Week 6: ICAD Roundup

Since the Index Card a Day project runs from June 1st to July 31st, we're now more than halfway through! Here are the cards I've made in the last seven days: 

ICAD24-38: Mandala Monday

It's a Mahalo Mandala Monday, celebrating the fact that I stumbled, almost simultaneously, upon both a library catalog card for a book about Hawaii AND some pre-stamped and already-colored yellow hibiscus... the state flower of Hawaii. You just cannot argue with that kind of serendipity, am I right?!

ICAD24-37: Dashboard

A tangential collage for #DASHBOARD; an antique car on a library card with trading stamps and vintage paper and some abstract rub-on transfers that kinda/sorta look like dashboard gauges...

ICAD24-36: Splash

Flashing back to yesterday’s #SPLASH prompt with a doodled version of one of those Lazy River pools they have at resorts; in this case some of the splashes are neon index cards glued on top

ICAD24-35: Castle

It’s a One Staple Collage featuring vintage paper and illustrations; flashing back to a prompt from a few days ago. Staged on my newest (and also oldest) vintage typewriter; a 1920ish Underwood of surpassing beauty.

ICAD24-34: Panorama

According to Vague Magazine, Panoramic Argyle might be the next big fashion trend... or possibly not; it's hard to tell. Ok, so... SUPER-loose take on today's optional #dyicad2024 prompt of #PANORAMA which is also (unintentionally!) a slightly tangential picture puzzle referencing a Beatles song; whilst also indulging my obsession with argyle. 

ICAD24-33: Off-Prompt

Apparently "Stripes with Doodles" is going to be my default mode this summer when I don't have another idea. And hey... I'm cool with that...

ICAD24-32: Off-Prompt

Not just off-prompt, but without any plan at all! I started out paper piecing… added pattern-enhancing doodles to my scraps of designer paper… and finally built out a weird sort semi-mandala in the leftover space. Not the best thing I've ever made but having started late in the evening of a tiring day with literally NO IDEA what I was going to do, I feel ok with just having made SOMETHING!

"Button, Button...

...Who's Got the Button" is the name of this fortnight's challenge at Shopping Our Stash and since I'm assuming you've already guessed we'd like to see projects with one or more buttons on them, I'll get right to what I made:

Here you see a card with just TWO (2!) buttons (they are stacked) sitting atop the vast quantity of red, yellow, orange and pink buttons I got out in readiness for making said card. This pretty much tells you everything you need to know about my process, lol. On the plus side, they made an excellent photo backdrop, so I'm calling it a win. I used up lots (and lots!) of pink, yellow and orange scraps by diecutting them with my classic Spellbinders Nestabilities diamond dies, distressing, stacking, and machine-stitching on the fruits of that labor, to make a funky argyle pattern. Two (stacked) mulberry flowers... (again a much smaller amount than I'd anticipated) ...hold the buttons, which I have threaded as a salute to my friend and former SOS colleague Leslie, who considered "nekkid" buttons to be an abomination.

Visit the SOS blog to see the fabulous button cards made by our talented Crew and then start planning what you'll link up with us this time. SOS524 runs until the evening of Monday, July 1st.

Diamonds...

...are indeed a girl's best friend. Especially when combined with papers from Prima's Misty Rose collection (and maybe a little vintage sheet music?) then topped off with (neutral) embellies from Georgia Blues. See?

About eighteen months ago my friend Elisabeth gave me an older set of nested diamond dies that I admired and I've been periodically obsessed with them ever since. I've cut and layered the shapes a bunch of different ways, including multiple variations on argyle. Then, the other night, when I was trying to fall asleep, I suddenly thought of doing layers of the negative space that remains after the diamonds are cut out. As it turns out, this was a really good idea and I'm glad I woke up enough to email it to myself! ;)

The only counter-intuitive thing to remember about "layering" negative space is that you have to use the smallest shape in the lowest/farthest back layer, and get progressively bigger as you move towards the top of the card. Once you wrap your mind around that, the process is exactly like layering regular diecuts. Oh and as a bonus, you can take a few of the shapes you've cut out of lower layers and add them to the top of the card, for even more texture and interest. I distressed the edges of my positive and negative diamonds, added a bit of grungy stamping to my sheet music layer, and did some machine stitching. You'll notice I went only moderately wild with embellishments... not out of any newfound minimalist tendencies, but because the more I added, the less you could see the diamonds. I couldn't resist grabbing my punch board and making a custom envelope for my finished card. 

