used a ballpoint pen on the one on the right and it shows.  This was definitely fun and inexpensive, using materials I already have so I think I’ll be playing around with these little guys. 

I’m a little behind on scanning and picture taking as I was volunteering and I had class on Wednesday! This is a little ACEO made from some Swedish, US and Canadian stamps. It’s so rare to get stamps these days, and it was something I always enjoyed collecting when I was younger.

February 16th
Candle-holder making…

Yes, it IS exciting as it sounds. Well, actually it really was a lot of fun. Being me, I have a lot of candles, and of course, a lack of candle holders. So I had come up with a genius idea and started asking my mom to save the pasta sauce jars after she’s done with them (very cheap candle holders, but I can decorate them and make them look cool. WHICH. I. DID. sorry, bad caps lock, down caps lock). Having several candle holder options, and several ideas, and a friend coming over to visit. It made for an interesting night.

Pictures of the process are beneath the cut. I’m very proud with how the candle holders came out. I’ve already enjoyed using them several times.

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I took the fabric I stamped yesterday and created a small twelve inch square quilt.

Wednesday the Sixth: apart from having an emotional meltdown, I managed to make four cards.  I didn’t see the common theme (the band along the bottom) until I whacked them all together for this photo.  Can’t believe I made four cards with the same element without realising!

I’m still working with the stamps I made. Today I took the stamps and stamped with acrylic paint on fabric. The large heart is a ’store bought’ stamp.

Tuesday the Fifth: two cards, not my usual style.

More stamps. This time I started with heart-shaped erasers - carving both side.

Okay, so more wedding stuff.  Here are a couple of sample invitations that I made for my future SIL’s bridal shower.  And you guessed - she LOVES, LOVES, LOVES pink.  We were also thinking about a possible cooking theme.  These are just concepts - they definitley need some tweaking. 

The “Think Pink” one’s font will be a bit bigger and the words will be spaced out a bit to hig around the little dress in the corner.  This invite is handmade (except for the letters - that’s printed.)  The papers are layers and glued and the little dress in the corner is stamped (Stampin’ Up! baby) and embossed and then cut out.

The second invite with the plate is all done in photoshop (new to photoshop - I know it’s no great shakes, but I was pretty proud!).  In fact, the colors are much different on here than they should be (much more purpley and bright.)  I used a nice bright pink and crisp white, but it’s hard to tell.  You also can’t tell that there is a white border around the stipes. I plan on including a real black ribbon bow right about where it says “Lauren’s Shower” and then making this the front of a big envelope, which has 3 blank recipe cards inside (all custom made to match of course) that people fill out and bring with them to the shower, with little instructions.  I’m hoping to do a custom cookbook if we use this theme.

I’ve blocked out the personal information in case any of you are nut jobs (hehe.)

I traced one of the hearts I drew yesterday and transferred the design by burnishing it on an eraser. Carving was a bit awkward, but I got the decent result.    I made five comments yesterday and I’m going to go make ten today.

My thing today was to doodle some hearts. I am planning to work over the next several days in making and using stamps on both paper and fabric.