give peace a chance

over at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ we're still making cards that feature the peace sign OR the word peace OR with a peaceful scene. i've got two out of three. see?

patterned paper: ciao bella, plus the birch trees photo which is from a catalog last december!; peace die: spellbinders; snowflake punch: paper source; glitter paper: best creation; white cardstock: staples; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, xyron, 3m foam tape, sewing machine 

the peaceful scene i've used as a focal point is a beautiful journal card from the "snow and the city" collection by an italian paper company called ciao bella, which i got at my lss paper anthology last december. the background panel- with the birch trees- is, believe it or not, the cover from a holiday catalog! all i needed to add to make those two lovely pieces of paper into a card was a couple of skinny white mats, a diecut sentiment, part of a doily and three glittery copper snowflakes. et voila, la paix! 

hop on over to ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ and see stephanie's beautiful card and link up your very own!

It's a CARD-inal!!! :)

The new Fall 2019 brads, bling and tapes are making their way into the Eyelet Outlet Store, and one of my favorite new brads are the Profile Cardinals which are beautiful on their own but even nicer with the original Cardinal Brads. See?

I am a really big fan of the EO Paper Flowers, and the green ones have a special place in my heart because the petals make such beautiful leaves when you cut them apart! I used one small and one medium flower to augment my diecut branches. 

I had so much fun making the first card that I decided to do a landscape version featuring the Bluebird and Robin Brads, just so they wouldn't feel left out!

I hope you'll have a chance to get outside today and see some birds in real life, but if not, the EO Store is here for you! ♥

Stencil Sunday: On the Town

This fancy vintage lady and I hope you'll join us on The Ink Pad Blog where we're wishing The Ink Pad a very Happy 21st STAMP-iversary this Stencil Sunday! ♥

gelli, gelli, gelli!

it's time for this week's round up of gelli printing goodness and ...in a few cases... frustration, actually. it was sort of a mixed week, lol!

day 7: trace

did you know you could use alcohol ink markers on the gel plate? nor did i! they work really well tho. posca paint pens work pretty well too, though they are more likely to stick to the plate. for this prompt we placed a magazine or coloring book image UNDER the gelli plate and traced around it with a copic or posca, then pulled the print with paint. i'll definitely come back to this one!

day 8: pastels or chalk

i'm lonnnnnnging to try this technique with pan pastels, but alas, all i had were some ancient chalks and the method still worked pretty well. i confess i did add some pen details at the end just because my colors were so very soft...

day 9: stencils

a bit of a cheat here, but it was mandala monday, so instead of making new prints i took some older ones (which were made with stencils) and assembled a mandala from punched circles and hearts.

day 10: pigment inks

if i was only going to choose ONE favorite technique for the week, i think this would be it! so much so that i'm going to just tell you to watch the birgit koopsen video because it shows you exactly how to do it -- you don't even need PAINT!

(ps: i didn't have texture plates like the ones birgit used in the vid, so i made my own by using embossing folders on scraps of sturdy cardstock!)

day 11: multiple layers

after several triumphant days of trying a new thing and having it turn out brilliantly, when i got to this one it just. did. not. want. to. work. the brief was to add design elements to the plate in several layers and then lift the whole thing in one swoop at the end. this just didn't happen for me. i made some absolutely beautiful plates that either didn't release at all or got too covered up with paint or... well, something. i was bizarrely comforted to hear (via instagram comments) that apparently a lot of folk struggled with this one. and i think i miiiiiight have an inkling of how to change my results now...

day 12: repeat patterns

ok, so, back to the pigment inks for instant gratification lol! i applied ink to my small diamond plate, "lifted" some ink with a beautiful ken oliver flower mandala, then stamped the diamonds repeatedly to make a harlequin pattern. 

day 13: mixed media

another one where i loved my compositions but failed repeatedly to actually lift them successfully off the plate. i think the problem might be that i'm using too heavy body of paint. i'm going to try this (and the multi layer prompt!) again with thinner, less pigmented craft paint and see how it goes!

