Trimmed with Love

Happy Friday to you once again! The week seemed to go by rather quickly for me - did it for you? I'm sure most of you are so happy it's Friday... I still have another 12 hour shift to pull tonight, then my weekend will officially begin... YAY! hee hee......

Well, you probably know by now that I adore using all my Stampin' Up! goodies - whether it's retired or not, so it's time for a Friday Flashback! Even though it's still hitting around 100 degrees in Phoenix, the mornings are beginning to cool down which always helps me to start getting into the holiday spirit. I felt inspired to do a Christmas card, and this is the result-




Aren't those hedgehogs just too cute?! They are so much fun to color in, and I love, love, love to watercolor!!! I know Copic markers are all the rage right now, but I don't think you really need to invest in them if you already have a collection of good waterbased markers like Stampin' Up's. I love the variety of colors we offer, and watercoloring/shading is not hard to do with a touch of patience and a little bit of practice. I actually like to lay down my first layer of watercoloring, which gives the softer and lighter areas on your image, then going back over the darker "shadowed" areas with the actual marker pen tip directly to the paper. You can just "pull" the darker colored areas into the lighter areas with an aquapainter and achieve your range in depth this way. I keep my aquapainter on the drier side - just a little moisture is all that's necessary. Also, be sure to use a good quality paper that can resist the moisture a bit - like watercolor paper, although I get good results with Whisper White.


Supplies Used:
Stamps - Holiday Hedgehogs, Trimmed with Love (both retired)
Cardstock - Ballet Blue, Close to Cocoa, Whisper White
Inks -Basic Black, Versamark, SU markers: Creamy Caramel, Going Grey, Close to Cocoa, Real Red and Ballet Blue
Accessories - Aquapainter, mat pack, paper piercer, twine, edge distressor from cutter kit, dimensional popdots



This brings us to a Tip-To-Share moment!
I found an easy way to create a reverse distressed edge for a frame (as found around my sentiment block above), is to poke along the edge with a paper piercer. Don't worry about perfection here because the distressed edge needs variation! Finish by tearing along the perforations and roughening up the edge with a fingernail. The pic below shows what I mean. I actually had to go back and make my frame just a little skinnier width-wise because I didn't get enough blue cardstock peeking through to my liking on the sentiment block. By piercing along the edges first, it made it so much easier to tear, and I didn't run the risk of ripping my skinny frame in two.



So I hope this little holiday card has inspired you today. I hope you get a chance to dig around your stash and give watercoloring a try. Have a great Friday and enjoy your weekend! Come back soon!!

All Occasions Candy Jar - Part 1

Welcome! You may have been seeing these awesome candy jars circulating around sites like Splitcoaststampers or Stampin Up, and I loved this idea the moment I saw the Halloween one at Convention this year. Well, being limited on storage space (as I'm sure most of us are), I didn't want to adhere this Spooky Spider Decor Elements directly to the jar for use only during the Halloween season. DH overheard me talking out loud about my thoughts on this, and with his suggestion, I placed it on a sheet of transparency instead to make a slide. He's brilliant - LOL!

So, for Halloween, I was able to use my Spooky Spider -and will again, and again, and again... :)


And now, I can change out the decorative slides to fit any occasion. Here's one for Christmas -


July 4th anyone?


Of course, we need one for everyday use!
*

These were SO EASY to do! To figure out how big of a slide I needed, I inserted a ruler into the glass jar and measured from the bottom to the top where the glass begins to curve inward to make the lip for the lid (looking at the image above, between the asterick to just below the bottom of my watermark where it says copyright Stampin Up!). This 1 gallon candy jar was purchased at Walmart, and after measuring it, I cut my transparency lengthwise at 6 1/4 inches. This made my slide 6 1/4 x 11 inches. You definitely don't see the top and bottom edges of the slide, and it's practically unnoticeable on the sides, especially with candy in there. And the best part is that the candy keeps the slide pressed up against the sides of the jar, so no adhesive is necessary - Perfect! Just a couple other tips, keep in mind that you adhere everything on one side of the transparency, and it's this side that is pressed against the glass - so fingers won't be snagging the edges of your creations and ripping it off the slide. And, in case you were wondering, I simply used an adhesive tape runner to adhere everything to the slide - easy and clean. These were extremely quick to put together as well - I hope you try out this idea! Till next time....

All Occasions Candy Jar - Part 2

I thought you might be interested in seeing the individual slides that were inserted into the candy jar shown in the above post. As you can see, the possibilities are endless and I'll be making more slides to fit every holiday and special occasion. You know, how about making a small candy jar for family and friends that has interchangeable slides for them to use? I think that's a great gift idea! I hope this is something that helps inspire you to try it out - I'd love to see what you come up with, so comment here with a URL!!!

For Halloween (medium sized Spooky Spider Decor Elements) -
(front)

I put the "SPOOKY" sentiment on another slide for the back side of the Candy Jar. Oh, by the way, both images come together when purchased!
(back)

I used the Independence Day stamp set to create this for July 4th-


Of course, the beautiful Snow Swirled set is perfect for Christmas -


How about Inspired By Nature for everyday use? This was created using the Alcohol Etching technique described in my September 30th post - try it out and see how easy this one is to do!


Again, thank you so much for stopping by today! Have a great week, and I'll see you again soon!!! :)