man, oh man!

this week's challenge at shopping our stash is called, "DUDE!" and we want to see... (you've guessed already, haven't you?) ...that's right, we want to see masculine cards. you don't need to make a father's day, card (though you can, and i did!); because of course any masculine design for any occasion will do! 

loads of vintage book paper from several sources, also a map that I SWEAR was torn like this when i found it, though of course i had to trim up the other edges to make it fit, lol. stash-wise, the fussy-cut car and the tiny heart were discards from a different project and had been put into one of my many little zippy bags with "parts for future" use... they're always my first port of call when making a collage or collage card!; tapes: heidi swapp, eyelet outlet, 7gypsies, little b, recollections; compass brad: eyelet outlet; glossy black cardstock: ranger; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m/scotch foam tape and gluestick (for the record, the latter is now the ONLY mass-market, inexpensive gluestick i will use for collage!)

this might be a record-settingly layery card even for me, lol! i actually had the layers of text, map, and illustration all ready to glue up before i realized that even with inked edges they were just not standing out very distinctly. so i added a super-skinny black glossy cardstock mat to EVERY. SINGLE. LAYER, and suddenly the whole thing looked soooooo much better. speaking of mats, having used a torn bit of map, i hesitated over what to do: leave it un-matted? trim off the torn and slanty edge, then mat? mat and cut neatly around the shape of the torn edge?? finally, it occurred to me to mat it on an oversized piece of black and see if i could TEAR along the same outline. i frankly wasn't sure i'd be able to do it, and even if i could, that it would look nice... but it worked and is now my favorite part of the card! 

well, that and the eyelet outlet compass brad, set into a tiny music paper heart! ♥

something else i really love is this week's sketch saturday sketch. as always, i've added my own little twists, but "the bones" of it are all sketch saturday! btw, i thank those ladies and also ABM illustrations for the very cool prize from being last week's random winner!

everyone who checks out my DT darlings' work at shopping our stash is always a winner, and today will not be the exception to that, so off you go to get your allotment of eye candy!

hole-y (holly) moly

we're still making cards with windows or other apertures cut into them at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ and this week i've done something i rarely ever do... used the same ingredients, two cards in a row. but i really HAD TO, this time, because about 15 seconds after i attached the diecut holly leaves adorning the window on last week's card, i realized that i should have used the holly dies to cut the actual window in the card! so i did:

holly and greens dies--regular and mini, used as both positive and negative space: tim holtz/sizzix thinlits; felt poinsettia: k and co; pinecones: martha stewart; golden flowers: petaloo; various shades of green cardstock: bazill; patterned paper: bo bunny, october afternoon + vintage sheet music; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, gluedots, sewing machine

in the meantime, having treated myself to the sizzix/tim holtz "holiday greens" dies last week at paper anthology; this week i treated myself to the MINI size of the same dies! so when i cut through the music paper, i was able to arrange ALL the holly leaves from both sets, into a larger spray, which i think looks really cool! of course, i could have gotten a similar effect by making more than one pass using the larger holly branch too. or i could have arranged one of the other greens dies with the holly on my magnetic platform for that matter. btw, i'm not allllll that much of a gadget girl, but i must say that's an accessory which has completely changed the way i think about making window cards and/or doing complicated or multi-die cuts. if you have wafer thin dies and you don't have the sizzix magnetic platform, you are missing out! you can get one at paper anthology, btw. just sayin'... :)

here's a pic that shows the aperture a little better. i put some little dots of foam tape around the holly leaves underneath, so that there'd be a little space between the top and bottom layers. i also used the darkest green paper i had, for maximum contrast!

meanwhile, stephanie also has a beautiful and HOLE-y card to show off. why not hop over to ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ and check it out right now?!

Mini Card Smiles for Miles

You know how we all eat MORE candy when they come in those little fun size bars? It turns out the same is true for cards... well, not the eating part, lol, but I find that once I start making mini-cards it's really hard to stop! Especially since an ATC format (2.5 x 3.5") showcases Summer-Themed Eyelet Outlet Brads so wonderfully well, as I believe I prove conclusively on the Eyelet Outlet Blog today!

