What I Did On My Holiday Weekend

I love long weekends. My Sunday's are usually crazy busy, as I have to cram everything in that I did not do on Saturday because I was at my market. But on a 3-day weekend, I get to be lazy on Sunday. Then I cram everything into Monday that I failed to get done Saturday AND Sunday.

Just to demonstrate that I did actually play with stamps and paper and ribbon in between everything else, here is a sampling of my attempts at art this weekend.

I caved (surprise) and bought this embosslit and I thought I'd try a white-on-white look. This is a retired Raised Edge Note Card and a piece of probably-not-SU-white, because it does not exactly match. What do you think? *I* think these would make really neat Thank You cards to sell in 5-packs!

Then I played with the ornament punch. I think is is well-established that I do not 'do' Christmas, so why I bought this punch PLUS the coordinating stamp set, I dunno. Must have been one of my Good Demo moments. But I have seen several people cut off the tip of the ornament and use it as a flower vase, and THAT I can do! I love re-purposing punches and stamps so I can use them for other than their intended, um, purpose.

All the brown here is Soft Suede, and the vase is Soft Suede textured card stock. The flowers are punched from a scrap of retired DSP. I free-hand drew the stems and fronds with my Mellow Moss marker. It is very fuzzy and needs to be replaced. It has had a long, good life - 5 years, at least. Not too shabby!

Then I grabbed another piece of DSP scrap and punched out these guys. I saw the fish idea here, and thought it was incredibly clever and worthy of CASEing. I can probably do better, but it is a starting point.

Now, get out your sun glasses, because you are about to see some (literally) glaring photos. Bad lighting abounds in my world, and combined with a bad photographer, you guys are in trouble.

I spent a good part of this weekend organizing. At one point I discovered I have 9 new, unopened packs of Dimensionals, and they needed a home. I have a drawer dedicated to adhesives, but when I opened it to put these away, well ... you know that spring snake in a can? The one that explodes when you open it? Or that closet thing on tv where someone opens the door and a bazillion things tumble out? Yeah, that is this drawer. Well, it WAS this drawer. I took the time to empty it out and then put everything back.

Along the way I rediscovered all sorts of things, like these:

I found about 8 2-packs of 4x6 magnet sheets. I also found several packs of SU 8 1/2x11 magnet sheets - yes, those are OLD! I set them aside and put everything else back in the adhesives drawer. Organized and neat, for now, anyway.

Then I set to work on my Nestabilities storage solution, version 3. Version 1 was a box. Version 2 is/was a 3-ring binder filled with 5x7 photo pages, each slot holding a pkg of Nesties. I had to be careful how I opened the binder, as the top ones would slide out as if possessed. I got tired of retrieving them from the floor. Version 3 is largely version 2 with ... magnets!

Here is one of the scalloped oval sets stuck to a magnet sheet. The 4x6 sheets were PERFECT.

I actually figured out that the ovals are skinny enough to fit side-by-each, so I got all four sets in two sleeves!

Then I set to work making some more magnets for my market, since I am down to about 4.

This is the turtle version. The card stock is from a package of Prism papers, so figuring out which three blues to use was already thunk out for me. I used my Nesties to cut the three scalloped layers, and one of my Marvy punches for the black circle.

I have a 12,000,000 foot spool of blue poly thread that I use to wind around the smallest scalloped layer.

The turtle is a Sizzix die (I think) cut out of some SU Brushed Copper card stock. Last time I used Crystal Effects to fill in the shell, but this summer I had to bring them in the house to keep them from getting sticky in the heat. This time I decided to just cut some blue ones out of the scraps from cutting the circles, and used them instead. I have all the copper shell parts plus the blue turtles to use on another project yet to be determined.

This is the crab version of the magnet. I used a Martha Stewart punch instead of the Sizzix (I think) die, just because it was easier. I still used the googlie eyes, because I think that is what really make this guy so popular. All the people who look at them comment on the eyes. :-)

This is another version of the crab, the only difference being I used a multi-colored thread instead of the blue. I made this one first because I forgot I was supposed to use the blue.

I was so excited to have these finished (I made 13 of them), that I packaged them up and all I needed to add was labels, and I printed those tonight. What I forgot, though, was to stick on the magnets. So tonight I had to un-package them all and glue on their magnets. Sigh ...

Here are all the little soldiers drying. I'll re-package them tomorrow.

Lastly, I bring you this evening's project: Dasher. I was already going to use this guy tonight, but when I saw this post over at Understand Blue, I knew it needed to be CASEd. I cannot ever CASE a card 100% - maybe it's my conscience, and the fact that I like to sleep at night. In this case (oh, how punny!) I do not have the punch that she used, so I HAD to do something differently. This uses the I-hope-it-never-retires Lovely As A Tree for the (!) trees. The Reindeer is one of SU's single stamps: Dasher. I stamped him in Soft Suede and went back over him with my Soft Suede marker to fill in some of the spots missing ink. I went over the piece with a 2-way glue pen, adding glue here and there, and a lot at the seam between the white and blue, and added some Dazzling Diamonds glitter. There is some on the trees, too.

I glammed up the white background with one of the SU embossing plates. Oh, and I cheated. I embossed a 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 piece of white, then stuck it on the white card base. This also gave me something around which to wrap the ribbon (GOTS to have ribbon). Feel free to steal this cheat.

So, yeah, I've been busy. Which reminds me, I've got another load of wash in the dryer that needs to be addressed ("Hello, load of dry laundry") before I need to iron it or, more likely, re-dry it.

Thanks for stopping by!