Faux Suede and Lovely as a Tree

Good Morning and Happy Monday! Lynn over on Splitcoast came up with a cool techniuqe for us to try out today. It's called Faux Suede! All you do is take your piece of cardstock and using a bone folder, distress your card over and over and over until the fibres start to break down, they you just peel it apart (if you've distressed the card enough, it just peels apart easily). It looks great when you're done!

I teamed it up with Lovely as a Tree. Here's a trick for you, spritz your watercolour paper first, then stamp your image with classic ink and you get this 'washed out' look. I like it!!! I think it would be a great masculine card.

Recipe
Stamps : Lovely as a Tree
Cardstock : Old Olive, Soft Suede, Watercolour Paper
Ink : Soft Suede
Accessories : Choc Chip 1 1/4" grosgrain ribbon, Bone Folder

Shimmer Paints

Have you heard the buzz about SU's new Shimmer Paints? Oh my word, these things are amazing. Let me share a few things I've learned by playing with the new shimmer paints.

* You can make them into a shimmer spray ... this is just a beautiful effect.
* The shimmer sprays can have reinker added to them so can you make up shimmer sprays for ALL of the Stampin' Up colours!
* You can add reinker to the paint to customize your Frost White shimmer.
* You can add the shimmer paint direct to your stamp.
* You can add the shimmer paint to your already inked stamp.

... the list is endless! Let me show you a few of the things I've managed to do:

Shimmer Spray

You'll need to buy some sort of spray bottle. I've found that the smaller the spray-head, the better the result. Fill your small mister bottle almost to the top with 70% rubbing alcohol (if you use 90% or higher, you may encounter clumping ... ask me how I know!!!!!). Once your RA is in your bottle, add 6-8 drops of Champagne Mist shimmer paint. After 2 spritzes of the bottle, this is the result I got with this recipe:

You can take it one step further and use this recipe PLUS 6-8 drops of reinker. In this photo, I used soft suede reinker. It's sprayed onto Whisper White cardstock. I spritzed 5-6 times so the cardstock was pretty saturated. It actually curled up, but after about 1 minute the alcohol and water evaporated and the cardstock uncurled itself. If you wanted a less intense colour, you would just spritz once or twice. I love how this turned out!

Reinker with Frost White Shimmer Paint

Take an artists mixing tray (or something similar) and add 2 drops of reinker. Then tip 2-3 drops of Frost White Shimmer Paint and mix with a small paint-brush. This is what it'll look like:

Dap a sponge dauber into the mix and tap onto your rubber stamp. Here's the result I got using Ruby Red reinker (hard to photograph, so thanks to Sarah and her wonderful Nikon SLR!)

Shimmer Paint Direct to Stamp

Use a dauber, shake up your shimmer paint and dab the dauber into the lid. This method allows the dauber to pick up just the right amount of paint. Dab it onto your stamp. This time I used Platinumn Shimmer to get this effect:

Shimmer Paint to an Already Inked Stamp

Here's the same Platinum Shimmer, only this time I daubed it onto the stamp after it had been inked up in Old Olive:

Apologies for the photography, it's so hard to get a good picture of a subtle shimmer!!! However, you can rest assured that if you like what you see on the photograph, you'll LOVE what you see when you try it yourself. You can find all 3 in the mini catalogue (page 27) for just $5.95 each! and ordering is easy from my SU website! I hope that's helped give you some ideas about how YOU can use your shimmer paints. If you have any questions just leave a comment!

Supplies
Stamp : Dasher
Accessories : Frost White, Platinum, Champagne Mist SHIMMER PAINTS, daubers, rubbing alcohol, mister bottles, reinkers

CHRISTMAS CARD CLASS

Here are the cards we'll be making at my class on October 9th at 7pm, or October 11th at 1pm. The 4 cards use many different techniques, new stamps from the mini catalogue and new accessories (including the Shimmer Paints!). Let me know if you'd like to join us for either class, there is space still available.

Nancy Ruth ~ SCS Featured Stamper

When I first started participating in the challenges over on Splitcoast, one person kept popping up with comments and encouragement ... Nancy Ruth Levine. So when I saw that she was today's FS, I was thrilled for her! Congratulations Nancy Ruth ... you deserve this honour today!

Here's my card. I based it on this one from Nancy Ruth's gallery. I loved the layout and thought that I could use my new chipboard template with my embossing folder to mirror the layout. Thanks for the wonderful inspiration Nancy Ruth!

Here's a close-up of the texture on my card. The butterfly is punched out with the new SU Butterfly punch, and I added a Fleurette but coloured the centre using a blender pen and ink ... yes, it's that easy! I love these little white flowers, you can turn them any colour to suit any card.

Recipe
Stamps : Teeny Tiny Wishes, Flight of the Butterfly
Cardstock : Bordering Blue, Whisper White
Ink : Bordering Blue, Sahara Sand
Accessories : Blender Pen, Fleurettes II, Butterfly Punch, Petals a Plenty Embossing Folder

Never Run Out of Buttons Again!!!

Thanks to Lynn on Splitcoast, you never need to run out of buttons again! Lynn found the coolest thing for us to play with on today's TLC ~ and it's so easy and such fun! Lynn found a blog post by a German stamper called Jennifer detailing how to make your own buttons from cardstock. So never again do we have to find the perfectly matching button to our DSP or cardstock, just make your own ... and it's easy too! Here's the card I made today with 3 hand-made buttons, one is made from a 1" circle punch and 2 are 3/4". How cute are they?

And here's a close-up of the buttons. I was so anxious to put my card together that I added the linen thread when the crystal effects was still tacky ... next time I'll wait a little longer!

