WMD - Rosette Christmas tree

This very cool rosette tree was shown on the Archiver's Online ad a couple of weeks ago. There are printable instructions on their website. Another great project for the Martha Stewart scoring board. This is what I'm making on this Where's My Desk Wednesday. Photo pending...

(updated 12/6/2012) Here's mine.  I chose to leave it undecorated. It's a lot smaller than it looks, only six inches at the base and about 10 inches tall; just right for setting on a mantle.


The paper is the O Christmas Tree stack by MME. I love it; so nice and glittery. However, double sided cardstock may have been a better choice. The photo makes me feel like my slip is showing.

Happy Birthday to the Girl Child

How can the Girl Child be 19 years old? I just don't get what happened here. I'm pretty sure she turned twelve at her last birthday. Even the Hub explained that he didn't use 16 candles because there weren't enough green ones. (She doesn't like cake or pie so he stuck candles - one pink, six green -  in raspberry cheese danish pastries.) This is our last "kid at home" birthday; all our babies are grown-up. Where did the time go?

Applebee's style Penne Alfredo
serves 6

Layer in 9x13 pan sprayed with PAM:
16 oz Penne pasta, cooked according to package directions
15 oz jar Alfredo sauce (or two)
*Cooked Chicken

 Heat thoroughly in oven.
Serve topped with **bruschetta and  shredded Italian cheeses

* Marinate 2 or 3 Boneless/Skinless Chicken Breasts in 1/2 cup Italian salad dressing for 30 minutes. Grill, then cut in strips. OR cut Chicken breasts in to bite sized chunks before marinating. Saute until cooked through.

** Bruschetta: Combine 3 Diced tomatoes, 1T dried sweet basil, 3 minced garlic cloves. 

Happy Thanksgiving

I'm thankful to announce that I'm done making cards from remnants of Perfect Pages kits. This Family Recipes kit is the last.

All About Me

These are the remnants of the Perfect Pages All About Me kit. There is a tutorial for the pinwheel element over at OWH, but I cheated and used 2 inch striped paper rather than making my own strips. I recommend looking at the tut however. Here is what happens when you follow her instructions: Pretty cool.

WMD - Dude! Where's My Desk?

 No, I don't live on the East Coast and this is not the result of a natural disaster; FEMA is not on it's way for cleanup. This is my workspace while I'm making cards from scraps. What you see here is the box of small bits I'm using for small bits cards. The boxes of large plain and patterned scraps are on the floor below and the drawers of card sized, and nearly confetti sized, scraps are on the other size of the room with the ribbon. Sometimes I have to create ways to force myself out of my chair so my legs don't shrivel up and fall off. The notepad between the donuts and the Pepsi (Breakfast of Champions!) has sketches of the cards I hope to make today.

Below is the latest contribution from the Perfect Pages Kit remnants. These are the remains of the All Occasion kit. The pinwheel sketch and instructions are on the OWH site and the smile card sketch is this week's I Spy Sketch.

ISSC#42

Another card from my scrap drawer, inspired by this week's sketch at  iSpy Sketches. It's a simple sketch that works.

The stamp is from the CTMH Friendship Word Puzzle set. A nice alternative to "Love".

I made the bow on my hand made Bow Easy Style bow maker. The Bow Easy is the greatest invention ever for those of us who are bow challenged. I left the tails long and wrapped them around the element. It lays as flat as a plain knot but gives a little "dressier" look to the simple card. I love that I have a choice of nice bows or cutesie knots. Maybe if I'm a good girl I can talk Santa into bringing me a real Bow Easy for Christmas.

Rosette Turkeys

Here is my little turkey flock, ready to adorn the Thanksgiving table. I'm not much of a cook so this is my contribution to the celebration. They are based on the Tim Holtz Quirky Turkeys but I used the MS scoring board rather than a die.

I made the bodies/faces from basic shapes on MTC (2 circles and an elongated tear, welded and stretched to 2.25 inches tall for the body, a kite for the beak and half a yin/yang for the waddle.) But if you don't want to make your own, Cricut has several choices or there are some freebies on the web.

Here are cutting measurements to get three turkeys per 12x12 sheet:
Cut paper vertically at 10.25. This will give you a strip to punch circles for stability. Contrary to what Tim says I put one on the front and back of each rosette. It made them easier to glue together.
Cut 3 strips 1.5x10.25
Cut 3 strips 1.25 x 9.75
Cut 3 strips 1x9.25
Punch along one long edge of each of these 9 strips with your scallop edger, score at quarter inches, then follow Tim's instructions.

The rosette paper is from SEI's Nutmeg stack.

WMD - Let's go fly a Kite

More cards from scraps! Hooray! The sketch for these fun Kites once again comes from the OWH Using Scrap Tutorial.

