Happy Birthday Ciprian - This Coupon is Redeemable . . .

Happy Birthday Ciprian! Who the heck is that?  My little sister's boyfriend.  She texted me (I feel so cool saying that) on Friday night and asked if she could come over on Saturday to make Ciprian's birthday card and a coupon book of some sort.  My sister and her boyfriend are college students, perpetually broke, so things like this go a long way.  I get it, it's been quite some time since I was there, but I am willing to help out!!  Plus,  I love it when my sister visits and so do my kids so my answer was a resounding YES!  Last year, in honor of Cipriain's birthday, she and I spent a week constructing the massive haunted house from Happy Hauntings.  Given the bar was set so high, I wasn't sure two evening was going to be enough time to top last year's creation. Despite my trepidation we jumped into it.  My sister wanted to create a coupon book for him to cash in  for things she would never normally do - like watch a movie of Ciprian's choosing. I know, that sounds crazy, until she started to tell me the type of movies Ciprian' likes - think Lifetime movies circa 1988 and you'll get the picture.  So, with that painful picture in my head and a clear understanding in my heart I pushed forward.  Creating a coupon book is a first for me.  I thought it was a fab idea and I was thrilled when I found the PERFECT image  on a Cricut cartridge.  Scratch that - unfortunately the one I wanted wasn't on a cartridge I own!  Don't worry, it's Make The Cut to the rescue.  I was able to find a ticket image in the Make The Cut gallery and with about ten minutes worth of modifications we were in business.  I am in love with this coupon book.  Ruh roh.  That means you guys might be seeing more of these in the future.  Somebody stop me!  Without further adieu, here it is:

Who is Spanky?  Well apparently Cirprian has an alias, and Spanky it is.  Don't question it, just go with it.  The front and back of the Coupon book were cut using cereal box chipboard and then covered with houndstooth paper on both sides from one of the DCWV Halloween packs.  I wish I could tell you which one but my sister was in charge of most of the paper selections.  I used my Chomas' gel pen holder to print everything on the coupon, and before unloading my mat from my machine, I changed the gel pen back to the cutting blade to cut out the tickets.  We added a mat, and then adhered it to the ticket.  Pretty cute isn't it?

My favorite part of the coupon book is the front and the back. Believe it or not I did not use any adhesive to hold it together, just Bazzil yarn that I've had from a Stitch It Up set that's been sitting around for quite some time. I also tied a few 7 Gypsies gears to the front because Ciprian is an engineering student and my sister thought he would appreciate the reference.  The tags on the front of the book were cut from Spellbinders Four and the flourishes are from Waltzingmouse's Vintage Banners.  Spanky's name was spelled out using Making Memories Alphabet Charms.  I'm almost at the end of this pack and it making me sad.  I don't think they sell these anymore!

Don't you love the yarn?  I love the yarn.

Next up is the birthday card.  After flipping through the Happy Hauntings book for a while my sister decided she liked the gate and tombstones.  I sprayed black paper with Marshmellow Glimmer Mist and then cut it out three times.  Once adhered together it was thick enough to resemble chipboard.  I cut the tombstomes out of DCWV silver shimmer paper several times to add some dimension.  The bats are Spellbinders dies (Nested Bats) and they were inked with Basic Grey (Stampin' Up) to accent their embossing.  I also pop dotted the bats for dimension.

The sentiment and the tags behind it I love but I really can't take credit for.  Many of you know that I am head over heels in love with Waltzingmouse Stamps.  This past week, one of the Top Mouse's used these spellbinder tags and accents to create the most awesome focal point.  I totally scraplifted those from her card which you can see here.  Jeanne is an incredible crafter with many awards to her credit.  One day I can hope to create with ease the masterpieces she turns out week after week. 

Here is the inside of the card.  The sentiment at the top was cut using Wild card, and I used a Stampin' Up image from the Happiest Birthday Wishes set on the bottom.