peace on earth

it's time for a brand new theme at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ and this time we're giving PEACE a chance. by which we mean: we'd love to see holiday cards which feature the word peace OR the peace sign OR maybe even just a peaceful scene? lots of ways to go with this!

background made using my favorite things inks and gelli arts gel plate (plus embossed scrap cardstock to "lift" some of the ink from the plate)... watch birgit koopsen's video for the full technique; sentiment stamps: avery elle... colored in and shadowed with tombow dual brush pens in aqua blue and grey, respectively, plus a few white dots with a fine tipped posca pen; tattered snowflake die: tim holtz/sizzix; snowflake brad: eyelet outlet; dark blue cardstock: bazzill; white cardstock: staples; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape

one of the prompts in "30 days of gel printing" this week was pigment inks. since i had never used pigment inks with my gel plate, i went looking for a video and found this absolute treasure from birgit koopsen. and i'm completely hooked. so when i realized i had the PERFECT stamp set from avery elle, and all i really needed was an interesting but flat background, i went to town! all i needed to add was a little little color and shading to make my letters stand out a bit more, plus a beautiful stacked snowflake held on with an eyelet outlet snowflake brad.

stephanie has also made a beautiful and peace-full card to inspire you. why not hop over to ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ and see that right now!

School Days, School Days

It's that time of year, when the kiddos --and the teachers!-- in our lives are headed back to school. So I rounded up some of my favorite Eyelet Outlet goodies, including our fab new School Bus Brads, and made a couple of cards to cheer them on!

My first card was a happy accident. I had these fun Bella Boulevard chalk-board style papers, and I went looking in my washi stash for a school-themed tape to pair with them. It turns out I had quiiiiiite a few choices, lol. It was hard to decide, so I used ALL OF THEM! Heart Tape, Book Tape, Road Tape, Math Tape, Skinny Stripes, Tape Measure Tape, Smiley Faces, Skinny Hearts, Crayon Tape and Skinny Plaid to be precise. Then I scattered matching brads around the card, including Emotion Brads, Star Brads, Bus Brads, and Book Brads.

My second card has a bit less going on, lol. I've got an Apple Brad, an Eye Glass Brad, a Bus Brad driving along on Road Tape of course, and the bunting which comes in the same set of Skinny Tape as the rainbow stripes on the last card.

And since that concludes my post for today, class is dismissed! ♥

it's the dog days of summer...

...this fortnight at shopping our stash, so we'd like to see projects with (waiiiiiit forrrrrrrr iiiiiiit) A DOG on them! easy, peasy right? unless it turns out you don't have even ONE dog stamp, sticker, journal card or diecut, lol. luckily i found this lovely illustration in an old, falling apart, children's book which lives in my collage stash!

image from a falling-to-bits 950's children's book; patterned paper: creative imaginations-- maybe-- but it's SUPER old and you'd never find it anyway, so let's just go with that; flowers, butterfly and awesome edge-distressing tool: prima marketing; leaves (actually a green paper flower petals that i cut apart): eyelet outlet; nested label dies: spellbinders nestabilities; ink on edges: antique linen distress

as i usually do when working with fragile vintage paper, before i diecut the illustration, i backed it with a piece of plain white cardstock which i had run through my xyron adhesive machine. notice that i xyroned the CARDSTOCK and not the vintage paper, this is crucial. if you try to xyron or even use a taperunner on fragile paper, there is a much greater chance you will lift off a layer of the paper, instead of applying a layer of adhesive. (...ask me how i know...) when working with vintage, your best choice is to apply the adhesive to the OTHER paper, then gently set the vintage piece down on it. your second best choice is to use a good quality gluestick (the xl scotch create is my fave). you will want to work with a magazine or scrap paper under your image, so that you can run the stick right out over the edges and get really good, generous coverage. you can also just tack the image lightly in the center and machine stitch all the way around the edges. it's nice to have options, lol.

once i had a nice stable, sturdy focal image, i diecut and mounted it on foam tape over a scrap of patterned paper so ancient i do not know who made it. then i embellished with lots and lots of small prima flowers. et voila!

there's loads more canine creativity going on at SOS. why not head over and fetch some for yourself?