All you need to make a kite is: dark cardstock at least 4.5x6.5 (I ran out of black scraps and started using pages from a Matstack. It was a perfect fit, no margin for error.) and two coordinating scraps about 1 3/4x4. If they are a little wider they can be a little shorter, and if they are a little narrower you can make your kites a bit smaller. I made one change in the assembly: I glued the top corner then cut it off and brought the scrap down to the bottom corner. That probably won't make any sense until you watch Sandy's video and make your own kite. The kite tut is at the very end of the very informative and inspiring scrap wrangling video.

A Wed Wose - How Womantic.

I found this beautiful, perfect Valentine rose SVG free at Miss Vickie's CuttingCrazy Blog. Go snoop around her blog and store. She has some super cute cut files. (I love the Angry Turkey SVG just in time for Thanksgiving. I see him on a card with the caption: Eat More Pork.)

The lacey oval frame is free at SVGcuts.com.

Life is too short to craft with ugly paper

The tutorial for these cool Starburst cards is on the OWH website. Fun, easy and nice to have something different. And as a special bonus the Starburst card is the I Spy Sketch this week. I'm going to post mine for reals this time.

As I was fussing with the remnants of the "Love" Perfect Pages kit I remembered struggling to find a way to make it make me happy when I used it on calendars. All I have left is the solid pink and tan paper that don't match any of the embellishments, which is why I didn't use them in the first place. But I wanted to try the Starburst so I saw this as an opportunity for experimental crafting; if I failed I wasn't out much. As I was finishing up these cards the voice of reason came to me and said, "Let's go watch Vampire Diaries." That Girl Child knows just what to say to lead me astray. So I tossed the ugly paper and most of the embellishments that came with it. I'll do more starburst cards another time with paper I love.

Inspiration

I managed to get 9 cards from the remains of the Colorbok Perfect pages kit, Inspiration. (One got lost in the bits pile and I didn't find it until after the photo was taken. Sorry, no make-up day for blog pix.) I don't use much purple but it is the Hub's favorite color and I liked the combo with the green.

These three sketches, Pinwheel, Smalls and Gift boxes, were from Sandy's OWH scrap wrangling tutorial aptly named: Using Scraps. Sandy has great ideas, complete with suggested measurements, about keeping card making bits from taking over your world. GO! Watch! DO!
 
Next kit remains to tackle: LOVE...just in time for Valentines Day. Don't forget the All Things Spring box ships in six weeks.

WMD - Back to the Future

Several years ago it seemed like a great idea to streamline my yearly Christmas gift giving by purchasing page kits to make calendars. So I bought all the Colorbok Perfect Pages kits I thought I could incorporate into the 12 months and off I went. As I recall it was a successful project with minimal design time and I like to pretend everyone was delighted with their calendar. (Insert rolling of eyes here. The sad truth is, people who don't papercraft don't appreciate the handmade gift. Oh well! they are going to get another one this year.)

ANYWAY...  there remains a pile of  matchy paper bits and elements just ripe for cardmaking. I promise to use everything I can and toss the rest.

Bits only a crazy person would keep

You know I occasionally refer to my scraproom as a landfill because it is stuffed full of "stuff", much of it inaccessible because of the sheer quantity. I really am trying to gain control of it a bite at a time. Last week I was working on the never ending project of getting scraps under control. I found a drawer in one of my towers labeled: "Bits only a crazy person would keep." That about sums up my hoarding issues.

I find myself on the lookout for sketches for cards that use small scraps of paper. I hate throwing them out but I also don't want them hanging around. Here is a nice sketch from Valerie Salmon. It was chosen as the sketch for the DCWV design challenge for November 2, 2012. Go check out the samples, grab some of your own scraps and get 'er done!

Reverse Nestablilites

Have you met Gina K. at GinaK Designs/ StampTV? No? Well now's your chance. As I've cruised YouTube, astonished at the amazing things people do with paper, Gina's videos keep popping up. She makes beautiful cards and makes it look so easy. For example, in  this video she demonstrates a technique she calls Reverse Nestabilities. Turns out I don't own any Nestabilities, but I do own Make-the-Cut. So I just used similar shapes to create a cut file for the same effect.

The card on the left is the Reverse Nestabilities technique. If you look closely you can see that the whole card front is popped up so only the bottom layer of the butterfly and the sentiment are actually on the card. Pretty cool. The card on the right uses the leftover cutouts. Easy, clever and I got 8 cards from 3 sheets of paper, butterflies included.

Credit where credit is due: Paper and Ribbon is American Crafts. Stamps are Fiskars. Butterfly svg is SVGcuts.com from the Cheryl's cute bugs collection.