And that's all folks.  I really have to say I loved this project.  I received some invaluable tips and ideas from my crafting buddies about the coupon book and it made all the difference in the world. I really like being stretched outside of my comfort zone and I hope to get to create something like this again soon.  In the meantime I am planning on entering it in the latest Cricut Circle Weekly Challenge.  I think this is a gift just about anyone would want to receive!

Recipe:

Paper:  K & Company Spooktacular; DCWV Ghouls & Ghosts; DVWV Midnight Spell

Cartridges:  Happy Hauntings, Wild Card

Make The Cut:  Coupon book and tags;  Fonts: Stencil & Batang

Spellbinders:  Fancy Tags, Ornate Artisian Tags & Accents, Nested Bats, Labels Four

Stamps:  Waltzingmouse - Cameo Maker (oval stamp) & Vintage Banners (flourish); Papertrey Ink Happy Birthday; Stampin' Up - Happiest Birthday Wishes

Embellishments:  Bazzil yarn; 7 Gypsies Gears; Making Memories Alphabet Charms

 Thanks for stopping by!  I hope to have something to show you again real soon!!

More Thank You Cards

I am starting to wonder how many of my blog posts have "Thank You Card" in the title?  Probably a lot.  I wish I had something more creative to call them, but Thank You card really does cover it.  This week I loved the card I came up with for the Waltzingmouse sketch so much that I decided to use it to make a bunch of thank you cards for my son's teachers and therapists.  Each one took quite a bit of time as I was sort of playing around with paper, colors, and especially embellishments.  I will warn you, I like to take a lot of pictures and also, well, I went a little crazy on embellishing a few of them.  Eh, not everything can be a masterpiece right?

Okay there is a lot going on here right? The basic form of the card is the same, three different papers stitched together, accented with flowers and a Thank You tag.  With that said, I used a lot of different things here, too many to name actually.  If you have a question about a specific card, please send me a note.  Some of these came out better than others, but I liked them all well enough to display them here, even if I did go crazy on the flowers on that last one.

Thanks for stopping by today!

My Gratitude Journal

I am so excited!  This is my first time desiging a project for TheBugBytes and I am thrilled for the opportunity!  I want to thank Pam so much for asking me to contribute alongside these other fabulous crafters.  My project is a Gratitude Journal.  I have been toying around with the idea of keeping one of these for a while as a way to force myself to get happy and put it all in perspective on those rougher days.  I figured why not make one instead of buying it?  Here is the finished product.

I started with two 6x6 pieces of chipboard made by Cinch.  Yes, I could have probably cut some down, but then I would have to sand the edges and I'm lazy - so I bought them!  Using Modge Podge for paper, I covered them with brown paper (Bazzil) on the outside, and then inside is covered using Coordinations paper.  

I decided I wanted to do something a bit different.  I've never worked with canvas before, and I picked up a piece of 12 x 12 while at Archiver's.  I pulled out my Hello Doily stamp from Stampin' Up and stamped on the canvas using Old Olive Stampin' Up craft ink.  Now when I stamp with these larger stamps (or smaller ones for that matter) I also do a few test stamps on scrap paper so I have a good feel for the stamp.  Some of the larger ones take a few tries before they stamp evenly.  After I stamped the image onto the canvas, I was a bit worried because I couldn't see it very well.  But then I covered it with the embossing powder (Adrionick Moss) and the image showed up very well.  I was pleased that I got it on the first try!  

This is what it looked liked after I covered it with embossing powder and shook off the excess.

 Check out my fancy embossing/misting area - hey, why let a good box go to waste?

This is what it looked like after the embossing powder had set.  It doesn't feel as textured as embossing powder feels on paper, but it does look like a very good stamped image.  I was very happy with the result. 

So what's next?  I took a few pieces from my dwindling My Mind's Eye Stella & Rose collection and spent some time inking and distressing the edges.  I decided that I wanted to use the doily image as an offset image, but I needed to cut it out first.  I ran it through my Grand Calibur using one of my Spellbinders circle dies.  It didn't cut 100% through, but left enough of an impression that I was able to trim it with my scissors.  I also inked and distressed the edges of the canvas as well so an absolute perfect cut wasn't necessary.

