Tuesday, September 27, 2011

The Halloween 4-Square - This one's for Barb Housner

Barb left a comment on the Cool Cat Card Class post and as promised, I made this one for her!  Thanks for your support!

Ahhh, the four-square.  A timeless card design I use again and again.  I don't think there's been a major holiday in the last 10 years that has not seen me use this design in one way or another.  And, if you ever wondered what people see in those Inchie stamps from Inkadinkado, well here you go.  I own no less than 13 sets and I believe there is one on the way. 

If you decide to dive into the Inchie scene, do yourself a solid and buy the 1", 1.25" and 1.5" square punches from EKSuccess.  You'll get nice even tiles with no measuring and a perfect .25" or .5" matt with just a squeeze.  How cool is that? 

I hung these little guys on a big, full, yellow moon made from Spellbinder's nesting circles set.  They are matted with orange and black glitter paper.  A 'Happy Halloween' puctuated with sparkly brads by We R Memory Keepers and a sprinkling of sequins finishes this one off.

Enjoy! - AMK

Stamping and Scrapping Sites - Links and Reviews


Hi All - below is a table of my go-to online shopping sites when I need something or just need a fix.  There are a plethora of other sites out there, but these are ones I frequent the most.  I've 'Friended' some of them on FB and to do so means you get project updates as well as sales updates.  I have no really good reason why I have not 'Friended' them all except that I am lazy.  It could be they are not on FB, but that would be hard to imagine.  These are in no particular order. 

I would love to hear if you have a favorite site.  Leave a comment to share the link. 

Enjoy! - AMK


Site NamePricingSelectionEase of UseBest ThingWorst Thing
ScrapyLand.comAlways DiscountedExtensiveThe site is ok - but the search feature could be enhanced. New products are available for pre-order at a discount!  Sign up to get coupons and sales notifications sent to you.  This sight sells items that are normally only available from European Sites.  The site name is spelled wrong on purpose.  Don't be fooled if you type in Scrappyland.com (w/ 2 p's).  
StampyLand.comAlways DiscountedJust Ok but growing every day. The site is ok - but the search feature could be enhanced. Free Shipping all the timeYour ScrapyLand account does not work here.  You have to sign up again. 
OhMyCrafts.comAlways a CouponExtensive - but popular items are out of stock fast.This site needs an update.  Clunky, but usable. Sign up and get emails with discount coupons almost every day. Clunky navigation of the site. 
Micheals.comVariable based on SalesLimitedGoodYour repeat buy stuff is usually available when you need it. They only add new products 2-3 times a year.  
Joann.comVariable based on SalesLimitedGoodSign up and get emails with discount coupons.  The online only deals are usally hard to pass up.They are not as bad as Michaels with adding new products, but they are still slow compared to the other stores. 
AddictedtoRubber
Stamps.com
Usually full priceLimited but they say they are growingVery Good - the standard by which all others are measured. This is a new owner for an old stand by site.  If they get their inventory back to where the original addicted was, this will be the place to find any stamp you may need. The new owners did not retain your previous account status. 
Scrapbooking.comVariable based on SalesExtensiveVery Good - the standard by which all others are measured.  Selection is HUGE here.  New stuff is coming in every day and available fast.  Sales are usually generous.Not a lot of email coming out of this site to let you know about the sales.  You'll have to visit often to see what's happening. 

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Coolest of Cats Card Class - Mini

In response to Andrea who lamented not having any of the products from the previous card class, I created this card with an eye for easy substitution.  It's a mini class, which is my way of saying the construction of the thing is pretty straight-forward. 

Hey - how about this?  If you send me a pic of your version of this card, I'll post it here for everyone to see.   amking1964@gmail.com will get it to me.  It will be fun to see your interpretation of it. 