In this case, my little "family" of cards was inspired by the fact that one of my Simple Stories 6 x 6" paper pads featured a bunch of scaled down journal cards, with little icons just right to be swapped for brads. Who could resist something as amazingly serendipitous as that, eh? You can see in the photo that one the cards has a smiley face EXACTLY the same size-- and expression-- as a Mini Emotion Brad and another has a sun just a tiny bit smaller than the one in the Sun and Cloud Brads. The Flip Flop Brads weren't actually pictured on their card, but the text is in the perfect colors and there was just enough room to attach them along the edges. Shifting through another collection from the same manufacturer I found a camera with an iconic center which precisely fit the Peace Sign Brads and another mini card that was a brilliant home for Mini Bee Brads... right down to the honeycomb pattern!

Once I started making the cards, I decided to combine the colors in the paper collection, add some dictionary text paper with strategically placed words, and highlight the designs with a bit of Washi Tape in coordinating shades and patterns.

Flower Tape with Cute Bugs looked adorable with the Mini Bees. Chevron Tape was a natural choice with that sweet camera and bold Peace Sign. The Blue Dots Tape always reminds me of bubbles in an aquarium (or the ocean?!) so that was perfect with the Flip Flops. And Smiley Face Tape was an obviously fab accent for the Mini Smiley. I've also used some Foil Dots tape and my very favorite, super-colorful Skinny Washi Set as accents.

When all the cards were finished, it seemed a shame not to make some tiny envelopes for them, using the leftover bits of paper and a little more coordinating tape; though these will be tucked into a gift or mailed in a larger envelope, since 3.5 x 5" is the smallest size you can mail on its own!

I hope you'll be inspired to look at your own paper collections and your stamp sets, to see which ones will pair perfectly with some super-fun Eyelet Outlet Brads! Meanwhile Miss Carri has another great project to show you, so why not scroll down below my post on the Eyelet Outlet Blog and see that right now?! ♥

sweet thang

this week's challenge at shopping our stash is called "you're so sweet" and thus we'd like to see cards and projects featuring... well... *SWEETS* lol! which could be anything from cupcakes to candy to fruit! always one to hedge my bets, i've got a little bit of everything!

patterned paper: simple stories, echo park, american crafts (amy tangerine + dear lizzy) cardstock and paper stickers: simple stories; tags: sei; cupcake, cherry and bright flower brads + chevron washi tape: eyelet outlet; glossy kromekote cardstock: the paper cut; adhesives elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sewing machine

this card is probably the answer to the musical question, "how many embellishments is too many"? but then i can never resist a sweet treat irl or on a card! i've got some ancient tags, loads of cardstock stickers and icons, a few fab eyelet outlet brads and ALL THE COLORS of the rainbow.

i used this week's sketch saturday layout, though as you can see, by virtue of my over enthusiastic embellishing i've morphed away from the compact neatness of the sketch a bit. i thank them for the inspiration, however, and also for the shout out on my "tribute to snail mail card" from last week!

lots more sweet treats and eye candy for you from the DT at shopping our stash! ♥

it's minibook monday again!

because YEAH, that's really gonna be a thing until i run out of minibooks and go back to mandala monday, lol!!! which at this point, will probably be next week, so not to worry if you're not really diggin' the little books so much. on the other hand, i really like making these and have loads more ideas, so they will likely make periodic comebacks! :)

this one is pretty random, so the only semi "theme" about it is that there's a lot of orange and yellow involved.

isn't this adhesive-backed fabric from michaels gorgeous? i think i already mentioned that i'm psyched that sticky fabric is making a comeback; i always loved that stuff! 

(even better news: in this incarnation, the adhesive actually WORKS... which in previous versions was not always the case, lol!)

lace paper also seems to be coming around again, too. it looks nice over top of random gelli prints, dontcha think?

chinese childrens books and bits of map are always a good idea, imo! 

i like being able to see various pages above, below, behind, and-- in the case of lace paper-- THROUGH other pages.

playing with some folded and torn pages again. misake kawai did an entire book with random, sticky-out, triangle shaped pages, which i saw at printed matter, and fell in love with!

having pages of all different sizes also adds to the "collage" feeling.

i love it when i buy used books and magazines at garage sales and there are handwritten notes inside, i always save them. ♥♥♥ to the lady who neatly copied these instructions for crocheted granny squares!

i know some people don't like ex-library books because they have plastic covers, pockets and stamps; i, of course, actively seek them out!

and finally the obligatory gratuitous "open book" shot.

