SOS #115 - Oldest Hardware

It's Tuesday, and time for a new challenge over at Shopping Our Stash. This week we ask you to pull out your oldest hardware, and by that we mean things like ribbon slides, brads, eyelets, metal frames, etc.

I went digging into the back of my "Miscellaneous" drawer and found several packages of SU metal framed vellum square tags. I also found a box of old, old, old brads, and decided they needed to be used, too.

I followed a now VERY old sketch from my pile of neglected challenges and I made this:

I still have these metal-edged tags because I never figured out how to use them well. For this card I decided to use four of the smaller tags to create a background, so I glued them to a piece of patterned paper. I stuck the doily on with a brad through the center where the four corners of the metal tags meet and covered it up with the sentiment banner.

About those eyelet brads... do you remember those?  I tried to get an in-focus shot of them:

heh I tried to hold one up and that's the one least in focus. ;/  Whoever thought punching two holes into a piece of paper to use a brad like this was easier than punching one hole and setting an eyelet was probably smoking something. Although, this was long before the Crop-a-dile, so two holes vs a hammer might have been the draw. No matter, I never embraced them, and six poked holes later I remembered why.

Now it's your turn! Got neglected, dusty hardware in your stash? Go dig it out and use it, then come back to Shopping Our Stash and link us up so we can see what you've made!

Thanks for stopping by!

Products used: SU vellum metal-edged tags, misc brads, Basic Grey Fact 12x12 paper, and the following:

InLinkz.com

Thinking Of You

For my first trick back in the stampy saddle, I played the current ColourQ challenge:

and I made this:

I totally cheated. I had these Bazzill Wayfarer papers out on my desk, and I declared the colors in this piece of paper to be close enough to the colors in the challenge to pass muster. It's all one piece of paper except for the sentiment strip, which I did cut and stamp.

I love the colors, so I may make another one, but I do love it when the papers do all the work for me. See? Collecting has its benefits: there's always something in your stash that will work! :)

I'm going back in for more! Thanks for stopping by!

Stuff I used: SU Basic Gray for the layer, plus the following:

InLinkz.com

Where Was Crooked Stamper?

Helloooo! I am not dead! Thanks to the miracle of Blogger scheduling I have posted my regularly scheduled projects, but plain old stamping? Not so much. In fact, I am suffering from withdrawal.

So where have I been? Last week I went to Ohio to visit my house and the progress being made by the various contractors. It's a true transformation! As soon as it's finished and I've moved in, I'll share a few photos.

I also stayed up way too late chatting with my generous host, Tina, and then we attended Stampaway* with several stampy friends, and had some good food, followed by crafty shopping and more food. We attended the Friday night session (mostly because a lot of us are allergic to crowds ... these are my people!) so Saturday, after more food, we napped.

This past week I mostly recovered from the trip and being back to work. I did play a little bit with a few things, but I didn't make much. Today I decided to change that.

First, let me show you the one Make & Take I did at Stampaway:

They were pushing the gel pens, and this was a very cool way to use them. I actually had the pens in my paws, plus a bunch of various stickers, when I stopped and said NO, and I put it all back. I figured I already have a ton of stickers I could use for this, and I also have all the OTHER gel pens, and I really didn't need any more. I was so good.

So my idea was to try embossing a flower instead of using a sticker, and that's what I've been futzing with the past few evenings. Let me show you what came out of that effort:

Top left is the Make & Take, and the other three are the ones from my experiments. I tried three different embossing powder colors, and I think I like the gold best, or maybe the black. I know I do not like the white one. I used the same pink color on all three flowers to have a fair comparison, though I was tempted to stop with the (gah) pink already. The analyst in me forced my hand to make it fair. Sigh.

We used two different styluses to do the embossing on the vellum. First we traced the inner edges of the petals with one stylus, then flipped the vellum over and used a larger ball stylus to emboss the petals and "push" it so it pops out within the sticker. I don't have a stylus at home with a large ball tip, so I improvised and used the end of a paint brush handle. You can see some of the scratches from the stylus in the white flower's petals.

The coloring is done by scribbling a bit of a gel pen onto the raised vellum and using a water brush to spread it around. This lets you keep the darker color along the embossing and fade it out into the centers. The selling point of their new gel pens was their color intensity which is clearly evident here. I won't get the intensity of color with the pens I have, but I don't think I'll be doing this a lot, so I'm okay with it.

I may break out some of my stash of stickers one day ... you just never know.

So, I've officially re-entered The Captain's Quarters with this week's stack of challenges that interested me, so hopefully I'll actually get a few done!

Thanks for stopping by!

*Small world. When I had my monthly workshops, I had to carefully schedule in August because most of my customers went to Stampaway. Unfortunately I didn't see any of them on Friday, and we didn't go on Saturday, so if they were there, I missed them. Maybe next year!

ABNH - Vellum Challenge

Hi there! It's the 15th of the month, so it's time for a new challenge at A Blog Named Hero! This time our theme is Vellum:

For my card, I tried to make a window, sorta. I love the hexagon circle die from Simon Says Stamp, and I may or may not be into neon these days, so here's my card, then I'll explain:

It's dark, but no glare. Baby steps, people, baby steps.

I've used vellum in two ways here. First, the obvious one: the sentiment banner. I stamped the sentiment in Versamark onto white cardstock-weight vellum and embossed it with white embossing powder. You want to use the cardstock-weight vellum for this, since the thinner vellum will curl. Ask me how I know.

I think we've already established that vellum and I are not on speaking terms, so I chose to wrap the vellum strip around to the back of the layer to secure it. I put some Kool Tak (clear) dimensional adhesive under the thick embossed letters to hold it down more. It's kinda floaty, but very secure.

The second vellum usage here is to tone down the neon. I ran my yellow neon dauber over a piece of white card stock and put it behind the hexagon circle to see how it looked. It was blinding. I knew I didn't want the hexagons over white, so I put a piece of vellum (paper weight, not card stock weight) over the inked circle and it toned it down A LOT! Lookie:

Here you can see the bright yellow hexagon and the paler yellow background. I used the same ink for both; the vellum layer really softens the color. You can also see my goth-like embossing job. Sigh.

Now it's your turn. Come on over to A Blog Named Hero and play along with our vellum challenge!

Thanks, as always, to our fabulous sponsor:

One lucky crafter who links up to our challenge will win a $25 gift voucher from Simon Says Stamp to purchase some new toys.

Thanks for stopping by!

Products used: Neat & Tangled Neon sequins, misc vellum, and the following:

InLinkz.com