No Time To Stamp?

I did this project for Jami’s monthly challenge to all Dirty Girls, present and alumni.  This month’s challenge is called *Girls Just Wanna Have Fun*!  We were to use a girl in our project, and something *sweet*, and it could NOT be a standard A-2 sized card.  Well, I don’t have many girl stamps, so I used my Elzybell from our original challenge 2 months ago.  And as far as *sweet*, well, let’s just say that Elzy herself is *sweet*!!!  And this is not a standard sized card, it is a 5 x 5 pocket book that I made from scratch, and in the pockets are several dozen stamped images of Elzy and some sentiments to go with.  I only have 3 Elzy stamps, and they are all related to the winter theme, thus the *Winter* on my book cover.  This is a little gift for a friend who loves all the Elzy’s but doesn’t have any stamps of her own.  Thought she might have fun with some images!!!

All of the uploads to this challenge will start coming in on Sunday morning, 1/20, and they will be coming in all day, so check back frequently for some fun cards.  The keyword for this challenge is DCG108 (Dirty Challenge Girls January 08), and if you click here you’ll be able to see all the uploads.

I received a gift in the mail the other day and wanted to try it out, so this is my first project using the Scor-It.  Yes, it is a scoring tool, similar to, but still quite different from the Scor-Pal which I have been using for the past couple of months.  As soon as I received my Scor-It, I went to their site to check out the projects they showed.  Wow, they had  alot of projects and a book made in a similar fashion to this caught my eye. Well, wouldn’t you know it, but today when I went back there to read the instructions, I couldn’t find it anywhere, so I just winged it — LOL!!! — and it came out great.  It works well, functions properly and I will definitely be doing a book like this again.

I do not have a tutorial here for you but I am sure I can find one for this type of book somewhere that I can come back later and link for you — but just basically the spine of this book is scored in 1″ increments and accordion folded.  It is attached to the book front and back, and the way it is taped together it forms a really nice spine giving you nice tabs inside the book to which you adhere your pages.  My pages are merely pieces of 2-sided DP, scored 2″ from the bottom, and then this 2″ flap is folded up to form the pocket. The covers of the book are 5 x 5″ pieces I cut from the backing cardboard that comes in the SU DP packages.  They are a great weight for this type of project.   They were then covered, inside and out, with the DP I used, Twirl Collection by Crate.  I adhered the DP with Mod Podge.

And as far as my new Scor-It, well, it worked wonderfully for this project.  It was used to score the spine of the book and the 2″ flaps to form the pockets of the pages.  It is a 12 x 12 bed that is lined with a black rubbery pad that holds your paper very tightly.  There is ABSOLUTELY no slippage at all!!!  To make the score marks, there is one runner in the center of the board that you run the tool over to score.  With this board you must move your paper for every score, but I found it to be quite easy to do.  The ruler markings at the top of the board are very clear, giving you every marking, just like on a ruler, so there is no guessing at to whether or not you are on the right spot.  And with the rubbery mat, there is never a problem with the paper moving or slipping.  I will say, on my first pass over my test paper with the scoring tool, I cut my paper right in half — LOL!!!  Good thing it was a test piece!!!  It requires a much lighter hand than I had expected it would.  In 2 or 3 passes I had the *feel* down pat.  I really enjoyed the Scor-It, found it to make nice sharp score lines and feel it’s strong points (for me anyway) are the well marked ruler at the top and the non-slip surface.  So, that was my first experience with my latest new toy!!!

OK, now back to how I decorated my book cover — well, I will be the first to admit that I am not at all pleased with what I did here — it is definitely a case of not knowing when to quit!!!  I really debated not uploading this as I am so displeased with it’s outward appearance, but I buried my pride and decided to upload it  anyway as I really do like the pocket book idea and how the book itself came out!  It’s so fun to have all those little pockets to fill up with whatever!!!  I will make another one of these as soon as I’m able and do a better job on the cover — and provide links and/or some mini tutorial photos to follow.  And this was not a super time consuming project — it really does go together rather quickly!!!

• Stamps:  SU Season by Season. Elzybells by AMuse.
• Paper:  Papertrey White, SU Black, Twirl Collection by Crate Paper.
• Ink: VersaFine Onyx Black.  SU Pretty in Pink and Blush Blossom.  Spica Clear Glitter Pen.
• Accessories:  Crate Paper punchout strips, Nestabilites Rectangle and Rectangle Scallop Dies by Spellbinders, SU Ticket Corner Punch, unknown Star Punch, Black Organdy, Red Sticky Strip, Mod Podge, Mounting Tape.

Thanks much for looking!  Please click here to check out the other uploads!!!

Just one quick card tonight — another to add to my copper series.   I was playing with my Nestability Dies by Spellbinders and I created a frame — what fun these dies are getting to be!!!

I used 2 dies from the large rectangle set to cut and emboss this frame. I then layered it on a Sage Shadow piece cut just a tad larger and stamped the sage piece with French Script, in Versa Mark, and dusted with Copper Perfect Pearls by Ranger.  I adhered it to the card with mounting tape.

The star was made by stamping it in Versa Mark on Very Vanilla paper, copper embossing, then cutting out, leaving a narrow vanilla border.  I then adhered that to a piece of Sage Shadow, and again cut out, leaving a narrow sage border.  I wrapped it with copper cording and mounted it onto my frame with a Pop Dot.   Done!!!