First - here is a picture of the supplies I used: 

Background paper - Reminisce, Midnight Stripe (I bet the designer has a cat named Midnight)
Cat Stamps - These are two images from a company called Prickly Pear.  I picked up these little guys at the One of a Kind Rubber Stamp and Scrapbook show in Madison last year.  The Saturday before Thanksgiving, folks.  Mark your calendars.
Circles Stamp - that's Tim Holtz, he's got an embossing folder that matches it if you really dig it.  
Embossing Powder - ZING by American Crafts - Orange, this stuff is glittered. (Andrea's favorite medium)
Staz-On - Jet Black
Sentiment - sorry - the manufacturer is not labeled on this one, it's really easy to use your printer though, (wink, wink!)
Orange Brads - these two here are swirl brads in two colors of orange.  They came in a glass tube that was prone to rolling off the table and breaking on the floor, hence I don't have the original packaging to tell you who made them. 


The finished card is #10, that's 4x9.25.  It will fit nicely into a #10 business envelope.  Take your supplies and work your magic and make them look like what you see below.  Note that I stamped two sets of circles, embossed them and then cut them out.  Stamp everything on the scraps from your cream colored card stock. 


When you're all done putting it together, it should look something like this.   That's it.  Like I said, a mini card class. 

Let me know what you think and send me your versions!   Enjoy - AMK

Zutter Kutter - Part 2, a review



A couple of days ago I blogged about a new (to me) tool called the Zutter Kutter.  This thing retails for $169.00 but I found a used one on Amazon and decided to take a chance.  It arrived super-fast and in its original packaging.  The first owner indicated she only used it once.  Yeah!  But of course that makes me wonder why only once....hmmmm. 

Things to consider if you are thinking about purchasing this tool:
  1. It's heavy.  But it needs to be to do the heavy lifting of cutting board stock.  It's not as heavy as the Big Shot Pro, if that's a reference for you.
  2. It's about 15" long so you will need some space when you want to use it.  Not too surprising.  Board stock is larger than 12x12 most of the time so you'll need some space to swing that stuff around anyway. 
  3. Because board stock is larger than 12x12 you'll have to cut it down the old fashioned way before it will fit in this tool.  Not terrible and is what I expected. 
  4. I did some test cuts with some scraps of chip board and was not happy.  It went just shy of cutting through the whole thing.  I kept having to turn the piece over to get it to cut all the way through.  Odd.  And, definitely a drawback.  But then I remembered the original owner and her 'only one use of the thing'.  I pulled out the blade and found it was notched.  Bingo!  It was a simple thing to reverse the blade and begin cutting again.  Can you say "hot knife through butter"?
  5. To look at the thing - that large black knob looks like it's integral to the function of cutting.  It's not.  It's just a handle for you to hang on to with your free hand to keep it out of the way. 
  6. Safety is well thought out.  You can't even see the blade much less get yourself in the way of it.  I did, however, come close to bloody-ing myself when reversing the blade, but I admit, I'm a spaz.
  7. Blades are reversible (obvious by now) and cheap.  Between $5 and $6.
  8. It does not come with instructions.  You might think, that because mine was used, the original owner just forgot to include them.  But, no.  After a little Internet research, most of the people who reviewed this thing at their purchase site said it was a pain to have to download the instructions.  It was not a pain, just inconvenient. 
  9. It's not meant for cutting just one sheet of paper.  You can stack about 20 sheets, clamp them in and cut, but the heavy duty blade does not work well on just one sheet.  They tell you this in the instructions....that you have to download.  :o/   So - if you were planning to replace your every day cutter with this, that's a no.
  10. The measuring stay is only six inches long.  That's way too short in my book, but it is able to be used on either side of the machine.  It will be easy enough to create a jig for larger cuts when the time comes.  Maybe the company will read my review and create one for us!?
Overall, on the scale of 1-10, I'd give this thing a solid 8.  It will make my book making a LOT easier.

