Embossing on Textured Cardstock

I love the crisp perfection of using Ranger Embossing Powders on smooth cardstock, but recently I've been experimenting with using them on on Ranger's Woodgrain and Cracked Leather textured cardstocks; and even on Dina's Stickyback Canvas Tape! I love the result... a beautifully soft, slightly worn effect, similar to vintage linens. Head on over to the Ranger Project Tutorials Page where I'll walk you through the process step by step using Ranger Embossing Inks and Powders, I think you'll enjoy trying this yourself!

Bring on the COLOR!

This Mandala Monday started off with a sort of vaguely pumpkin spice color palette... but then morphed into autumnal pastels. Is that a thing? Maybe not, but I quite like how it came out. Hope your week is off to a satisfactory start! If not, more coffee might help!

Lines by Letter It Finerliners from Ranger; color by Tombow DualBrush Pens; shapes thanks to my trusty Helix CircleMaker Tool, which you can find at art stores, office supply stores and big giant online stores too, of course. An old-school compass from geometry class also works; as does a set of nested circle dies or stencils! 

How About Some Dim Sum?!

Something which is *ALMOST* as much fun as meeting friends for dim sum is crocheting tiny dumplings, shu mai and sesame balls!

I used an excellent set of Dim Sum Playfood Patterns from the SkyMagenta Etsy Shop; this set has ELEVEN patterns. including a crocheted bamboo steamer, though I elected to purchase an inexpensive steamer instead to hold the crocheted bounty.

The official pattern didn't call for eyes, but I couldn't resist adding them; I love how the little guys seem to be peeping up at you when you open the steamer lid! The only other adjustment was to add a few more colors for variety; and, having recently remembered how to make bobbles, I worked a few into the tops or edges of some, again for variety and interest. 

I used Lion Brand's Vanna's Choice throughout with a slightly smaller hook than usual (a G in this case). Colors are Fisherman, Beige, Honey, Dusty Green, Mustard and Pink. And now I REALLY want some dumplings!!! :)

JB2423: Christmas Feast

This fortnight at Jingle Belles we are celebrating one of my very favorite aspects of the holidays: The Christmas Feast! There are lots of iconic holiday foods, from cookies and candies to gingerbread in all its forms; sugar plums, Christmas pudding, Buche de Noel, even the Grinch carving the Roast Beast! Make a holiday card in any color, style or size you like... just make sure it features a tasty treat!

As often happens when I get out my stash of adorable Doodlebug Design holiday items, I couldn't just make ONE card. In my defense, D-bug always includes a lot of sweet (in every sense lol) treats, which are perfect for this particular theme. For these cards I raided the patterned papers and sticker from the aptly named Gingerbread Kisses and Candy Cane Lane collections. I used coordinating papers from my scrap box, and couldn't resist adding a few Eyelet Outlet Gingerbread and Candy Cane Brads.

The Christmas Feast challenge (#JB2423) will run at Jingle Belles until 6pm (Eastern) on Wednesday, November 20th and we'd love for YOU to join the fun!

New Holiday Jumpstart Card Kit: Christmas Roses

Holiday Jumpstart: Christmas Roses, now available in the Paper Anthology Design Etsy Shop, is our newest holiday card kit, which features Hero Arts' Christmas Roses white embossed for you on white cardstock; pressure embossed Floral Vines panels; and a sleek "Happy Holidays" sentiment that's been diecut from gold cardstock. Five different color recipes using Ranger Distress Oxide shades have been provided or choose your own favorite ink combinations.

Paper Anthology’s Holiday Jumpstart Card Kits are our pre-packaged kits that include everything you need (except adhesive and blendable inks) to complete FIVE copies of an original holiday card design. This edition is called “Christmas Roses” based on the card's beautiful blooms.

Don’t we all adore the IDEA of making holiday cards throughout the year, instead being overloaded in November and December? But sometimes it’s hard to be inspired during the “off-season”. This pre-packaged kit features everything you need (except adhesive and blendable inks) to complete five beautiful, detailed and colorful cards, including complete written instructions (not pictured, but included!) five unique color recipes and a nice big photo showing all five colorways for reference.

