cavalcade of ICADs

because there's nothing more refreshing on a hot summer's day than art on an index card, am i right? ok, cool drinks are also nice... but this post just has index cards:

day twenty two: bicycle

it's a very very (VERY!) abstract version of a bicycle wheels. with spokes, etc. wellllllllllllll... sorta.

day 23: off-prompt

at julie balzer's gel print class!

i knew this day, with julie's amazing 6 hour class at the ink pad, would be as long and tiring as it was fun, and i was right! so luckily the night before i had used some ancient vinyl alphabet stickers to mask a couple of index cards and i printed on them during class. this was my fave.

day twenty four: off-prompt

mandala monday

handcut mandala layers made from paint-testing gel prints. nothing fancy. because it was assembled at 10pm in my hotel room! ;)

day twenty five: rose

this is one of my favorite cards from the whole of ICAD so far. firmly within my comfort zone of vintage paper collage, but none the worse for that, imo.

day twenty six: off-prompt 

rainbow ribbon doodles

this card was made at the end of the night on which i finished my samples for a hand-lettering class i will be teaching next month at paper anthology. when you see the cards from the class, you will see EXACTLY how i got here, lol!

day twenty seven: inspired by maud vantours

i haven't made anything inspired by MV in a bit, but as soon as i made this card with folded, layered triangles i was immediately re-smitten. this arrangement also reminds me of the crocodile stitch in crochet!

day twenty eight: inspired by clover robin 

one of my favorite things about ICAD is the opportunity to "try on" different artists' styles and see what they feel like. i have just recently discovered clover robin on instagram. she is an illustrator who draws and paints with handcut collaged papers. it's kind of hard to explain, so just GO SEE! btw, it's harder than you think to just freehand cut out even quite familiar shapes without drawing guidelines. just sayin'... :)

♥♥♥

it's not too late to join the index card a day project! don't worry about catching up, just start on july 1st and do the month! or start today and do one week. honestly, the numbers are the least important part of it!!! think of something you've always wanted to try; then figure out how to put it on an index card.

ready... set... GO!

♥

Snow Far, Snow Good!

We're still celebrating the flaky white stuff this fortnight at Jingle Belles. Frankly, the one place I really quite like to see *SNOW* is on holiday cards, where it never impedes driving or requires me to wield a shovel for hours at a time lol. So let's get right to my card:

patterned paper: echo park, authentique; white glitter cardstock: best creation; snowflake brads, snowflake tape and pearl swirls: eyelet outlet; circle punch: ek success; tag die: sunny studio; trees and hills die: penny black; sentiment die: elizabethcraft design; the perfect shade of cobalt blue cardstock: gina k; ink for edges: colorbox; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, scor-tape

In the spirit of full disclosure, I confess that the center panel of this card began life as a sample for a "Christmas in July" class I will be teaching next month at Paper Anthology. But as it turns out, I decided to use the Penny Black Trees and Hills die in a different way, on a different card, so the base with trees peeping through the round windows became surplus to requirements. But "waste not, want not" is my motto! So I added an additional mat to make the card an A7, popped on some fab Eyelet Outlet Snowflake Brads and placed a diecut sentiment on a banner made with pretty grey and white Snowflake Washi Tape... et voila!

Hop on over to Jingle Belles and see Stephanie's snow-centric masterpiece, then start planning one of your own! ♥

Christmas in July (...technically, a week early...)

But these days there are TONS of awesome events and challenges surrounding the making of holiday cards all throughout July, and what better way to prepare than by stocking up on all your favorite Eyelet Outlet Holiday Brads, Washi Tape and Bling?!

Since my craft bestie Stephanie and I have a fortnightly Christmas card blog called ♥JINGLE BELLES♥, I am no stranger to making Xmas cards through the year. In fact, the only month I absolutely do not want to make holiday cards is... December! But any other time that inspiration strikes me, I will happily sit down and make a couple of cards. In this case my first card was built around these sweeeeeeet Peppermint Candy Brads. In January I had picked up a super-cute gingerbread house stamp set in the post-holiday sales, and when I came across it again the other day and realized I *still* hadn't used it, I got right to work. I stamped the house in white, (thanks to Hero Arts' amazing Unicorn Ink!) added some gel pen details and a few sticky-back Pearl accents. I flanked the house with a Holiday Tree Brad and a Candy Cane, then built a little hilly little landscape, in which it is snowing candy! :)

My second card features these lovely Ornament Brads, which I'm embarrassed to say I don't use nearly enough. Or at least, I haven't until now. But seeing as all I needed to make this card was five Ornaments, portions of one Pearl Bling Strip and a stamped sentiment... I think this is an idea I will be revisiting over and over!