And now I really must be going, because I have quite a few sets of nested shape dies, and I'm kind of curious if this concept will work with ALL of them...? ♥

card pals!

just a reminder, there's still nearly an entire week left for you to link up a blossom-bedecked project with us at shopping our stash for the "may flowers" challenge!

one of the best things about being lucky enough to have an awesome, brick-n-mortar papercrafting store, like paper anthology fairly nearby (in kenvil, morris county, nj) is that it's kind of half store and half clubhouse. and truly my favorite thing is how many cool people i have met and good friends i have made. elisabeth ostrowski, the owner, is constantly thinking up fun new ways for us all to interact, and the latest of these is called "card pals", which is kind of like a happy mail round robin. elisabeth tags someone in the group, who's given the snail mail address of another member. they make and send a card to that person. then it's the recipient's turn to send a card. and so on and so forth. last week i got the most beautiful flamingo card in the world from my friend samantha, which i will show you in a minute. but first, here's what i made for my (secret) card pal:

ok, so, one of my card making mottos is: when in doubt, go PRIMA! i mean, really, prima marketing is pretty difficult to beat in terms of elegance, and they have such wonderful embellishments, especially (but not limited to) flowers. unusually for me, nearly everything on this card is from one collection, "georgia blues", including both patterned papers, the large blue blossoms, the smaller printed flowers and that gorgeous butterfly. i used my spellbinders diamond nestabilities to cut a bunch of different sized diamonds, which i distressed, inked and tacked lightly onto my background with a taperunner. then i machine stitched around each one and when they were firmly affixed, i ran one blade of my tweezers around the edges of each to coax the edges upwards for even more dimension. i'm very happy with the result. here's a closer look: 

and now, as promised, here is the awesome card i received from my friend samantha klabenesh. YES, it had FLAMINGO CONFETTI inside!!!!!!!! ♥♥♥

hope you are having a good week so far, but if not, there are three more weekdays left, and thus plenty of time to practice! :)

a cure for the january blahs

the first paper anthology newsletter of 2018 is out and it's chock full of crafty goodness, including the date for this month's junk journal junkies' meeting (jan 26!) and loads of awesome classes to banish the winter doldrums. the list includes these two that i'll be teaching, so if you're within driving distance* of morris county, nj, i hope you'll come along and say HI!

collage for cardmakers: peekaboo layers

this class puts kind of a different spin on traditional collage. we're still using vintage papers and images, (and yes OF COURSE there is a doily involved, lol!) but instead of handcutting or tearing our layers, we'll use interesting background dies to create a fun and funky peekaboo effect. 

diamonds are a girl's best friend

i've been slightly obsessed with making my own argyle patterns for about a year. it started with this tape and bling version on the eyelet outlet blog for mother's day last year; then i made this one in may, and most recently this floral version. at that point, i finally realized i was (apparently) going to want to do this periodically, and asked elisabeth if the ancient set of diamond-shaped nesties i remembered seeing online was still available. it was, which led to more-- and much, much logistically easier, lol-- experiments. (bc, YES, up until then, i was just measuring and making my own diamond-shape templates which i would then trace and cut by hand!) this is all a very long and drawn out way of explaining that my second class for january and february is called "diamonds are a girl's best friend". we'll make three different versions of argyle-inspired patterns, combining paper-piecing, embossing, stacking, sanding, and more. each student will get to choose their own color- and pattern-scheme, so your finished cards could range from quite masculine, to uber-feminine, or even go in a baby-centric or valentine-y direction if you'd like!

complete details, dates and times for these classes as well as some totally amazing ones taught by elisabeth, anna and georgia, are on the class page of the paper anthology website!

*paper anthology is located at 717 us highway 46 in kenvil, nj 07847, with easy access from routes 80, 10 and 206. here is a map for you. :) 

autumnal argyle

this week at shopping our stash we have a gorgeous color palette to inspire you:

i have to confess that i cheated slightly on the "stash" part because the last time i was at paper anthology i just happened to see a beautiful floral patterned paper from kaisercraft that had ALL the colors from the palette, so technically i bought something new, for a stash challenge. on the plus side i definitely got the "shopping" part right, huh?! ;)

everything else involved in making this card is quite elderly, though, so there's that. the velvetty flowers, the jewel brad, the cardstock... even the technique is a "re-run" of something i hadn't done in ages, a paperpieced argyle pattern like this one and this one. because yes, apparently hand made argyle is going to be something i return to periodically. in fact, i just asked elisabeth at paper anthology to order this set of nesties for me, so i can have an almost infinite choice of sizes.

but even without any special tools, it's actually quite easy to do. i made a little plastic template, traced it onto my patterned paper, and cut the shapes with my trusty guillotine trimmer. then i arranged them on my card... (hard to see in the pic, but my background paper has a very light ledger pattern and those horizontal lines make precision sooooo easy!) ...tacked them lightly with my tape runner, and added lots of machine stitching to enhance the look.