♥♥♥♥♥

hope my US friends are having an awesome memorial day weekend, and that the rest of the world is having a pretty fine monday!

more collages?

as you know, i'm super excited about the fact that ICAD* officially starts on thursday** and while i have not been able to participate in all the pre-ICAD festivities, on the day that tammy posted the "one-staple collage" warm up exercise, OF COURSE i had to drop everything and make a one-staple collage on an index card. because that's the way i roll. meanwhile, there are a few full-sized collages from the last couple of weeks that i haven't posted, so this seems like a good time to show you those, as well.

one-staple index card collage

asking the musical question: 

how many things can you stack in a 3x5 space and still see them all? 

1) a tabbed index card base 

2) a scrap of vintage ledger paper 

3) a strategically torn piece of garden plan 

4) another (different) type of vintage ledger paper

5) common plant names from an english/thai pocket tourist dictionary;

6) a small section of green paint chips 

7) a flower illustration from a tiny, falling-apart, 1910-ish field guide 

8) butterfly punched from a "chinese for kids" workbook page. 

...so the answer is "EIGHT" then! :)

mother's day collage

lately i've seen quite a few cool collages on instagram where, instead of being fussy cut, the elements are all arranged kind of geometrically. which i find fascinating and cool. so of course i've had a few tries at this and i'm sure there will be more. i don't think i've really "cracked it" yet, but as with the one-staple format, changing the rules really makes you look at EVERYTHING differently, which is often quite inspiring.

(ps: i don't know the people in the vinatge photo, but it says on the back, in beautiful copperplate handwriting, "yvonne ward and isabel greer at cargygray ireland, 1957")

bird collage

again, playing somewhat with the grid idea, though the four arched doorways were on one page in a falling apart fodor's guide to india, c1975. the birds are cut from a beautiful paper napkin and i love the way they are a tiny bit see-through once you peel them down to one layer! 

avalokiteshvara gridded collage

in the midst of my gridded collage mania, i found a cool schematic in an old needlework book for a sort of strange 1970's stitch sampler, where blocks of pattern are layered over and under each other... (the sampler, shown on another page, was of course executed in shades of lemon yellow, avocado green and burnt orange, as all decor items were federally mandated to be in the 1970's) ...for the most part, i'm not a "scan-and-duplicate" collage artist, but this was SO COOL i needed to scan it. plus, that meant i could print it out on a transparency and place most of my layers under it, on the grid!

(yes, i know, i get inordinately excited about things like this, lol!)

*the index card a day project, aka ICAD has been hosted by tammy garcia on the daisy yellow art blog for the last seven years; this will be my sixth year participating! ♥

**the (totally optional!) prompts for each week are posted on the sunday before, which means that anyone who is chompin' at the bit to get going could snag the prompts TOMORROW and start working a teeny bit early. not that i'm going to do that... ok yeah... i'm almost certainly going to do that... ;)

oh HOLE-y night?!

yep, we can never resist a holiday pun at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥... the more egregious the better, lol! so what could we possibly mean by "oh HOLE-y night"?! if you guessed that we're making cards with windows or other apertures cut through them, you are exactly right!

patterned paper: glitz design + vintage sheet music; cardstock: bazzill; poinsettia + velvet holly leaves: petaloo; greenery: tim holtz thinlit dies used on scraps of green patterned paper and cardstock; wood veneer: photoplay; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, xyron, gluedots

i acquired a couple of new die sets at paper anthology this week, and tim holtz's "holiday greens" was one of them. i love florals and greenery at any time of year, but maybe most of all at christmas. so of course there was no question that my window card was going to involve some festive foliage. i used two successive sizes of nestabilities' "labels two" to cut and mat my window, and added a beautiful burlap poinsettia as the focal point. visible through the window inside the card, there's some vintage sheet music and a wood veneer sentiment to round out the design.

stephanie also has something rather lovely to show you, why not hop over to ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ and check it out?