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Crafty Road Trip

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Yesterday two friends and I went on a little road trip to Buffalo, NY, about an hour from here, to visit Buffalo Stamps and Stuff. Sharon has a wonderful little store that is crammed with good things. It’s hard to restrain yourself when faced with so many goodies for crafting.

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I managed not to buy any 12X12 paper since I have enough to last me a lifetime. I went with a list, and found almost everything on it. Here are my major finds:

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I did buy two packages of the new Memory Box 6X6 papers. They are so soft and beautiful. One is shades of pink and the other blues, greens, and purple. The big find was the boxed set of Cavallini stamps. Earlier in the week I saw a beautiful card using one of these stamps, and added a “realistic bird” stamp to my list. Just as I was getting ready to check out, I looked on the floor and there was the exact set I was looking for. I added the new Memory Box stamp to the basket, thinking it will make a good background for some of the lovely stamps in this set. I don’t have anything like these, and best of all, I had a 20% off coupon that I was able to use for the set of stamps. Here’s a look at the stamps:

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Some adhesives & colorful pearls, two containers of Ultra Fine Flower Soft, and a set of Twinkling H2O’s rounded out my purchases. Afterwards we went to Pano’s for lunch. We’re always happy with the delicious food and relaxing atmosphere here.

Great day and then came home to dinner out with Tracy and two good friends at a new restaurant, The French Quarter Cafe–fabulous New Orleans style food.

Papertrey Anniversary Challenge

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The anniversary festivities are winding down at Papertrey Ink, but there was another challenge today. The “assignment” was to create a set of floral embellishments, and then use one to create a card. For today’s flowers I used Jeni Bowlin papers form the mini sets. They are easiest to crumple since they are text weight paper rather than the stiffer scrapbook papers. I used my Nestabilities “Blossom” and cut three different sizes from seven different papers. I sewed some Papertrey buttons to the middle.

PapertreyEmbellies 

For the card I used Pure Poppy and Kraft cardstock from Papertrey, a piece of cream cardstock from my stash, the Houndstooth Embossing folder by Cuttlebug, a Quickutz tag and leaves, and piece of gingham ribbon. The sentiment is an Amuse stamp.

CPS 153 & Papertrey Ink

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Papertrey Ink is sponsoring the challenge at CPS which I always enjoy. The number of people who have already posted cards this week is truly amazing. These two sites must be a great combination. Here’s the sketch:

CPS153 

and my take on it:

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Cardstock (Bazzill); patterned paper (Papertrey “Hodge Podge”); stamps (Papertrey “Blooming Button Bits”); button (Papertrey); silk ribbon (Ellen Huston); gems (Michaels & Kaisercraft)

Scrap-Mart

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I thought I would share some of the projects I’ve done for the Scrap-Mart Design Team. They picked up a lot of new lines at CHA, and are expecting lots of new products for their existing lines. I’m especially glad they’ve decided to pick up both October Afternoon and Jillibean as those are two of my favorite paper lines. I received some of the new American Craft papers to play with (next up in my project list), and they are wonderful. I’m waiting to get the new Hands Free mat for the Slice. They’ll also be stocking the 12 new design cards.

This is the first time I’ve ever used Just-Rite stamps. I had one of their self-stamping units and wasn’t very pleased with it. Now I have two sets of the hand-held stamps, and there’s so much you can do with them. It’s also my first experience with Unity Stamps, and they’re a quality stamp, mounted much like the new Hero Art Clings. So here are a few of the projects:

JRValentine 

Just Rite Stamps

SMJanSketch_hi

Sassafrass Lass papers

ThinkingofYouOrange 

Sketch challenge at Scrap-Mart with Sassafrass Lass papers and brad

You'reTheBest

Copic markers

PuzzlingLO 

Sassafrass Lass paper and Copic markers

YouMakeLifeBright 

Unity Stamps

ThankYo 

Unity stamps

Another Papertrey Ink Anniversary Challenge

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The challenges at Nicole’s blog just keep coming, as do the amazing announcements about new products. This one was more challenging than usual. It had two parts. The sketch was easy enough, but the color combination took quite a bit of thought.

Here’s the sketch:

PTI Sketch 

There were several color combinations, and you had to use the one associated with the first letter of your user name at PTI. Here’s the one for K:

PTIColorPalette
I truly would never think to put these five colors together, but I’m pretty pleased with how the card turned out in the end.

Best
Papertrey cardstock in colors seen above, Sizzix leaf die, sentiment from Blooming Button Bits, flower punch with gems from Michaels, Martha Stewart border punch

Project 365

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I took a lot more photographs this week, so I had quite a few to choose from. Completing the first of the Develop on Fridays assignments has reminded me to take several (or many) photos of the same thing from different angles. Here are five from this week.

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1. beautiful cord from a lovely shop in Rhinebeck, NY that I rediscovered this week in my card-making tote 2. shadows from the fence in our backyard, taken from our bedroom window 3. Cornell bread made by Tracy with his new breadmaker 4. the newly renovated Kodak Hall at the Eastman Theater; a friend and I went to the RPO Pops concert Friday night 5. oven-roasted tomatoes; the only way to eat them in the winter.

