Bachelorette Wine Charms

Howdy, Readers, 

My friend Angel and I made the below "wine" charms (more like martini charms in our case) for our mutual friend's bachelorette party. We were inspired by this etsy shop discovered via Pinterest. Our friend is into everything nautical, so we used anchor charms and paper from Authentique's 6x6 Seaside. I used My Favorite Things' Stitched Circle Stax to create the label portions of the charms while Angel picked out and assembled the bead portions from my random stash. I think we made a pretty stellar team! I show images from the initial creation, but also the great presentation Angel put together for the party. 

I think another craft night is in order, soon! 

--LJE

Art Cart

Readers, I made this drawing for a Visual Resources related blog post, but I thought I'd share it here, as well. Yet another moment where it felt nice not to dread drawing--digitally or otherwise! 

--LJE

Ink Blending

Howdy, Readers, 

I've been watching lots of craft videos with ink blending and decided I wanted to experiment a bit with the Simon Says Stamp inks I already had. I followed the Frugal Crafter's advice to try to make my own ink blending tools out of foam make up applicators. I sort of ended up not using the applicator's properly, but I had a lot of fun playing around. I also ended up cutting pieces out of the applicators to make interesting stamped/blended shapes. 

None of the pieces ended up looking all too great on their own, so I made my own "pattern paper" rectangles with my trusty Lawn Fawn's Small Stitched Rectangle Stackables and my new trusty My Favorite Things' Stitched Circle Stax--I wanted to get as many pieces out of each sheet as possible. Stay tuned for these pieces to show up in future projects! Below you will see some process photos and then an image of the sheet after inking and then the final die cut product. 

Not only would I certainly never have thought I'd be doing this a year ago, I would also never have thought I'd have a reason to buy make-up applicators...

PS. Subsequently, the Frugal Crafter put out this amazing video covering the basics of ink blending. I definitely recommend!  --LJE

Birthday Cards

Dear Readers,

I came up with the idea for this card layout from this post on Splitcoaststampers. I can't tell you how much I love this new-to-me die--Memory Box's Cinema Film Strip. It cuts out all of the delicate little pieces and creates a great space to inlay faux film. I have lots of future ideas planned with this, possibly with tiny photos, but for now, I'll be pleased with my selective inking of the candles in Lawn Fawn's Baked with Love stamp set. I also used Lawn Fawn's Small Stitched Rectangle Stackables. The papers are from Echo Park's 6x6 Getaway, Heidi Swapp's 5x7 Wanderlust Collection, and basicgrey's 6x6 Prism.

--LJE

Quick Cards with New Dies

Howdy, Readers,

I made a few quick cards using a bunch of new supplies including several word dies. For the last card below, I used an actual paint swatch card for a housewarming card. When I saw it at Home Depot a few months ago the size seemed too perfect, but it took awhile to come up with a way to use it. For interested parties, I used Pebbles' 6x6 Front Porch. For dies, I used Lawn Fawn's Small Stitched Rectangle Stackables, Lawn Fawn's Scripty Love, Memory Box's Cozy Kitties, and Mama Elephant's Hello Script Creative Cuts.

--LJE

Wedding Card

Wedding season has not yet ended, dear Readers! For this card for a very dear friend, I was inspired by this post by Dahlia Memories. 

--LJE

Set of Note Cards

Howdy, Everyone,

I mentioned a few posts ago that a friend had commissioned me to make her a set of birthday cards. Before that, a different friend had commissioned me to make note cards. I wanted to make hers right away, but I just couldn't figure out what I wanted to do for her. I finally got inspiration from this Lawn Fawn video. Remember all of those water colors I painted? I had intended several to be backgrounds for this project, but I just wasn't sure how to integrate them into the actual cards. This video offered a good overall layout solution, and using Lawn Fawn's Small Stitched Rectangle Stackables dies just gave the water colors the touch they needed. I also used the same dies to cut pieces of white card stock for the card interiors so that it would be easier (and more elegant) to write notes. This was also a good project to just use bits and pieces of things I already had embellishment-wise. And, yes, I do wish I'd spaced the one with the flower covering the letter "T" in "thinking of you" better. C'est la vie!

--LJE

Bookmark...with Kitties!

Howdy, 

My friend was coming to stay with me, and she was the same friend who sent me an adorable stamp set from Italy, so I thought I'd make her a little something with that stamp set. Below, I share a book mark with a little feline inlay! The pattern papers are from basicgrey's 6x6 Prism and Pebbles' 6x6 Front Porch pads. 

But, first, I just wanted to show you some scraps. Yes, scraps. I've seen paper craft videos that recommend partial die cuts for various visual effects, but the more I thought about it and the more I have been trying to stretch this set of Lawn Fawn's Small Stitched Rectangle Stackables dies, I wondered if I should use partial die cutting to change the shapes of the end results of my die cuts. I should say that this did not end up being successful in that I wasn't able to get it right for my bookmark, but I was able to make two pieces which you can see are not the same shape as the largest stitched rectangle die but were cut using that die. I think I'll try to use this technique more effectively in the future, but I wanted to show you that it is possible!


--LJE