Yes, I know this picture shows a different color doily - I actually did two - one in Moss and one in Copper to see which one I liked best - I cut them both out using my spellbinders die, but ultimately I went with the green one.

After inking and distressing each piece I adhered the pieces together, and added a bit of straight stitching with hot pink embroidery ink.  I also trimmed off the edge of the doily to make it fit within the square.  I then added some charms from Memory keepers spelling out the word Thankful.  Because I am a slave to dimension (I have yet to find a project I couldn't work it in somewhere) I took a piece of off white paper, stamped the doily again, embossed it with the same moss embossing powder and then cut it out with a smaller Spellbinders die.  I then placed it over the canvas symmetrically, on pop dots of course, and added a Stella & Rose brad to the center.  A pearl flourish, flowing out from the center of the doily was the final touch.  I love, love, love the final look of the journal's cover. 

Okay, let's move on to the inside of the journal.  I thought I could do something easy and just cut out 6x6 squares for pages, but I was feeling a bit more adventurous.  I decided I wanted to have something with a fun border, so I turned to what?  You guessed it - Elegant Edges.  I took one of the borders, hid the inside cutouts (because I wanted it to be solid) and then welded it to a square shape using my gypsy.  I then sat over my Expression for about 30 minutes cutting all of these out.  Well my Cricut actually did the cutting, I mostly watched.  I know a lot of people wouldn't have gone to the trouble of using their machine to do this, but I have several issues as a crafter, and one is that I am not so good with paper trimmer.  I can cut out a 5 x 7 card fine, but ask me to do 40 of those back to back and I can guarantee you that most of them won't be 5 x 7.  My Cricut is far more accurate than I!!

Okay, so now I have my journal pages - am I done yet?  Well, no, the inside was looking a little bare to me so I decided to add something to it.  Just a stamp or something reflective to help me remember why I'm keeping this journal to begin with.  I pulled out my Spellbinders Beaded Circles and cut out this image that I stamped from the Verve Words of Wisdom set and then embossed with copper embossing powder.  

I thought it looked a bit bare so I added some bling around the beads.  Some are Imaginesence, the rest are from my stash.  So I'm done and now I can get this baby bound!  Here it is after I finished punching all of my holes using my Cinch.

And after a bit of finagling, I put it all together by putting the spiral wire on.  I have to say this took a bit more effort that I imagined it would, but I think I might have gone just over the 1" size of the wire so I'll be sure to stay just under it the next time.  This morning, as I went back down to my craftroom to inspect my masterpiece I realized that I had done something really stupid last night at 10:30p.m. when I bound the entire thing together - I glued my oh so cute inside sentiment UPSIDE DOWN.  With hot glue no less.  So, what to do, what to do.  Okay, well I can just cover that up. 

The New and Improved Version!

Ha!  I like it better than the first one.  And I got to add some additional dimension which is always a plus.  The stamp is the same, but I skipped the embossing and stamped it in Chocolate chip, over a pretty flower from Stampin' Up's Blessed Mother's collection (stamped in Old Olive).

So, that's it!  It's finally finished and ready to be used.  I think I'll start on that - tomorrow.  Thanks for everyone who took the time to read through this loonnnnng post.  If you're still with me I hope you have enjoyed what you have seen.  I have a few more pictures to show you of the finished journal, including some close ups. 

Recipe:

Cinch:  6x6 chipboard pieces, Brown Cinch 1" spiral wire

Paper: Stella & Rose, Bazzil, Coordinations, Canvas, Stampin' Up

Stamps:  Hello Doilly (Stampin' Up), Blessed Mother (Stampin' Up), Words of Wisdom (Verve Stamps)

 Ink:  Stampin' Up Chocolate chip, Old Olive Craft Ink, Old Olive Class Ink, Crumb Cake, Moss 

Spellbinders:  Beaded Circles, Regular Circles

Cartridges:  Elegant Edges

Embossing Powder:  Copper, and Moss

Brads: Stella & Rose

Flourish:  My Stash

Charms:  Making Memories

I have thoroughly enjoyed sharing this project with you.  Have a wonderful Sunday!!