PaperFections

New Piercing Templates

I attended a SplitcoastStampers.com stamp/swap day gathering in my area this past weekend and had tons of fun hanging out with old friends (not that they are old, but you get my drift!).  One of those Texas sweethearts (even though she's about to move out of our great state, we'll still consider her a Texan!), Jody Morrow (aka TexasJodyLynn) brought the coolest tool I've seen lately.  It's just the plastic canvas that you can do yarn/needle work crafts on, but she put it to a totally different use . . . as a paper piercing template/guide!  Here's what I mean:

You know how hard it is to pierce holes around circle shapes?  Using the normal square piercing guide, you have to constantly turn it around the circle, hoping to keep somewhat within your circle shape.  But Jody found the plastic canvas in circle shapes AND with these shapes, you can just select whatever size will fit the circle shape you want to pierce around!  The only thing is that the holes are larger than your piercing tool, so you'll want to select a certain spot within the hole, to use consistently around your shape.

You'll see the smaller round template on the lower left of my photo above, laying on my small set of Spellbinders Nestabilities Classic Circles -- it is 3" in width, so it will fit your smaller sizes of Nestabilities.

The larger template is shown on the lower right of the photo and measures 5.75" in width.  As you can see, this size will fit all the sizes of Nestabilities.

Now, what about the other dilemma we have with a too-small piercing template that isn't even the size of a normal A2 (4.25" x 5.50") card?  Just get this large (10.50" x 13.50") sheet of plastic canvas and cut it to the size you want!  This type of canvas comes in different holes sizes (for lack of a better description, like Aida cloth).  This size is #10, which is smaller than the shaped templates and your piercing tool fits perfectly in the holes.  Now I can make a template that is A2 sized and also have a separate square template!

The next best part of this fabulous discovery is the price:  I found a 10-pack of the small circles at Hobby Lobby (in the yarn crafting area) for $1.17!  The large circle was just .39 cents and the large square canvas was .79 cents!

So hop on over to Jody's blog and show her some love for this great idea!  She also has some photos posted from this weekend, but it looks like we forgot to get one together!  You can also keep a watch on her blog, as she does fabulous ribbon shares about once a month, usually with that luscious May Arts ribbon.  Thanks for sharing your discovery, Jody!

Flourishes Wedding

Today's card is a quick, simple wedding card.  I made it for my cousin's son's wedding a few weeks ago, sent it off, and totally forgot to post it!

It's made with Flourishes' Wedding Essentials set.  I heat embossed the rings with Versamark and gold embossing powder onto shimmer white cardstock and cut them out with Spellbinders Nestabilities Classic Scalloped Squares.

Then I did my inlaid trick by cutting out the same scalloped square from gold metallic cardstock and laying the white square into the gold piece.  The Mr. & Mrs. was also heat embossed in gold onto the gold cardstock.  This whole layer is popped up on foam dimensional tape.  Black brads finish it off.  The black mat is flush against the white shimmer card base (A2-sized). 

Speaking of Flourishes . . . are you ready for another new stamp release from them?  I just started playing with some new sets that will be released next Wednesday, May 14 and I know you will love them!  Some more gorgeous flowers are coming your way, along with THE cutest/elegant baby set I've ever seen!

I'll be back in a bit with a cool new tool/trick I learned about this past weekend!

WSC46: Best Cupcake Inchie

Wow, it's been all week since I posted  something -- sorry about that!  I've been busy stamping for deadlines and I hope to be able to show you some of those things soon!  How do you like this long, skinny sketch Beate put together for her Weekend Sketch Challenge today?  Lots of neat possibilities!  Here's what I came up with:

I was excited to get my new Spellbinders MegaNestabilities Long Scalloped Rectangles this week, and knew they'd be great for this sketch.  Here, I used the largest of the Small set, which is 5.75" at the widest point (My card turned out about 6.25" x 3.25".  I suppose I'll be making an envelope for it, LOL!).  All papers used are from BasicGrey's new Cupcake collection.

I popped up the squares on the left (cut with Spellbinders Nestabilities Classic Squares) and added some beautiful bling Gemstone Crystals to each corner.  <== Check those out ... Ellen has a bunch of new colors of crystals in the store.  The smallest ones in the sets are the same size as A Muse's Creative Candy Mini Dot Twinkle Stickers and then there's a larger size in the set, too (I used the larger ones here).