Weekly Gratitude

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A friend of ours recommended a travel agent to us, and I am so grateful to have found her. Gretchen Rubin talks about the importance of anticipation in enjoying a happy event in her book The Happiness Project. A few weeks ago, I  purchased The Unofficial Guide to Disneyland (we used the same guide with great success years ago in Disney World), but when I got to the section on hotels I was totally overwhelmed. Finding affordable accommodations for five adults seemed daunting. And frankly, it was keeping me from enjoying any sense of anticipation. Our travel agent found a two-bedroom, two bath suite with kitchenette and a sofa-bed which will allow all of us to be together, but everyone will have their own space for sleeping. The hotel and tickets work as a package, so we have some very nice benefits (including free parking) as well. Last night, I started reading about the park and getting excited about whole trip which will take us to San Francisco, Livermore, Disneyland, and Sacramento. Best of all, the whole family will be together for a week.

Papertrey Ink Resist Embossing Challenge

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It’s been a long time since I used this technique, but it was quick and easy to execute. I’m really happy with the outcome as well. Edited to add a link to Nicole’s video on this technique.

LiveForToday
Black and white cardstock from stash, Papertrey Ink stamps “Through the Trees” & Spring Rain and Enchanted Evening inks, Beaux Regards cord, black Colorbox ink and clear embossing powder

Bamboo Fun

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For my birthday last May, Tracy gave me a Bamboo Fun pen tablet from Wacom. I opened it up, looked through the printed literature, and put it all back in the box. It really look intimidating. So when I heard Jessica Sprague was running a class on pen tablets, I signed right up. I took the photo on Monday, and you can see that the mouse was still sitting on the tablet. I’ve since put both my original mouse and this mouse in a drawer. It really hasn’t taken me long to figure out how to use it. Tonight Tracy and I customized the buttons on the tablet and on the pen. I’ll be anxious to see how that all works out.

I also finally made a watermark (see above). I thought I wanted one with a flourish or some decorative design, but in my typical style, I ended up with “clean and simple.” I got the idea for it from a stamp Jennifer McGuire showed on her blog. I tried a couple different fonts, but I’m pretty happy with this one. I made both a black and a white version. Tracy bought me a set of actions from the CoffeeShop blog which apply the watermark as well as sharpen the photo. There are four versions of the action. The one here adds a drop shadow. It all happens like magic!

Papertrey Ink Anniversary Party

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Papertrey Ink is celebrating it’s third anniversary. Today each of the designers provided an image for a birthday card you could download. There were lots I will eventually play with, but I only had time for one card today.

PTIBirthdayWishes
This also gave me a chance to break open last month’s patterned paper pad called Pretty Pastels, and to use some Copic glitter pens as well. This is a decidedly more feminine card than I usually make.

Last Week’s Layout

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I’m late in posting this, but I did get another layout done last week. Sometimes I think there are no “daily moments” around this house with three adults, but that’s because I’m just not paying good attention. Matt has spent most of January holed up in his room studying for the Graduate Record Exam. It’s become clear that finding even an entry level job in a plant breeding and genetics lab is going to require more lab experience than he has. He has always known a master’s degree would be important, but it looks as if graduate school might be sooner rather than later. He’s hoping to get take the GRE sometime this month. On Friday, I wandered into his room and asked if I could take some photos. He’s gotten pretty used to this, and is generally very cooperative. The little photo session produced this layout. I used a digital template from Cathy Zielske from Designer Digitals, mounted it on textured cardstock, and added a real brad to the date tag.

Matt GREL0

Project 365

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Here’s my layout summary for January. I used the color picker in PSE to color the text squares, and didn’t realize quite how bright it was until I printed it. I was unwilling to use the ink it would take to redo it, so went through my stash and found this equally bright graph paper from Paper Loft. The photo template is one of Cathy Z’s from Designer Digitals. It’s definitely not me, but done. I do like the format, though, mostly photos but a bit of journaling about our month.

JanuaryLO 

I played around with some textures and blending modes this weekend, so for this week, I’m sharing the original and the altered photo. For the first one I used an Antique Paper action and then a black and white tint. I rather like it.

CardBox

 

For the second one I used the pencil sketch action in PSE and adjusted the contrast. It turned the photo into a drawing. I think it’s a technique I could use for a transfer or maybe for a card.

Starbucks 

At any rate, it was fun to play around.

Weekly Gratitude

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I’ve said it so many times this week, there really wasn’t any other choice:

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Project 365

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I know some of you are working on Project 365. Yesterday I came across two articles that I thought were interesting and had some helpful hints.

Eleven Tips to Succeed with Project 365 and Carry Your Camera Around. In the photo you can see a bit of my colorful new camera strap Matt gave me for Christmas. He had it lined with Minky, and it is super comfortable. It’s so much more fun than the original.

CPS 151 & 2S4Y 44

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One of my unstated intentions is to complete two card challenges each week, and complete one layout. So far, so good. A friend and I went to lunch today and spent some time crafting together. The result:  two cards for challenges. The first is for CPS 151.

CPS151 

Here’s my card. I’ve been wanting to make some of these paper flowers but needed a slightly smaller scalloped punch which I picked up at 40% off this week.

CPS151 

Patterned paper (Basic Grey, Jenni Bowlin), cardstock & ribbon from stash, buttons & twine (Papertrey Ink)

The second challenge was posted at 2Sketches4You. It’s been awhile since I played along there, but I always love their sketches and keep a folder of them on my iBook. 

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I needed a masculine birthday card so it was a perfect time to pull out my new Through the Trees stamps from Papertrey Ink. I know this set is going to get a lot of use.

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Cardstock from stash, white embossing powder, sentiment (Impress Rubber Stamps), image stamp (Papertrey Ink), ribbon (Ribbon Expressions)