Regards, - AMK

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Halloween Card Class - a rainy afternoon project

It's Saturday here in Cedarburg and man, is it raining.  Dennis Diebold must have washed is wife Lynn's car again...He tells me that's the surest way to make it rain.   To while away the afternoon I put this little card together.  It's one of those piles you saw on the floor in a previous Halloween post.  Hopefully the pictures will make things clear. 



First - we have to give credit where credit is due:  Here are the tools you'll need: 

Sizzix Strip Die - Bats;
EK Success punch - Drops;
Sizzix Tim Holtz Alterations embossing folder - Halloween Words;
Stampendous H258 - Fang-tastic
Staz-On - Royal Purple
Versa Mark - Grape (not pictured)
Colorbox Re-Inker - Lava Black (not pictured)
Small rubber brayer
Pallet board
Background paper is from Cosmo Crickit, Haunted collection - Macabre
Transparency Film
White, beige, orange, purple, black card stock scraps
Die Cutting Machine - I use the Big Shot.  It's my workhorse. 


The finished card is A7 - that's 5x7.   The embossing folder is A2 - that's 4.25 x 5.5.  So trim your papers accordingly. 

Ok - Let's get started.  If you click on the finished card to embiggen it, you will see the transparency overlay over the words.  This adds to the interest of the card and makes people say - 'How'd you do that?'

Well - here's how:

Cut your transparency film to fit the folder.  There are two definate sides to this stuff.  The rough side is meant to take the ink.  So always use that side down. 



Dribble a little Lava Black ink onto a pallet board and roll it around with the brayer until you get a nice even smudge. 



Open the embossing folder and roll the ink onto the back panel with the brayer.  Don't think to much about this or you will go crazy.  You are working with a transparency and that means everything is in reverse.  Lay the film inside the folder with the rough side down and roll it through your die cutting machine.



Next, cut a piece of white card stock the same size as the transparency, lay it into the emobssing folder and run it through.  Don't worry about cleaning the folder.  The ink, remember, will be on the back side of the white card stock, so you won't see it. 

Load the brayer with ink again, and roll it onto the front of the white embossed card. 


Layer the transparency over the card stock and attach using a few strategically placed mini-glue dots. 


Ink the stamp with royal purple and stamp onto beige card stock scrap, trim close to image, edge with grape ink, and matt with first orange and then purple.  Don't use white for this image.  You want those fangs to pop, so they should be the only white element to the card. 


Ok - if your hands are not clean, go wash them.  We want these fangs to be a nice bright white.  I had to toss my first set because my fingers were full of ink.   Punch out two sets of the fangs using the Drops punch.  Make sure your paper does not have an obvious texture as that's usually only on one side.  You'll be turning one of the sets over to get the shapes you need for this. 


Die cut one of the smaller bats from the strip die using a black scrap.   Now you have all your pieces, so let's assemble the card. 

I liked the background paper so wanted to show more of it rather than less.  Attach the embossed panel to the card as shown and trim off the pieces that don't fit on the front.   Layer on the stamped image.  Pop up the fangs and the bat with some foam squares.  Ink the outer edge of the card with grape ink.  Stay away from the transparency with the grape.  The front of the transparency will not take the ink and you'll just get it all over your fingers.  If you want to add a purple edge to the transparency, you'll have to do it with the Staz-On. 



That's It!  Hope this was all clear.  If you get confused, post a commnt.  I'll respond in kind. 

Enjoy! - AMK

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

A creative process - Halloween 101

Pictured below is the start of my Halloween card creative process.  I started by cleaning the room.  Let's face it, it needed a good cleaning.  Everytime I do that, more stuff winds up in the rummage sale pile.  Fine by me.  Out with the old, in with the new!  And, yes, there is new stuff arriving every day.  Someday soon I will blog about all the sites I like to buy from and my thoughts about each. 

I should note that everything you see layed out on the floor below is all from my historical arsenal of Halloween stuff.  None of it is new this year.  Oh, wait.  I take that back, the Unlucky 13 set is one of those Unity sets I spoke about in my last post.  But that's it.  I really wanted to use up all this stuff before I started restocking.  Fingers crossed, I think this year will do the trick. 