It's never too early to get a jump on the holidays, so I hope you'll be inspired to check out all the fun stuff in the EO Store. And of course we'd love to see you at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ as well! ♥

a round up that moves around

which seems appropriate for the index card a day project, in which all things experimental... and indeed "mental" for that matter, lol... are fair game. also, getting a whole week's worth of cards into a post first thing monday morning was a bit tiring, lol. so let's see if saturday is a bit more relaxed. ♥

day eighteen: off prompt

sticking with my fallback position of, "when all else fails... zen doodle!" i had fun with the supplies that were already on my table this particular night: a fabulous hexagon stencil that michelle ward designed exclusively for the ink pad and some ranger inks. plus my trusty faber-castell pitt artist pen, the one with the XS (.1mm) nib which i reach for over and over and over...

day nineteen: yellow

a collage of random yellow things, mostly snipped out of old childrens' dictionaries. quite spare for me, but once i had that canary on there, singing to an empty room, i felt like it was DONE.

day twenty: off prompt

something which has been a fallback position for me during every ICAD ever, is random collage. it's my comfort zone. and again, if you're going to start your ICAD at 11pm, it is a good idea to use whatever happens to be on your table at that time. in this case that happened to be: scraps of vintage paper, a couple of butterflies diecut from an old subway map, a pre-painted colorburst rainbow on a gridded card and a wendy vecchi leaf stencil. ta-da. :)

day twenty one: guitar

a less random collage. because i was thinking about the prompt during the day, and i knew i had a loteria card with a guitar. i also grabbed the definition of guitar from a childrens' dictionary and a vintage south american passport stamp. the sheet music and ancient rub-on transfers just happened to be there and then worked. woohoo.

♥♥♥

happy saturday!!!

,it is sunny here for the first time in about a week and 

i'm planning to take full advantage of that fact!

♥

Snow Much Fun!

As you may have deduced from the title, we're celebrating *SNOW* this fortnight at Jingle Belles! So break out your snowmen (and women!), snowflakes, snowy landscapes, or anything else that features the frosty white stuff and get creative!

Here's what I made this week:

This sweet snowman from Prima's "Santa Baby" chipboard has been calling to me since I acquired him last December at my lss, Paper Anthology. Finally I found the *perfect* home for him on this ancient piece of sheet-music inspired patterned paper from October Afternoon. All I needed to finish up were a few mats, a couple of diecuts and some awesome Eyelet Outlet Snowflake Brads!

Hop over to Jingle Belles to see Stephanie's gorgeous card and link up your own snow-centric masterpiece! ♥

Wine (Tape) is the Answer!

Especially if the question is, "How can I make beautiful, fun, slightly silly, wine-themed cards really quickly?!" Because our brand new Eyelet Outlet Wine Washi Tape was custom designed to pair perfectly with our fabulous Wine Brads, as well as our cool new Grape Brads. Just stamp --or in my case, computer generate-- a snarky sentiment and you are practically done already. See?

I love that the Grape Brads come with all three varieties... red, green and purple... in each packet. As for the Wine Brads, you get bottles and glasses of both red and white. Which is super-useful! For my first card I used the Wine Tape to create a fun patterned paper for the lower half of my card. Then added the brads within my diecut sentiment panel.

For my second card, I used the Wine Tape as more of an accent, so I only applied one strip, neatly set off with some Skinny Gold Tape. I used nice tall letter stickers for "Age" which I flanked with glasses from the Wine Brads set, plus bunches of red and green Grape Brads. The small Heart Pearls are a nice accent at the top, but also... they cover a distracting bit which was part of this slightly distressed patterned paper! ;)

Cheers to you for visiting today! Be sure to check out the Eyelet Outlet Blog for even more ideas and inspiration!