of course the challenge is just to be inspired by the colors, and the SOS design team has lots more cool ideas on how to do that... why not hop over and see what they have done? ♥

(gah!) PINK 2: alien encounter??!

if you play along regularly at shopping our stash, you may remember that back in january we had a special challenge in our late friend leslie's honor; well we're back again with a second (gah!) PINK challenge, but this time in addition to seeing PINK on your project, we'd like you to incorporate a "UFO"... no, not the alien kind... just an UNFINISHED object or leftover from another card; you know what we mean, right? the background you made but never used; the image you colored so carefully and then swapped out for something else in the end; the 27 hearts you diecut before realizing only about six would fit?! yep, that's what we're talking about, so go grab the box or baggie or file folder in which you keep those sorts of things and while you're at it, find something (gah!) PINK to include as well! here's what i made:

patterned paper: (very very OLD) rhonna farrer for autumn leaves, basic grey, recollections, glitz design, doodlebug + some pink gingham giftwrap from long lonnnnnnnnng ago; white kromekote cardstock: the paper cut; flourish die: tim holtz/sizzix; butterfly punch: martha stewart; flowers and pearl brads: michaels; adhesives: staples brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sewing machine

as we know, i like (gah!) PINK... quite a lot, actually. i also change my mind fairly often in the course of making... well... ANYTHING, really. so i generally have quite a few UFO's and a fair proportion of them are (gah!) PINK! so i was quids in for this one, lol! here are the things i "pulled" thinking they might work together: a medium sized hand-cut heart, a few argyle diamonds leftover from the mother's day card i made for the eyelet outlet blog, a butterfly diecut of unknown origin, a bunch of pink silk flowers that were surplus to requirements in this SWHIA collage, a chipboard + giftwrap flourish that must've been made right after i bought that TH die, because the little bits of black die material that come off in the first few passes were still clinging to it:

shockingly enough, i used almost everything in the pile, though i did wind downsizing the butterfly, and i STILL have a couple of argyle diamonds left, which is fine since i still have some argyle ideas floating around my head. the big serendipitous "surprise" in all of this is that i actually found a piece of ancient brown patterned paper with a diamond pattern on it, which was a GREAT size to hold the argyle diamonds... so instead of measuring, etc, i just popped them onto this pre-made background, added some machine stitching, et voila!

this week (#410) at sketch saturday one can choose any sketch from #215 onwards, so i went with #218... yes, i've used it pretty loosely, but i *think* you can still see it...

and now i invite you to hop over to SOS and see the other fabulous (gah!) PINK projects; be sure to leave my wonderful dt darlings some love as well, won't you?

Save the Drama For Your Mama

Ok, maybe not *actual* drama... your mom probably doesn't need that; but how about a little papercrafting drama in the form of Mother's Day cards? I'm up on the Eyelet Outlet Blog today with a few ideas for unique --and dramatic-- effects that are fun and EASY!!! Let's start with a floral watercolor background.

What's that, you don't paint? Can you make a messy circle? Seriously, the messier the better! Make six or seven of them. Let them dry. (This is by far the hardest part; luckily, we have heat guns!) Add a few squiggles or swirls, with a pen or your sewing machine, or your favorite floral stamps; top them off with Eyelet Outlet 12mm Clear Edge Jewels or Oval Jewels... or both... and that's *IT*! Wait, maybe we should have a sentiment: let's make a home for it with a few strips of Music Note Washi Tape, then our alphabet stickers will really stand out!

Still not into the whole painting thing? All right, let's make some patterned paper, instead. I went with argyle because I just got a roll of super-fun Road Washi Tape and the dotted lines reminded me of stitching. Plus, what mom wouldn't like to get *DIAMONDS* on Mother's Day, eh? ;)

I hand cut these diamonds, but we all have a zillion punches and dies, don't we? Start with one basic shape in a few colors and see how many fun geometric patterns you can make. When you find your favorite, affix the shapes to your background and start thinking about embellishments. I must've been channeling a 1950's vibe because as soon as I had pink-n-grey argyle I wanted to add pearls... and what could be easier than Pearl Bling Strips? A few blooms are always a nice touch, and these gorgeous Eyelet Outlet Solid Color Paper Flowers come in packs of *40* with three graduated sizes and they're available in a few different shapes! I popped on some Bumpy Heart Bling centers and I was done.

I hope you'll be inspired to try something new and different... be sure to leave me a link to your own dramatic creations in the comments, I love to see the things you make! ♥