The theme of each card is usually the first thing I settle on.  For example, if someone says, 'I've got my eye on you'; put that in a Halloween context and what comes to mind?  Exactly!  Creapy eyeballs glowing in field of blackness, right?  Now all I have to do is find the right images, paper and embellishments to make it real.  That's how I got to the 13 piles of soon to be cards you see below.    

I'll make multiples of each style until the paper is used up.  One goes in the shoebox to pull out when magazines put out a call.  One goes in the 'My Work' acid free storage box for posterity.  All the others are either sold or sent. 

Is this how you do it?  I'm curious to find out how other creative minds work.

Enjoy! - AMK

Monday, September 19, 2011

Unity Stamps - Breaking all the rules

I've been collecting a number of images from Unity Stamps in the last year or so.  They were one of the companies at this year's Expo here in Milwaukee.  And, if you have not yet 'friended' them on Facebook, you missed out on a SWEET Facebook promotion they did in August - 40% off your entire order.  Needless to say, I bought another boat-load.  I picked up Bella Trees at the Expo and have been waiting until Fall to bring them out to front and center. 

Thumbing though my unseemly amount of paper, I happend across an 8x8 pack by Carolyn Gavin from K&Co, that to look at, does not even whisper fall, with it's bright, hot pinks and teals with lime green and dark brown accents.  Yet the images on some of the papers were the perfect foil for these funky trees in the Bella Tree set.  And, when I found acorns on the reverse side of one of them, well, I've never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth!

Breaking all the rules is part of the fun.

Here are two of what will likely be a double handfull when I finish with this set.  I'll add more pix under this post as they emerge.  Join the blog to get updates, so you don't miss anything. 







Sunday, September 18, 2011

I'm a baaaad girl....The Zutter Kutter (Part 1)

I was doing a little shopping online today and came across a new (to me) gadget.  I don't have it yet but will post my thoughts on it once it arrives.  If you have it, I would love to hear what you think of it.

Most of you know that I create hand made books.  Many of you receive one of them for Christmas every year in the form of a recipe book.  What you don't know is how bloody hard it can be to cut bookboard for 18 cookie books.  Or how tedius it is to cut 270 sheets of card stock down to the size you need for the recipe card, which of course, is NEVER a standard size.  Why make it easy?

Lo and behold - the Zutter Kutter.  I already have the Bind-it-All tool and like it.  The O-wires come in plenty of sizes and they are always on sale somewhere.  I've used it for two book projects so far, one was a Halloween riddle book I gave out to the trick-or-treaters and the other was the Cookie book from Christmas 2008, pictured below (albeit a bit blurry, but the binding wires are what I'm trying to show).  So, I'm thinking since the Bind-it-All was a hit, this new cutter thingy will be too.   Stay tuned....


Saturday, September 17, 2011

Teabag Folding - Another option for Trees

Ok - so apparently I'm enthralled with this technique, despite the dyslexic tendancies.  I saw some pix of these styles using the image views that Bing! provides in your search results.  So, without much ado, began cutting and folding.  These are made with 2" squares and you need 10 of them for each tree.  If you pick an obvious stripe like I did, make sure you fold them all the same way to keep the symetry of the tree visible.  Symetry and precision is the key to success with this technique. 

How you lay them down makes the difference in the look.  Note the darker colored tree below has three tiers that gradually get larger as you go down.  The other has three as well, but the third one is more shallow than the one above.  Either way I think they turned out pretty cool.   I tried to get an angle shot so you can see the dimention of them.  These trees are mounted on 5x7 cards (that's either A6 or A7, I can never remember).  The ones from the previus post were A2. 

The nice thing about this tea bag business is the finished product folds flat enough for you to mail them without a lot of hassle.  When the receiver opens them up, they should pop right back up.  How many of you out there have mailed something with a little dimension to it, only to have the post office mangle the living crap out of it? 