The popped up squares allowed space for a paper clip (this one is from a Spare Parts Alpha Clip by The Paper Studio that already had a mounting on it, so I just glued the Inchie to the mounting) to attach and hold this birthday Inchie that can be used as a bookmark or perhaps an embellishment for a birthday scrapbook page!

The Inchie is made from that wonderful new white matboard I've been using.  I stamped part of the Best Cupcake image directly on the matboard with Ranger's Adirondack Pitch Black ink and then colored it with these Copic markers:

I just dotted the markers onto the matboard to create the confetti background.  The Inchie is matted with Spellbinders' smallest Nestabilities Classic Scalloped Square from the large set -- it fits the 1-inch matboard square perfectly.  Another blue gemstone crystal tops the cupcake and a bit of Wright's yellow rick-rack finishes it off:

I hope you'll try this sketch this weekend and check out other samples made by these talented ladies:  Beate, Cambria Turnbow, Charmaine Ikach, Jenn Balcer, Laurie Schmidlin, Lori Craig and MaryJo Albright.

FYI note: I've changed the commenting on my blog -- now you don't have to verify and type in the Captcha letters.  I know how those can sometimes be a pain to read and type correctly, so we'll try this for a while!

Friends Card File

I made this card file for the Spellbinders website Gallery last month.  Once you are in the Gallery, you can click on different sub-divisions over on the left side (scrapbook pages, home decor, cards, etc), to see all the projects the design team have created. 

This file is for my daughters to store the names, addresses & phone numbers of their friends.  We usually have several scattered pieces of paper they try to hang on to and then find again when they want to call friends, so this will help keep us organized!

I started with an unfinished wooden card file by Glue Art & Paper Studio that I got from Doodliedoo.  Right now Doodliedoo is undergoing some site work and should be opened back up within about a week, so check back with them then.  Until then, though, you might find a retailer for these fantastic wood alterables at a retailer listed here at Glue's site.

I painted the file with Making Memories Strawberries & Cream acrylic paint and then covered parts of it with Fancy Pants Sweet Pea & Key Lime collection papers, using a glue stick.

Next, I traced the 3" x 5" file cards (another Glue product available from Doodliedoo) onto more papers from those same collections; cut them out and adhered them to the cards to make the front one and alphabetic dividers.  Letters were cut from some solid papers (same Fancy Pants collections) using Spellbinders Shazzam and Julius alphabet dies.  They were glued onto the front file card, along with a die cut Daisy.  The daisy is accented with some Stickles.

The alpha dividers were created in the same way; here are just a few:

I used a bunch of different smaller dies to create the tabs: A/B: Tags 5, C/D: Charms & Rod; E/F: Variety Tags, G/H: Filing Folders, I/J: Tags 5.  Julius and Whimsy alphabets were used for the tabs, along with Decorative Photo Corners on the G/H divider.  Ribbon is from Sweet Pea & Key Lime collections.

Divider tabs were backed with heavy cardstock, to make them more durable:

I've color coded the cards (purple & pink) -- one for each of my girls, so we'll be able to tell which friend belongs to each of them!  I hope you enjoyed this project . . . the possibilities for these card files are endless and I have another one brewing!

WSC45: May Calendar

For Beate's Weekend Sketch Challenge today, I decided to do my monthly 6" x 6" calendar page.

<== There is Beate's sketch . . . and here's my calendar:

Our wedding anniversary is in May, so that made me think of this adorable Tart of Hearts stamp by Karen Lockhart.  I stamped the hearts onto my computer-generated calendar (more on that below) which was printed on Cryogen White shimmer cardstock and colored them with Copic markers, accented with pink Copic Spica glitter pen:

   

*Note: The greens here are softer and lighter in person -- my camera and lighting were giving me fits this morning!  Copic colors used: R81, R85, YG01, YG25, Y21.

The calendar measures 3.75" x 2.5", is matted with Spellbinders Nestabilities Classic Scalloped Rectangle cut from Prism Frosted Yellow cardstock, and is popped up on dimensionals.  Pink ribbon is Stampin' Up's taffeta.  The "May" alpha dot stickers were included in the 8x8 pack of Making Memories Garden Party paper I finally found at Target . . . I adored it when I first saw Michelle use it and was happy to finally find it!