SOS398: you're so punny

this fortnight at shopping our stash we are celebrating... (you've already guessed haven't you?) ...PUNS! and since that is one of my favorite ways of making absolutely any type of card* i was spoilt for choice, lol. but what i really needed was a "guy card" for my father in law, so i went with, "BEST FISHES"!

fish: fussy-cut from a vintage nature book; patterned paper: creative imaginations; gold chipboard thickers: american crafts; kraft cardstock: bazzill; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sewing machine

i cannot even tell you how many times i have used this particular pun. but there are so many ways to interpret it, and it still ALWAYS makes me laugh, so i will probably continue to do so. in this case, i had expected there to be a lot more collage elements, and i definitely tried to add them. but the handsome fish (trimmed from an ancient, falling apart nature book) insisted quite adamantly that all he needed was this seriously, seriously OLD piece of oceany patterned paper, some funky gold thickers and a little bit of machine stitching. so in the end, i just left him to it, lol.

there's lots more funny, punny cards awaiting you at SOS... you should really go see those right now, darlings! ♥

*ok... probably punny sympathy cards would not be good; but other than that... 

round 'em up!

the ICADs, that is. btw, it's not too late for you to join the fun. no need to catch up, just start now and keep going for as long as it is FUN! :) meanwhile, here's what i made in a 3 x 5" size this week:

day eleven: palm

i can't say i'm love with my finished colorburst watercolor of a palm tree, but it was really really fun to paint, so i'm calling it A WIN! :)

 day twelve: tapestry

this is a collage idea i played with last year during ICAD: strips of paper (in this case some are chopped up photos of needlepoint tapestries, lol) pieced a bit like a scrap quilt. i haven't really broken any new ground, but i have ideas swirling around in my head, so i expect you'll see things like this periodically... 

day thirteen: balcony

i did not have any kind of brainwave for "balcony" so i went back to my unused idea from "macaron" last week: pastel gel print punched into circles, then re-arranged. at the moment all i can see is a sort of abstract inchworm. but i do feel like this could at some point lead somewhere! probably i should have either used only one size of circle punch? orrrrrrrrrrr maybe just cut all of the circles precisely in half? i think i need to let the idea simmer a bit more...

day fourteen: thread

more strips. these were from a stripey bit of leftover colorburst, in which i blended lime, pthalo green and indigo. i was playing with the idea of making the shades line up in interesting ways, a bit like woven fabric. kinda.  

day fifteen: storm
following my semi-plan to fall back on zen-doodles when i don't have another idea, here are some stormy zen doodles! :)

day sixteen: chandelier
yes, it's another one-staple collage. what can i say? i still love them!

day seventeen: (off-prompt) mandala monday
i had an entirely different plan in mind, but then my pipsticks stickers came on friday and there were TINY TYPEWRITERS. 'nuff said...

...and thus we wrap up another another index-card-a-day week!

♥♥♥

everybody's waitin'...

...for the man with the bag! santa claus, that is. which is why he and the rest of the north pole's residents: mrs. claus, reindeer, elves, happy polar bears (maybe even a yeti?) are the focus of our ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ fun this fortnight!

santa illustration: authentique; patterned papers: doodlebug, graphic 45; chipboard sentiment: october afternoon; bling snowflakes and swirls: eyelet outlet; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, sookwang scor-tape

this week i built a tall card around this beautiful vintage-style santa on a journal card from authentique's "jingle" collection. he didn't need much in the way of embellishment, so i contented myself with a few coordinating patterned paper mats, an ancient chipboard bauble sentiment and some eyelet outlet bling!

visit ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ to see stephanie's lovely card and link up your own santa-centric masterpiece!

Cheers, Dad!

Father's Day is only a few days away, but I  couldn't resist making a few last minute cards which feature our two of our four new Eyelet Outlet Custom Washi Tapes, which coordinate perfectly with our Brads and our Clear Stamp Sets! The good news is that both of these designs would also work really well as birthday cards!

My first card features the new Beer Tape, which mixes beautifully with the Beer Brads as you can see! (It also coordinates perfectly with the Beer Stamp Set, though I didn't use that this time.) I lined strips of tape up neatly on scraps of plain white cardstock, then used the "D" and the "A" from a really fun oversized set of chipboard aphas as templates to trace and cut out my letters. I had planned on running the "CHEERS" strip through the center of "DAD", but it turned out to cover up a bit too much of the tape for my liking, so I wound up moving it further down, instead.

