Drowning My Sorrows, And Doin' Some Stampin'!

As beautiful as it was again today, the Market was ho-hum, though I did get the name of a potential new customer. Sales-wise, I was worried I would not even take in my booth fee, but in the end I made lunch money, and maybe gas money. So to drown my sorrows, I stopped at a Salon on the way home to try and get myself a pedicure, but they were booked solid, so I opted to make an appointment for tomorrow and go back. Hey, I'm worth it!

Also to further bum me out, my SU order is still in Closed status. To non-SU types, this means "we got your order, but we have not looked at it yet". Sigh. So I will not see that stuff for at least another week, and I must instead use what I have on hand. How sad. Actually, I have three of the new Simply Sent Kit Elements that I wanted to play with, so after Saturday's market I broke into one and started to play. When I get one of these kits, the first thing I do is make the cards they give you as examples. I made them, and I do not like them. Here are the two I made:


(Humor me and pretend that purple strip is actually stuck all the way on the card base, and that the circle image stamped in the Mustard circle is actually centered. Thank you.)

I mean, they are okay, but not something I'd normally make, and not something The Ladies would like (I don't think), so I set the stuff aside and started to think about what *I* could do with the materials provided. This is just like making a recipe for the first time according to the directions, then doing it 'better'.

I had seen a blog post somewhere (heaven knows I've tried to find it again!) where she ran a glue pen down the purple stripes in the patterned paper and glittered them up, and it was amazing! (If you know whose blog that is, please tell me so I can give proper credit!) So I took that idea and used a piece of the kit's paper to make another Celebrate card:

If you look closely (please see past that poorly-tied ribbon ...), you can see the four glittered stripes in the middle of the Mustard stripes. The Mustard ribbon is also from the kit, as is the textured Perfect Plum card stock. The overly-distressed star is from my bulk chipboard purchase from the last catalog round, the star rub-on is from my never-opened bulk rub-on purchase from the same bulk order, and the Mustard paper is from the package of More Mustard DS paper I got this time last year, opened and used maybe once.

Then today, since the Plum and Mustard papers and card stock were still out (of course!), I decided to try and accomplish many things with one card. I have always been an over-achiever...it is a curse.

I wanted to (1) make some Birthday cards to fill the Big Empty in my market inventory; (2) make some age-specific Birthday Cards for at least the '0' years - 30, 40, 50, etc.; (3) try the very, very, cool thing done here with the new Scallop Punch, that I have been dying to try all week; and (4) mount at least one of the stamp sets sitting neglected on my coffee table. And this is what came out:

I started with the Mellow Moss layer, cut to the necessary 2 3/4" square (from a scrap laying next to my cutter, thank you very much), centered my long scallop punch over one of the sides, punched and then did the other three sides. This is so stinkin' easy, with such an amazing result, and if *I*, The Crooked Stamper, can pull it off, so can you! This technique has such a WOW factor, I am totally using it in my next workshop.

I layered the Moss layer on Perfect Plum since it was already out. Then since my order with my new scallop square punch is not here yet, I used a Nestability to cut the scallop square out of More Mustard patterned paper, because it was also still out. To give the Mustard scallop some contrast, I stuck it to a piece of white and trimmed it really close. I added the 4 brads that were left from the kit (just laying there... do you see a pattern here?), then in a fit of inspiration, I turned the green&purple layer on its ear and then stuck on the Mustard square. Sometimes shaking it up a bit is just what it needs to not be a typical Leslie card. If I'd let that baby square up, that would have been so predictable. Can you tell I live a really exciting life?

All along my plan was to stick some numbers in the middle of the Mustard square, so after I mounted the Big Deal Numbers, I spent quite a bit of time playing with inks to get them to emboss the way I wanted them to. I must have tried 3 or 4 different things before I broke out my Elegant Eggplant Craft Ink that I have not used in like forever, and after 6 stamped images, it actually took some embossing powder. I guess I should use those Craft Inks more often, huh? I chose the number 40 for no particular reason, but I did figure out that the center of the zero can be punched with the 1/2" circle punch, and the outside fits perfectly in the 1" circle punch. No cutting!!!! The 4 was pretty easy to cut out. I stuck the numbers on with Mini Glue Dots.

For my final trick, I found the purple Happy Birthday rub-on. For the rest of the cards I plan to make, I'll use a Birthday stamp.

And my evil plan? Yes, I have an Evil Plan! I cannot tell you how many times people ask for a birthday card for an age I do not have. Either it is a popular number (like 50), or something like 25 or 65, and one year there was even a request for 23, but honestly, I cannot please everyone, so I don't even try to. But The Evil Plan is to make the standard '0' years, and then make some with no year at all, and I'll have a bag of extra numbers and they can glue them on themselves. So whatdya think? Crazy? Crazy Good or Crazy Bad? Inquiring minds want to know!

That's all I have in me tonight. Tomorrow I have the day off to recover and do --- laundry, of course. And clean more veggies...and maybe cook some of them. And clean the bathroom. And the litter box. Oh, yeah, and do some stampin'!

Thanks for stopping by!