I machine stitched the dotted paper to a 6-inch base of Prism Baby Pink, using a combination of straight and zig-zag stitches.  Stampin' Up saffron brads finish off this page.

Since I finally figured out how to attach files in my posts, I'll share my Microsoft Excel file (below) of the rest of this year's calendars.  I just changed the font color to pink when printing this month's.

For more inspiration on this week's sketch, check out the samples by these awesome bloggers: Beate, Cambria Turnbow, Charmaine Ikach, Jenn Balcer, Laurie Schmidlin, Lori Craig and MaryJo Albright.

I'll be back with something to share with you on Sunday . . . I hope you enjoy your weekend and play along with this sketch!

Download 2008_Calendars_6x6_SharonHarnist.xls

Inchie ABC's - D & Matboard

I thought I would continue today with more of my Inchie ABC's.  If you have missed these so far, you can click on the Inchie Category from the list on the right sidebar of my blog.

D is for Dimension -- Pop up images and add layers to your Inchies:

Stamp credit: Lockhart Clothesline.

Stamp credits: 1-Lockhart Apples in Chintz, 2-Itty Bitty Dragonfly.

Dragonfly is glued by its body to the Inchie base, but its wings are flying free!  Notice where I Initialed my dragonfly Inchie?  Under its wings! 

You'll also see in the photos above, how nice and thick this black matboard is and that even the core is black -- all the way thru.  It makes for a very sturdy base for your Inchie art and is already cut into 1-inch squares for you!  More on this matboard below . . .

More dimension . . . below, I added a 1-inch page pebble over the fish bowl:

The white matboard I used for this Inchie (and the black matboard above) is the highest museum preservation quality.  The matboard is fade and bleed resistant & lignin-free.  I stamped this Itty Bitty Fish image in Brilliance Graphite Black ink directly on the matboard, heat set it, and then colored the image with Copic markers & Spica glitter pens with absolutely no bleeding whatsoever (and no warping from my heat gun)!

D is for Display -- Create a display for your Inchie artwork:

This is a Scrabble game tile holder -- perfect for displaying your Inchie collection(s)!  You should see THIS idea Karen Lockhart came up with . . . a piece of wood molding she covered with patterned paper -- beautiful!  I'll have some more display ideas for you in the next few weeks, as I just got some new product to play with!

As a reminder, you can find out more about Inchie art thru Ellen Hutson's new Inchie INKlings blog, devoted solely to Inchies!  New challenges will be posted on the 20th of each month.

Seaside Sisters

I created this layout for the Spellbinders gallery last month.  New items for March from all the designers can be viewed there. 

I took this photo on our Spring Break trip to California this March.  After visiting the San Diego zoo that day, we drove back up the coast to Anaheim and stopped at this beach along the way, to stick our feet in the ocean!  Without any prompting, my oldest daughter took her sister's hand and led her out to the water (everybody say AWWWWW!!).  I was really glad I had my camera ready!  They loved the rolling waves and leaving their footprints in the sand (bottom photo).

The base for this layout is from Fancy Pants' Floral Chic collection -- I thought it looked like a sandy beach.  The "Seaside" lettering was cut from cream cardstock with Spellbinders Whimsy alphabet and while the cardstock was still in the die, inked with Tsukineko Copper Encore metallic ink.  Unfortunately, the lettering blended into the background paper a little too much for my liking, so I brushed a little vanilla acrylic paint underneath and then blended it into the background paper a little by sponging with Ranger Vintage Photo Distress ink:

"Sisters" was cut from cream cardstock with Indulgence alphabet.   

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While still in the dies, cardstock was inked with Versamark and then dabbed with coral Pebbles Inc I-kan-dee shimmer chalk.  These chalks happen to be the product spotlight at Cornish Heritage this week, where they are on sale!  Just click the link above to find them.

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The Shells were cut with the same cream cardstock and inked in both ways detailed above.  I love the shimmer effect from the chalks and metallic ink:

Copper metallic heart brads are from Creative Impressions.  Lace is from Fancy Pants Key Lime Collection.  Journaling tag was created from a manila mailing tag, with some more shell die cuts added:

   

Journaling was done with Copic's Gold Spica Glitter pen.  Distressing and hemp twine finish it off.

Thanks for looking . . . I'll be back over the next few days with two more of my gallery projects!