Tips for foiling the post office mangler:
  1. Load the card into the envelope with the brad or bling NOT under the stamp if at all possible.  Go so far as to design the card so there is no embellishment in the upper right quadrant of the card.  Those automatic cancelling machines are mean as hell. 
  2. Make your own envelope out of something heavier than text weight paper.  I use 65lb test card stock (cover wieght is another name for it) for most of mine.  It does the trick.  Most cardstock paper you buy is cover wieght. 
  3. If you have the time to wait in line - hand cancelling at the counter is always an option.

Click an image to embiggen - Enjoy!  - AMK





Wednesday, September 14, 2011

How to Frustrate your Inate Dyslexia - Teabag Folding

I've made these little trees a couple of times in the past.  There are plenty of u-Tube videos for the how-to's of doing it so I won't go into that.  I've linked in one of them below.  What I will suggest is that what seems a simple folding of squares is anything but to those of us who can't tell our right hands from our lefts. 

The idea of them encroached on my tired brain a few nights ago, and as I lie awake waiting for sleep, I tried to figure out the folds in my head, which of course led me to get up and into the craft room to cut some test squares.  After 20 minutes of frustration, I head downstairs to the computer to review those u-Tube videos I mentioned earlier.  Success.  I have a test version all folded up.  Time for bed. 

A couple more days go by and now it's time to make good use of that lost sleep.  Yes, it still took me another 10 minutes of trial and error, but success comes once again.  Below are two of the 6 that I folded. 

Something to consider:  There are about a million ways to embellish these trees, but how about you let the paper do the talking this time.   And that trunk thing you'll see in the videos is WAY overrated. 

Something else to consider:  Every piece of paper you own is fair game for Christmas cards. 

Enjoy.

http://youtu.be/R5dIhBbPEec


Monday, September 5, 2011

The Cut-able Font Library

Organization - always part of the fun of any well stocked craft room.  So - yes.  I have a lot of stuff to play with.  One of the things I spend a lot of time searching for is the right font to use on any given project.  Sometimes its obvious what to use, say, for Halloween.  Any scary, drippy, Transylvania type font will convey the necessary sentiments without a lot of fuss.  But other times it's not so obvious.  To make the decision easier, I've cut the upper and lower case ABC's for each of the cut-able fonts I own.  Simple black on white or the reverse, so all you see is the font. 

Those long narrow boxes of dies from Sizzix are hard to see into so the photo below shows how I've labled them with their font rather than their name.  I mean, who cares if a font is called 'sunset', right?  All I care about is what it looks like.  The hanging tags have the samples from other sets I own.  I have yet to add the tags for all the circut fonts, but they are coming.

Once I get the cutables all tagged, it will be on to the stampables.  Stamp sets are easier to see and thumb through than these boxes of dies, so maybe the stampables can wait?  It's all part of the fun.

If you struggle to remember all the different fonts you have, maybe this little font library trick would work for you as well. 



Friday, September 2, 2011

The Craft Room - messy because I like it that way!

Hello Everyone!  Lest you think I am some kind of craft poser, I thought my first post should show you what my workroom looks like on any given day.  If you are like me, you probably have anywhere between 3 and 7 projects going on at one time.  Multitasker's unite! 

I tried to get the room from all angles, but it's pretty cramped.  I like haveing my toys within easy reach so I purposely keep the space small.  As you can see by the wall color, I'm a huge fan of anything that no one else would ever dream of putting on their walls.  PURPLE.  It makes me happy.  I must say, though, that because I see purple in the room when I am creating, it's not a color I go to a lot for projects.  My creative mind is probably on purple overload when in there.  For that reason, maybe something neutral would have been a better choice? Live and learn!

If I ever get to where the place is clean, I'll post more pics to prove I'm not a slob.  Really, I'm not, I swear! :)

Click on any image to embiggen.