I've used the Tool Tape as the background on my second card, matting it on a panel covered with Hardwood Floor Tape. I spelled out "Happy Father's Day" with tabbed letters as well as some chunky cork stickers; the latter i attached to a panel of silver metallic cardstock which I'd run through a diamond pane embossing folder. I attached the panel to the card with Screw Brads, which are incredibly useful. Each packet contains both large and small sized, as well as flat and phillips heads. This tape would also coordinate perfectly with our Tool Box and Nail Brads as well as Saw Brads and also the Tool Set, which contains hammers and wrenches!

If you need more inspiration, be sure to check out the Eyelet Outlet Blog frequently, because the design team are constantly dreaming up new ideas!

i can, therefore... ICAD!

the first full week of ICAD (and coincidentally also of june lol) is behind us. how can the days be flying by SO FAST, eh??! here's what i made on index cards this past week:

day four: reflection

i stumbled upon the definition of "reflection" in an old children's dictionary which featured the same colors (and angles!) of a butterfly i had already cut out. you can't argue with serendipity like that. so i just made a one-staple collage instead.

day five: tourist map

i wound up covering most of this old map of detroit, which is a shame since it's so pretty. on the other hand, mandevillea, a 1950's "toyopet" automobile and a beautiful chinese stamp from my ATC swap partner arlyna in shanghai are nothing to sneeze at...

day six: leaves or petals

my friend cyndie is doing ALL zentangle-inspired art for ICAD this year. and she is AWESOME at it. i am not awesome at it... but it's fun!

day seven: stencil

"S" is for stencil... and skyline... and sunset...

(ps: note how beautifully pristine i keep my favorite stencils, lol!)

day eight: goggles

i will never, ever, EVER, admit how dang much time i spent on this one, lol!!! especially since it's really just a couple of circle punches and dies stacked together, so it should have been super-fast and easy. having said all of that... i do actually love how my steampunk goggles came out!

(this is the magazine illustration i placed behind the "goggles" card, 

so that you would see something cool through the eyes!)

day nine: macaron

i actually did have a pretty good idea for "macaron" but then on the morning of day nine, i saw my first cedar waxwing, perching on the yew just outside our dining room window. so *obviously* that changed everything...

day ten: sapphire

i've tried gems before, and whereas i excel at making the fab colorburst backgrounds (this one is indigo and prussian blue); creating the facets is ALWAYS harder than i think it will be, lol. this one came out pretty well, though i confess it was my second attempt! 

♥♥♥

it's a bit of a grey monday here in new jersey, so let's make some COLORFUL art to perk it up!

meet otto...

...the eight-legged birthday present i made for our grand-nephew hudson's first birthday. don't get me started on the whole, "how can he already be a year old, he was just BORN for pete's sake!" topic, lol. honestly i think the older i get, the fast life flies past. but when it comes to crocheting, that's time well spent!

i used this awesome free baby octopus pattern from the friendly red fox, where there are many awesome free patterns including this narwhal that i'd quite like to make for myself! the pattern called for worsted weight yarn and a G hook, but i supersized it by substituting bernat baby blanket yarn (which is the softest, squishiest chenille you could possibly imagine!) and an M hook. i also made the tentacles four different lengths, and incorporated a few additional colors just to make it a little bit more dynamic.

the result is an octopus that is just slightly larger than the birthday boy... though obviously not nearly as cute. mission accomplished! ♥

santa baby!

we're celebrating the denizens of the north pole this fortnight at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ so cards featuring santa, mrs. claus, the elves, the reindeer...  or even perhaps, a yeti? ...are all fair game. i went with the big guy himself:

there are sooooooo many great versions of santa claus out there in the big wide papercrafting world, but for sheer cuteness and adorability, i think it's hard to beat doodlebug design. my card is about 90% d-bug products, including most of the papers and all the sweet stickers, which i combined in a little rooftop scene. i placed my stickers on a little tag, thanks to this week's awesome sketch (#566) from sketch saturday:

there's no real need for a second pic which focuses on the tag and the stickers, but i had taken one, and it came out well, so it seems a shame to waste it, lol.

be sure to set your magical reindeer on a course to ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ so you can see stephanie's beautiful card and read all about the little prize that's on offer to one random cardmaker this time! 

