Busy, busy...

I'm heading off to Banff tomorrow morning to go camping for a couple days.  I wanted to get a few more prototypes done of cards for the craft show next month.  I made 2, but I may have to refine the first one.  I think the focal medallion is too big for the card.  I may take it down 1/2" and I think I'll stamp the sentiment parts separately - I tried to line them up on my block.  I think the little confetti stamps on the side kinda look lame too. I do like the image though - its cute.  The stamps are a clear set from Stampendous, the patterned paper is another free download from the Fuji flim website, the red paper is a digi freebie from the June 29/09 Colour Challenge kit by Jesse Edwards from Designer Digitals, the mint green cardstock is Recollections brand , and the white cardstock is Wausau 80#.  I used Stazon black ink and coloured the image in with pencil crayons & odourless mineral spirits and then added black stickles to the body and diamond dust stickles to the wings.  I used red stickles on the confetti designs.  The medallion is attached with pop dots.  Here is the card:

The next card I made is a very simple design.  I bought a couple Studio G stamps and wanted to try them out. The base is Domtar Cougar 130# cardstock, the green patterned paper is a free digi download from Designer Digitals (designed by Andrea Victoria), the second patterned paper is also a free digi download but I can't find which one right now on my computer (I have literally thousands of digi papers downloaded over the years), and finally the orange cardstock is SU! tangerine tango.  I stamped the sentiment stamp with SU! classic green galore ink, and the butterfly image is stamped with SU! classic tangerine tango ink.  I really like the clean lines of this card and I think I could change up the patterned papers and stamps to get a whole different look.  Here's what the card looks like:

So, the last card was an experiment and I think it looks like crap.  Last year I bought a block of rubber and some carving tools to see if I could carve my own logo stamp for my cards.  Well, needless to say, my carving skills leave a lot to be desired.  But I did make this bear stamp kind of in the Haida Indian style.  I just stamped it with Momento ink on the Cougar 130# card base (single layer card).  I then made a mask, and a template to look like snow mounds and one for clouds.  I used chalks on the background, then I mixed some irredescent perfect pearls in water in a little mister spray bottle, masked off the "ground" and the bear, and sprayed the sky so that it shimmers.  I then took frosted lace stickles and outlines the hills of the ground.  For the bear, I had originally coloured it in with chalks, but the colour wasn't deep enough, so I painted over top with gold perfect pearls and Future floor wax mixed together.  Here's what the card looks like.  Like I said, it looks like crap.

So finally, as I mentioned yesterday, I found a new solution for storing my ribbon.  I've been using a couple cd/dvd spindles and a lot of shoe boxes.  The cd spindes are ok since I can see through the cover and tell what ribbons are there.  BUT, the shoe box thing doesn't work at all.  I have to pull out all the boxes to find what I want.  Well, I went grocery shopping a few days ago at the Walmart super centre.  In the bakery section they have donuts - 6 for $1.  And they come in these cute little, clear clamshell type containers.  Well, I like to re-purpose/recycle containers.  I hate throwing stuff out.  I'm a pack rat.  So I was rinsing it out (cause we ate all the donuts - yummy) to put in the recycling bin and it struck me that the container would fit spools of ribbon perfectly.  Beautiful.  Now I'm going to have to buy donuts more often (like I really needed an excuse to begin with).  The one I have now, I was able to fit 10 spools of ribbon in it.  The max size of spool you fit in the container is about 3" in diameter and about 1" wide.  Here's a couple pictures of what it looks like:

They will stack nicely and fit nicely on a shelf in my bookcase and I will be see what ribbons I have without pulling everything apart.  I am really happy that I found these containers.  Too bad I couldn't just buy the containers.  I don't think my waist really needs all the donuts I'm going to have to eat to get enough containers for all the ribbon I have.  But for $1 a container, its a pretty good deal.

Anyway, long winded post.  I'll post pictures of my camping trip in the Rockies when I get back.

Have a nice day everyone!

Cat