This card has no sentiment, and that’s OK.  I often enjoy the versatility of having cards on hand that I can grab for any purpose at all!!!  Here’s the supply list:

• Stamps:  Star Studded Season and French Script (retired)
• Paper:  Sage Shadow, Very Vanilla, Fruitcake Designer Paper by Basic Grey
• Ink:  Versa Mark
• Accessories:  Copper EP, Perfect Pearls and Cording.  Large Rectangle Dies, Nestabilities by Spellbinders.  Mounting  Tape and Pop Dots.

Thanks much for looking!  If all goes as planned, my next upload with be a couple of SU samples using retiring stamps.  Hope you are all having a wonderful weekend!!!

Well, after seeing all of the adorable Elzybell cards  yesterday, I just had to make at least one thing out of each Elzy I had, so here it is — a card with a  coordinating bookmark in a sleeve — I only have 3 Elzy images and one sentiment — so now they’ve all been inked!!

The card uses DP on the lower portion and white on top.  There is black velvet ribbon on the seam joining the two, but you can barely see it, as it is pretty well covered up with my taffeta bows — oh well, I know it’s there!  The image was stamped, colored and then circle punched out.  This image is rectangular in shape, and the little black snowflakes were also left in a rectangular pattern, which just didn’t look right on the round punchout, so I just drew in more little black snowflakes to match with the fine tip of my marker — you can’t even tell!!!  I then sponged the edges, mounted on a scallop, added the white gel pen dots and mounted it onto the card.  Added a ticket corner punched sentiment on the bottom, with brads, and done!!!  I love the little pink bows on the side on this — they just look so cute and girlie!!!

Here’s the bookmark out of the sleeve - cute, huh?  I just can’t stop making these silly little bookmarks and sleeves — they are so quick and fun to do!!!  And it’s just nice to have a little something extra to give along with the card.  Click here to see the instructions on how to make the sleeves.  This one is wider than the one in the tutorial — you just have to adjust the measurements depending on how wide/long you make your bookmark.  And the bookmark is rather self-explanatory, I think.  The oval top is adhered to the bookmark with double sided tape, ribbon run through the top — the ribbon reminds me of Elzy’s hair!!! 

• Stamps:  Elzybells, distributed by A Muse:  Ice Skater, Winter Girl, Sentiment.  Snowflake is from Perfect Presentation by SU.
• Paper:  Pretty in Pink, Basic Black, Whisper White, DP is from an old Spring Stack DCWV.
• Ink:  Black Stazon.  Reinkers in Pretty in Pink, Blush Blossom.  Marker in Going Gray, Basic Black.  Signo White Gel Pen.  Sakura Stardust Silver Gelly Roll Pen.
• Accessories:  Marvy Oval, Round and Scallop Punches, 1/4″ punch, Ticket Corner Punch, Corner Rounder, Ribbons, Brads, Sponge, Mounting Tape, Pop Dots, Mini Glue Dots, Red Sticky Tape.

That’s it for today, and that’s it for my Elzy’s for a bit — on to something else tomorrow!!!  Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!!  Thanks much for looking!!!

• Stamps:  Snow Burst and Season by Season
• Paper:  Bashful Blue, Whisper White and Basic Black
• Ink:  Bashful Blue, Black Stazon, Versa Mark
• Accessories:  Spiral Punch, Tag Corner Punch, Ribbon, Elastic Cording, Glue Pen, Dazzling Diamonds, Iridescent Ice EP, Sponge, Mounting Tape, non-SU Brad

I made this card for the Ways to Use it Challenge at SCS today.  The challenge was to use spirals in your work — I chose to use the spiral punch.  I just love that punch for making journal covers, but have only used it a few times on cards.  I was going for the film strip look as was shown on several samples; however, in this card I feel my film strip idea kind of got lost in the  sparkles, cording, ribbon, etc.  I do like the snowflakes and the sparkles, and I like the filmstrip idea,  just not necessarily together!  But the card will do and I will use it.  I do want to use this film strip idea on another project — maybe I’ll get it right the 2nd time — LOL!!!

1. Filmstrip panel:  Black is 2 1/4″ x 5″, spiral punched along both sides.  The square punches would work great for the pictures on the film strip, but I don’t have them, so I just cut the panels to fit, approx. 1 3/8 x 1 1/2″.  Snowflakes stamped in Bashful Blue, edges sponged, snowflakes outlined with Sakura Quickie Glue Pen (has a real fine, pen-like tip) and sprinkled with Dazzling Diamonds.  Then all those spiral punched holes were just begging to have something run though them, so I used the new Silver Elastic Cord — what great stuff!  It looks wonderful and is so easy to use.  It bends, drapes, hangs just where it should, so flexible and manageable!!!  A HUGE improvement over the silver cording it replaced!
2. White panel:  5 1/4 x  4″.   Snowflakes stamped in Bashful Blue, edges sponged, went over the entire surface with Versa Mark (DTP), then embossed with Iridescent Ice EP.  Love that look!!!
3. Winter panel:  1 1/8 x 2 3/4″.  Top corners clipped with Tag Corner Punch.  Winter stamped with Black Stazon, embossed with IIEP as above.  Attached to Film Strip Panel with brad (from Michaels), sneaking a bow between the brad and tag.  Entire film strip panel attached to card with foam mounting tape (Wal-Mart).

That’s it for this one!  Thanks so much for looking!!!  And if you haven’t entered the Blog Candy contest below, please do so!!!