Magic is on the Cards...

...thanks to the fab new Eyelet Outlet Wizard Set Brads, as well as the Wizard Hat and Lightning Bolt, which I've used on today's cards!

The Wizard Set features wands, round glasses and scarves of green and white, as well as the burgundy and mustard that I have used for "You're My Favorite Muggle". In addition to using both the Wizard Hat and (Gold) Lightning Bolt from that set (which also contains black lightning bolts as well) I've added a handsome Sketched Owl.

For the "Magical Birthday" card I've combined the hat from the Wizard Hat and Lightning Set with the wand from the Wizard Set, and added in bits of white Pearl Swirl Bling. To make the flourish fit better in the space above the "I" in "Magical", I cut the swirl apart and stuck bits of it back together a little more compactly. Because it's reallllly nice to have options, right?

I hope you're having a Magical day already, but if not, I bet a little stroll through some of the New Brad Styles in the EO Store will cheer you right up! ♥

let's get stencilly!

this fortnight's challenge at shopping our stash is called "stencil me this" by which you'll no doubt have surmised we'd like to see projects which make use of at least one stencil. since i have quiiiiiiite a collection, i was spoilt for choice, but as soon as i found this pre-stenciled but mysteriously abandoned gel print, i knew exactly what i wanted to make:

stencil: "lace" by tim holtz/stampers anon; matching "mixed media" die: TH/sizzix; cardstock: bazzill; modeling paste and acrylic paint for gel printing: liquitex; gel plate: gelli arts; corner rounder: we r memory keepers; glossy black cardstock: the paper cut; large/ancient flower: prima (i think); velvet leaves: 7 gypsies; pearl and gem flower centers: eyelet outlet; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, gluedots, sewing machine

if i had been smart, i would've taken a pic of the gel print before i began. but i wasn't, and i didn't. so i'll just tell you that it consisted of blue and purple vaguely floral blotches, on the dusty lavender cardstock. at some point i had used tim holtz's floral lace stencil to add a sort of messy layer of plain white modeling paste, and then, for reasons which now elude me, i put the whole thing aside. but as soon as i saw it, i was excited because i recently got the second set of "mixed media" thinlits, and one of them is a fragment of this exact stencil. which meant i could play with both the positive and negative space of the same shapes. which is always fun. i "fixed up" the modeling paste by outlining the bits of incomplete stenciling, backed the piece with some cardstock which matched my oversized blossom, added a tiny bit of machine stitching, and called it a day.

be sure to hop over to SOS and see the gorgeous creations of my design team sisters, then start planning your own stencil-centric masterpiece! ♥

it's the first mandala monday of ICAD...

...and here are my first few index cards a day for 2019! (if you want to know more about ICAD visit this page at daisy yellow art!) ♥

day one: off prompt

one of tammy g's teaser graphics had this phrase and i sorta fell in love with it. i would not rule out additional versions being made at some point in the next 60 days...

day two: peppermint

whenever possible, if i'm using the (100% optional) prompts, i like to go with the very first thing that pops into my head. which, for peppermint, meant those little red and white pinwheel candies that are required by law to sit next to the cash register in all italian restaurants. as far as i know, no one EVER eats these; so it's possible, in an older restaurant, that these candies are now vintage decor items... :) 

day three: magenta

do you know the difference between fuchsia and magenta? ok apparently nobody really entirely does, although most people seem to agree that magenta is a bit more purple than fuchsia is. this article at the difference between dot com sort of sums up the main points. (and this somewhat tangential article has other fascinating color name origins!) what does any of this have to do with my card? well, it's a mandala which features both vibrant fuchsia and magenta archival ink (plus some chrome yellow, tea rose and poppy) over a collage of dictionary definitions of the two shades and some of their composite colors, like fuchsine, rosaniline and aniline red.

♥♥♥

if you'd like to see my ICADs as they post each day, i'd love for you to visit me over at instagram. be sure to also check out the official hashtag, dyicad2019 to see what everyone is making! to see all the index card art i've ever made (presumably as the cure for severe insomnia); yep, there's an ICAD blog tag, which goes from today all the way back to my first cards in 2012.