Brown Boo Boo

Am I the only one who spends ages on a card, even though they knew way back near the beginning they had made some tragic error, and it was never going to cut it?

I like to think of this as my brown boo boo! I knew at about step 3 that I had made a serious error in judgment regarding the colours. When I looked, all I saw was brown. Reminds me of high school uniforms (ours was chocolate brown). I still really like the design of this card, but the colours...VERDICT: unsalvageable! But for some odd reason I could not stop. Rather than put the bits in the scrap box, where they would have been more use...I ploughed on, even made a few more dubious calls on the way.



I am not going to go into the details because you can see for yourself. It is BROWN - well Chocolate Chip if you wish to split hairs. And, that is all you need, lots of it ;-).

Have a lovely day! Hope it isn't brown.

And again....

Colours are Old Olive, Real Red and Brilliant Blue. The small dots are from the Itty Bitty Background, and the large ones are from the retired Goin' Buggy set. 'Sweet' is from the retired So Very SAB 2007 set, and is embossed in white. There is faux stitching (done with a white gel pen) along the inside edges of the Old Olive quarters. The brads are Real Red and Old Olive.

TWO scrapbook pages on one blog. What will they think........?

So, I found a socket...I'm all good to go. I haven't even started dinner...but hey, that's no fun!

My second scrapbook sample, complete with 'shopped photos...



I made these pages back before Christmas...so I'm squinting at the photo and trying to remember what colours I used. Too lazy to go check. I'd say Brilliant Blue, Real Red and More Mustard. The background stamp around the photo is the small print pattern from Looks Like Spring. The buttons are from the Bold Brights assortment. The More Mustard slide frame is from an assortment of Bold Brights and Earth Elements tags etc that has now retired :-(. It is mounted on dimensionals. The photo in it is a zoomed and cropped version of the main shot. The 'loved' is from the So Very SAB 2007 set.

I keep these pages in a Stampin' Up! 6x6 brag book (navy linen cover) and take it with me to workshops to show. I also have a 12x12 album with some pages in there. But I desperately need to make some more.

I was just thinking!

...and yes, it did hurt a little. I was thinking that I had better get one of my scrapbooking pages up onto this little blog, or I'd better see about changing the name. For a Stamping and Scrapbooking site, it sure is lite on the scrapbooking (thanks for not saying anything...I tend to be fragile about stuff like that ;-).

Anyway, here it is...drum roll please...a scrapbook page!



Please forgive me my paranoia. I have never felt at ease putting photos of my kids on the WWW...hence the photoshop filter. I know it detracts somewhat...but hey, the name of the blog does not mention photography anywhere.

It is a 6x6 page. The colours are Real Red and Brocade Blue. The background snowflakes stamp is from the Sleigh Full of Toys set. The edges of that layer are also inked (in Brocade Blue). The 'So Very' and 'Cute' are from the So Very SAB 2007 set, of course. The 'Cute' is silver embossed. The brads are silver from the Vintage collection, and the organdy is also silver. The rest kinda speaks for itself. I have more...but the laptop battery is about to expire, so they will have to wait until I can get myself to a socket.

Ciao bellas! (can you pluralise Italian like that?).

Masking Swap

I feel like I can post this one now, as I sent my swaps out yesterday.



I made this card for a Masking Swap I joined. The star, from the Love It hostess set was stamped first, in Pumpkin Pie, then masked and over stamped with the circles stamp (in Tempting Turquoise) from the Background Sampler set. This was then masked and over stamped with the Print Pattern background stamp, in Close to Cocoa. All of this is done on Naturals Ivory cardstock. The star is coated with Crystal Effects. The Hello! is stamped in Chocolate Chip.

I was feeling all pleased with myself, and had made up about 8 of the eleven I needed, when I asked my hubby what he thought. He looked at it for a while then said, 'ummmm the colours are a bit bright...or something'. Arrrggggghhhhhhhh. Note to self....don't ask hubby what he thinks if you don't really want to know :-(. I hope the swapees don't think it's yukky. No-one will ever join a swap with me again (the beauty of this online gig is that I can always blame my dodgy looking cards on the poor photography ;-). I should take them outside during the day because I always struggle with my flash at night.

I've been a slacker!

So to my readership of four...oh, hang on, one of those is me...ooops ;-), to my readership of three, please accept my apologies.

This is not a new card, but I really like it, so here 'tis....



Stamps are from the the SAB 2007 Happy Harmony set. Colours are Lavender Lace, Certainly Celery and Whisper White. The flower heads and the words Happiness Always are clear embossed.

Thanks for looking!

Google Reader

Reading through Jo Eades' awesome blog recently I discovered a link to Google Reader. Now most of you are probably Google Reader pros, or something, but I've never even heard about it before let alone seen it in action! It is an AWESOME tool. You can link in all the blogs you want to catch up on regularly, and it will tell you when there are new posts on those blogs. In addition you can tag various posts in the different blogs and keep record of things you want to go back to, ie cards, colours or anything of interest.

As an example, I have made tags of cards that I think are beautiful, and made this tag public, and linked it to this blog. Now you can click on the 'read more' on the LHS of this blog, under Other People's Beautiful Cards, and see what you think! I have done the same for Groovy Colours and Techniques. It may not be so interesting to you, but for me...it is BLISS. I keep seeing things and thinking, Oooohhhhhh, must try and make a card in that colour combo, then I forget where I saw it, and it's gone...poof! NOW, I can find them all again....just like that (snapping my fingers in the air just doesn't cut it online, does it?).

WAKEUP! Hope you didn't fall asleep! The lovely people at Google are NOT paying me to con you all into using their reader...it is just really cool.

Birthday Invitation

I have been madly creating swap cards for the FOUR swaps I entered into recently. Four swaps, at least 10 cards per swap, so I've been too busy to do anything else :-(. I want to put them up here, but think I should probably wait until the swapees have received their copies (although one of my contributions has already put in a phantom appearance here ;-)....if you blinked, you might have missed it!

So...in order to at least have something new to show for myself, here is the card I made for the kids birthday party.



Colours are: Only Orange, Tempting Turquoise, Basic Black, and Whisper White. The two TT fishes on the front are raised and mounted on dimensionals.

Inside the card I had a piece of Tempting Turquoise cardstock with all the party details printed onto it, and it was held in place by a slot punch flap on either side.

Another hostess gift idea

I have started making these little cardstock samplers for my great workshop hostesses, and thought I'd share the idea here. They seem like a pretty useful little doo-dah (well I use mine all the time at any rate).



BTW - did you notice the groovy embossed bag topper? I love my Cuttlebug! Thanks heaps to my good friend who found one on special at Lincraft and got it for me..you know who you are :-).

My first ever ebay sale!

I sold my first ever item on ebay recently, and I'm so excited about it, I had to share! I thought it'd be really tricky to do, but it was pretty easy actually. I decided I'd send the buyer a thank you card, along with their goods...so this is what I made today.



I challenged myself to make it using only off cuts, because I really need to start using some of them up. My offcuts are overflowing everywhere :-(.

PS. Ebay is my excuse for not having posted in here for a while. I have been too busy watching auctions, sorry!

Embossing Brads

I found out last night that the way to emboss brads is NOT the way that I used yesterday, while embossing 18 brads :-(. I used Versamark to stick the white EP onto the brad...and apparently this will fall off in time (thanks for the heads up Veronica). So today I will have to emboss another 18 brads, by heating the head of the brad first, then just dipping this into the EP and reheating. Can't say I'm looking forward to doing this again...but you get that!

I will put the card up again after it has been delivered to the swapees!