CCC #35

Hello my friends. I should have been working on a card for my class on Thursday, but today is my daughter's birthday, and I wanted to make her a special card. She's 25 today and such a sweetheart. (I can say that, 'cause I'm her mom.) Where has the time gone? We're going out to eat tonight, so I'm going to time this post for when we're out, since I know that sometimes she checks my blog and I don't want her to see it ahead of time.

I tried to make this card a bit more artsy than my usual style, since my daughter's very artistic, so I'm hoping she likes it.

This is also for the Compendium of Curiosities challenge on Linda's blog. The challenge this week is found on page 67 - Design Details.

I actually built this card around the inside of the card, which is a pop-up style card. The idea I had in my head was to use Tim's gear dies and have letters coming from the gears like they were being manufactured. However, because I was pressed for time, I made it a lot more simplistic, but hopefully the idea still comes across. I used the bricked embossing folder behind the gears to make it look more like a factory.

The alphabet letters are an old EK Success stamp set called Typewriter ABC Set from their Nostalgiques line. My 1/2" circle punch was giving me grief and I thought I might have to cut the letters out by hand, but I managed to get them all punched by partially punching, turning the punch a bit and finishing it off. Not fun.

For the front of the card, I die cut some gears from corrugated cardboard and then added some direct to paper vintage photo ink to age them a bit. The old metal buttons in the centers are actually sewn on, since I don't know where my big wire cutter is and I'm not sure I'd have been able to cut the shanks off anyway, since they are a molded part of the button back rather than a wire loop.

The background is stamped with extreme elements (SU) in several colors and then embossed with distressed stripes embossing folder and sponged with vintage photo ink.

I cut a piece of twill and then sponged it a lot with vintage photo and added the print of the little girl. The crown is part of the extreme elements set and I put some black pearls on it.

Some old buttons from my stash, some brads and some stitching complete the card.

Thanks for stopping by today. I hope you're having a wonder-filled week.

CCC #34

Hello my friends. I have a very different card to show you today. It's very 'collagy', which is a style I rarely use. This is my card for the Compendium of Curiosities challenge found on Linda's blog. This week is challenge #34, Dimensional Collage Fragment technique, found on page 63 of Tim's book.

Since I didn't have any fragments, I improvised by cutting a piece of clear shrink plastic, shrinking it, and using it in place of the fragment.

For my background, I stamped several images on a piece of Basic Grey paper. All coloring is done with sponges. Stamps are Hero Arts, SU, and Innovative Stamp Creations. The butterfly is clear embossed with UTEE, but the camera did not pick that up at all.

I used a Spellbinders labels four die and fancy photo corner punch. The beads are from an old necklace found in a rummage sale, except for the long thin one, which is rolled up paper.

The sentiment was stamped and then cut apart. I sponged the edges and popped each piece up with dimensional tape.

I'm not sure I like this one, but it is what it is.

Thanks for stopping by today. Have a great weekend.

CCC #33

Hi my friends. Well, I've been out shoveling again. I didn't really get much done, because what's on the driveway is about a 2-3" deep combination of rain, sleet, snow, freezing rain... you get the picture... pretty solid. My honey went out this morning with the snow blower, but couldn't get through all that, so he just cleared off the snow on top that we got overnight. I've been doing more chopping, trying to break off chunks to clear off. Hopefully, it will warm up a bit and then it will come off easier.

So in between the shoveling bursts (about 1/2 hour of that is about all I can handle at a time), I've been creating. I've been working on this week's challenge for the Compendium of Curiosities over on Linda's blog Studio L3. This week's challenge is Altered Metal Alcohol Inks from page 56 in Tim's book. My card ended up absolutely nothing like I originally envisioned, but that's OK, it's all about the journey, right?

Although not part of the challenge, one of the fun things on this card is the rosette. It started out as brown paper filler in a box of goodies that I received. I thought I'd play with it and see what I could do to alter it. I started by crumpling it up pretty good and then flattening it back out. Then I inked it up with some alcohol inks. Then the really fun part. I painted it with Future floor wax. Since I was impatient, I used my heat gun to dry it.

My first project using it was to die cut some flowers with Tim's tattered florals die, but I didn't like how they turned out. I think I crushed them up a bit much.

So then I decided to try and fan fold it. I used my Scor-pal and scored every 1/4". The paper was actually kinda slippery, so I had a hard time scoring nice and straight, but I wasn't too concerned. After folding it, I realized my strip was too wide to make a circle, so I just trimmed it off on an angle until it would work. Pretty cool. I'm not crazy about the color, but since I started with brown paper, it was hard to get a nice bright color. What I used was mostly stream. It actually looks more teal IRL.

The red circle under the coin is a piece of burlap. I wanted just a tiny bit of red . The metal corner piece is something I picked upreally cheap at a local craft store that was going out of business.

Thanks for stopping by for a visit. Be blessed.

CCC #32

Hello my friends. It's a beautiful winter day - almost spring like with mostly sunny skies and temps soaring up near 50F. A lot of our snow has melted this week, but I know it'll be awhile before spring is actually here.

Today I worked on the next Compendium of Curiosities Challenge (#32) from Linda over at Studio L3. The technique can be found on page 59 of Tim's book.

I don't have any of Tim's stamps or masks, so I had to make some adjustments, but still followed the technique. The floral stamp is from Local King Rubber Stamps and all others are from Cornish Heritage Farms.

The flourish and photo corner are black cardstock, embossed with two layers of clear UTEE. The big flower is die cut with Tim's tattered florals from brown paper bag and misted with bronze and frost glimmer mist.

Thanks for stopping by. Have a wonderful week.

CCC#31 rusted enamel

Hi my friends. I think with all the cold we've been having even my creative cells are frozen! I've been stuck in no mojo land. I'm teaching a class tomorrow and all three cards are at least partially CASED.

However, I did stamp something today that I'm pretty pleased with. I've been seeing creations made using techniques from Tim Holtz's A Compendium of Curiosities book. I know Tim's style is quite different from my normal style, but I'm still intrigued by everything he creates. I received his book for Christmas, and today was the first time I actually attempted to do one of the techniques.

There is a weekly challenge using a challenge from the book put out by Linda at StudioL3. So this is my entry for this week. You can click on the photos for a closer look.

The technique is called rusted enamel and is found on page 41 of Tim's book. The background piece is a brayered embossing folder. I had a piece left from another project that didn't get used. I embossed a flourish in clear over the rusted enamel. It shows up better in the 2nd photo.

The butterfly is die cut from plastic packaging, inked with alcohol inks and layered on black. I made some paper beads that I colored with Copic markers and then glazed.

Thanks so much for visiting today. Be blessed.

Melody