This kit contains:

Five pre-stamped and white embossed Christmas Roses panels

Five pressure embossed Floral Vines panels

Five pre-diecut gold cardstock Happy Holidays sentiments

Five gold glitter cardstock panels

Fifteen golden half-pearl accents

Complete step-by-step instruction sheet with large color photo

Accent pictures showing detail of color blends and cutting

Five different color recipes using Ranger Distress Oxide or Distress Ink shades

Five white top-fold A2 cards

Get your copy of Holiday Jumpstart Card Kit: Christmas Roses, only available in the Paper Anthology Etsy Shop. While you're there, check out our other kits for holidays, birthdays and occasions!

Pumpkin Spice...

...and Everything Nice can be found at Eyelet Outlet, in the form of Pumpkin and Leaf Brads, as well as Mini Leaves and Sunflower Brads. Making the design even more autumnal are background panels made of Nature Tape, Wide Sunflower Washi and Brick Tape as well as white and green Paper Flowers.

I'm linking up with the Coffee Loving Papercrafters, whose Fall/Winter Coffee Lovers' Blog Hop runs until this Friday, November 8th!

They have lots of awesome prizes and you absolutely cannot beat that gang for inspiration, so be sure to check it out! ♥

SOS534: Time for a Hot Drink

It's time for a new challenge at Shopping Our Stash and this time we'd like to see (as the title implies) cards and projects which feature your favorite hot beverages. Mine is (surprise!) COFFEE!

I'm fairly proud of my stash usage here, I've gathered a bunch of sadly neglected items and given them some love. Fair Warning: the three lynchpin items are sadly out of print. The Caffeinated Flamingo was one of my all-time favorites from The Rabbit Hole Designs; the Coffee Pots Embossing Folder from Darice seems to be similarly unavailable. The former was a prize I won in a Coffee Lovers' Blog Hop a few years ago; the latter a gift from my friend Michelle. I don't use either of these enough, and somehow I've NEVER used them together, so it was especially exciting to combine the pair. I stamped, colored and paper-pieced the flamingo, and I'm taking bonus points for remembering to stamp the legs onto my background paper so that I wouldn't have to cut them out. (Go, me!) I embossed the coffee pots on watercolor paper and then painted them a bit wonkily, mightily resisting the impulse to outline all of them with a .01 Fineliner. The "blahmingo" sentiment came with the flamingo; the second sentiment is from Honey Bee Stamps' Perfect Blend Stamp Set, which... you guessed it... is also out of print, but that's ok because the point of Shopping Our Stash is to unearth the older things YOU already own and I bet --like me-- you've got some awesome goodies you've forgotten all about and will enjoy reviving again!

Completely coincidentally, this theme lines up perfectly with the 2024 Fall/Winter Coffee Lovers' Blog Hop (they have some AMAZING prizes, if you like that sorta thing; their hop ends on Friday, 11-8-24) so you can enter both by making just the one card, woohoo! The Time for a Hot Drink Challenge (#SOS534) runs until the evening of Monday, November 18th.

Plaid(ish) Stripes

Stretching the concept of Mandala Monday pretty far with a (sort of) plaid design made by masking off a few horizontal and vertical stripes with tape, watercoloring over the masked bits with analogous colors of Liquid Pearls, letting them dry, peeling the tape, and doodling mandala(ish) shapes with my Letter It Fineliners inside the unpainted bits. 

There's a bit more detail about watercoloring with Liquid Pearls on this Thank You Card post and this Birthday Card post both on the Ranger Project Tutorials Page, which is absolutely loaded with awesome ideas from a variety of papercrafting artists. Plus you can filter or search by occasion, product or project type which is handy! ♥

Creatures... Stirring

Over at Jingle Belles, Stephanie and I are heading into week two of our celebration of Christmas critters and creatures, and you still have time to join us for, "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks"! 

Here's what I made this week:

I found a beautiful (somehow unopened?!) older pack of adorable holiday animal stickers from Recollections so I immediately knew I wanted them to be the stars of the show. I didn't realize how well they'd coordinate with that very fun October Afternoon critter-bedecked washi tape; but having seen a few Team Spellbinders cards in which the smallest two sizes of Wendy Vecchi's Pinking Edge rectangle dies (from NOT Your Ordinary Card Collection's Birthday Add-On set) were used to make the most fabulous frame for a little scene, so I worked in that idea, as well. Ancient Heidi Swapp decotape and skinny mats of black glossy cardstock complete the design.

"While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks" (JB2422) runs until 6pm (Eastern) next Wednesday evening, November 6th so you still have plenty of time to join our Jingle Belles fun!