Recipe
Stamps : Friends 24-7
Cardstock : WW, Mellow Moss, Soft Sued, Cottage Wall DSP
Ink : Mellow Moss, Soft Suede
Accessories : 3/4" and 1/2" circle punches, linen thread, crop-a-dile, scallop punch, dimensionals

A New Technique

This is turning into the craziest week so apologies for my lack of posting. Just wanted to share something with you from Regionals. One of the demonstrations was how to tweak the SU Embossing Folders. I also tried something else for the first time ... I dyed the flowers from the pretties kit in Ruby Red re-inker, I love how they turned out!

I used my Big Shot Die, Oval Scallop Frame, and made a template from chipboard which just so happened to be the backing in our projects folders handed out at Regionals ...

You can see from the above photos what the chipboard template looks like. It's very easy, you just place your cardstock into the Folder, but instead of making the sandwich according to the Big Shot Platform instructions, you make it as follows:
Closed Platform
Chipboard Template
Embossing Folder
Cutting Plate
This sandwich gives just enough pressure to make the impressions around the oval (you can see the shadow in the first pic which is where the design will show) which leaves the centre nice and flat for your stamped image. I'm going to spend spme time going through all my Big Shot dies to see what other shapes I can make! It's a great way to take your cards up a notch.

Club girls, this is one of our projects tomorrow evening :)

Recipe
Stamps : Home for the Holidays
Cardstock : Whisper White
Ink : Ruby Red
Accessories : RR Ink & Blender Pen, Big Shot, Oval Scallop Die, Petals a Plenty EF, Pretties Kit, RR Brad

All-Girls Road Trip to Regionals

Well, sorry I wasn't around yesterday ... I went on a road trip with some Splitcoast demo pals to the STAMPIN' UP REGIONALS IN CINCINNATI ~ WAHOO. What a total blast we had. I've never been to a Stampin' Up organised event before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I have to tell you that it went WAY above all my expectations, a truly wonderful day full of the latest and greatest Stampin' Up goodies. And, yes, we all got a free stamp set! How fun is that?!

We left on Thursday afternoon and our good friend Dawn Marie drove us in the most fantastic conversion van (or probably, more aptly now called a converSAtion van!!!). All wood interior, leather seats with arm rests, TV ... I tell you, this is the way to travel! We left around 3pm and we were actually on the road for a good 5 minutes before we stopped for McFlurries!!!! No, I'm not kidding! What could be better than ice-cream and girlfriends, really?

Anyway, Dawn Marie did a fantastic job of driving us all down into Kentucky where Tracy navigated us successfully to our Holiday Inn Suite. Super room, 2 King Size beds and a pull-out sofa. There are a few photos of me on the sofa-bed which are not fit for publication ~ let's just say 'What happens in Cincinnati, Stays in Cincinnati' ... bwahahaha.

First stop was to find somewhere for our supper. Debra was aching for a huge steak (have you seen the size of her? Put it this way, the waist of her jeans would fit around ONE of my thighs ... no, I'm not kidding) So we found a great restaurant down on the river-front looking across to the City. Our server Chris very kindly took us out onto the balcony to take pictures!

Here we are! From the left is Tracy, Pony, DawnMarie, me and Debra. Now that was a fun evening! Then it was back to our hotel room where Debra showed us the new SU File Folders (page 169 of the main catalogue). They are just GORGEOUS, I totally passed them over in the book, but when Debra showed us her project, we all decided they'll be on our next order. Here we are playing with Debra's files!

Sorry Tracy, I forgot you had a towel on your head! Hey, at least she washed her hair!!! That's Debra sitting and working hard, me and Dawn Marie. We were so scared to cut the beautiful folders, we made Debra go first and show us how it was done! Pony's missing from this one, she took the photo ... thanks girlie!

Well, the big day finally arrived and we were SO excited. The Duke Energy Centre in Cincinnati is an amazing place. I suppose I've just led a sheltered life, but that place was HUMUNGUS! Here we all are outside Ballroom B waiting for the doors to open ... let me tell you, we almost bashed them down in our excitement!

The day was wonderful, we all sat at huge round tables with our Stampin' Up projects, we listened to Shelli Gardner (our CEO and founder of SU), she was a wonderful speaker, so motivating and such a genuinely nice person. I did tell her that she was, actually, my best friend, she just didn't know it ... and she didn't look at me like I was the moron that I am, she smiled, hugged me and said, of course she knew we were. However, she did walk right past my table at lunch time and didn't say hi, or give me a BFF hug or anything, so she's not much of a Best Friend, now is she!!!! She did, however, graciously allow us to have our photo taken with her {{sigh}} ... we love you Shelli!

That's Tracy, Pony (bobbing down), me, Shelli, Dawn Marie and Debra. Can you see from my expression that I was that crazy, giggly, stalker kind of fan ... so apologies Shelli, I know you will be reading this post because you are, after all, my best friend!!!

Thanks girls for a wonderful, fabulous road trip. You girls are the best ... I'll always remember that journey home where we covered such topics of conversation as:-

Nail polish that changes colour in the sunlight (yes, we really did talk about that!) / Giving Birth (yes, that was just after the nail polish!) / Death / Families / children / Love / Marriage / The Marines / Religion / Politics / Bra fittings / Money / Houses / Cars / Lot Lizards (I never heard of such a thing!) / Sweaty unmentionable men-parts ... well, I admit it was me that brought that up, but hey, it WAS a long journey / but the most memorable was the conversation about our friendship and how lucky we are to have each other as friends. Love you girls! Convention 2010 here we come!