Watercolour class

On Saturday April 9th, Linda Saxon will be teaching her watercolouring with distress inks technique at the store. As you can see from the photos, Linda's work is beautiful, and as soon as I sent out an e-mail with a link to her blog, the class was full! Linda will be here to teach a second class on Saturday April 23rd, so be sure to sign up ASAP if you'd like to attend.

Yes I know it's still March but......

As I mentioned in my previous post, we're starting our monthly Christmas card classes again next week. We'll make 3 festive cards the last week of each month and here's the first one for 2011. Start exercising your fingers girls...those bows are not pre-tied...LOL!

Two more...

Here are the other two class cards we made this week using the same Unity stamp. The first one is heat embossed using copper embossing powder. I really like the black and copper combo, but I was surprised how much everyone else liked it too. I thought at least a couple of people would opt for a brighter colour. The triangular shape was cut from copper metallic cardstock and dry embossed using the D'Vine Swirl embossing folder, then ink distressed with black soot distress ink to give it a little bit of an aged look. The second card was created by stamping the image with Versamark and heat embossing with clear embossing powder. The colours of distress ink used on this image are Spiced Marmalade, Aged Mahogany, and Peeled Paint. This technique is called emboss resist, because the embossed image "resists" the distress inks and really pops out of all that colour. It's one of my favourite techniques to use with silhouette stamps. Next week we are going to start working on our Christmas card stash. I know it seems crazy when Spring has only just arrived (I think??), but if we make 3 cards per month we'll have 27 Christmas cards by the beginning of December...that's not quite enough for my list, but it's a healthy start. The last week of each month will be Christmas cards, so if that's the only time of year you send hand made cards, why not join us and get a head start? On Sunday I'm heading out to Brampton for a Canadian Craft and Hobby Association one day event. I'm so excited because I'll be seeing and trying out new products and techniques, and I hope to come back with lots of new goodies for the store and ideas to share. The event begins at 7:30 am on Monday and runs until 5:30pm so I'll probably be toast on Tuesday, after the long drive home, but I'm really looking forward to it anyway. Hopefully the weather will be good for driving and I'll tell you all about it here when I get back:) Have a great weekend.

One of Three

Here's the first of three cards we'll be making in class this week. I'm trying something new this week by using the same stamp, with a different technique and layout on each card. This one was made by colouring directly on the stamp with Memento markers, then spritzing the stamp with a mini mister filled with water, before stamping on watercolour paper. I love the softness of this look and this stamp from Unity is perfect for this technique. The lower portion of the card was run through the Cuttlebug in the textile embossing folder, and the edges are ink distressed with Peeled Paint distress ink. I finished it off with a little corner piercing and a band of purple grossgrain ribbon to separate the embossed portion. The colours are much prettier in real life. I'll post the other two cards later this week. Fingers crossed that we dodge the snow in the forecast...I'm so ready for spring weather!

Spring is just around the corner!

I think the "springing forward" has really thrown me for a loop this year! I seem to be playing catch up with everything and here I am posting this week's class cards AFTER the classes are over! There is an advantage to this though....two of the three cards shown were actually made by people who came to class! We sometimes make minor changes to the sample card during the class and I often prefer the results that come from those changes, to the original card. For instance, the plant and the butterflies in the sheep card are different colours than I used in my card, and we came up with the idea of using punched butterflies as hair bows, to replace the ribbon tied bows on the original card. We also sponged around the sheeps' bodies with pumice stone distress ink to make them a bit less pristine looking(I've never seen a real sheep with fleece as white as snow...have you?)The tree card was also a slightly different version than the original. My first card had the tree stamped in green and I thought it was a little washed out looking, so I suggested using brown ink instead. I liked the result so much better that I decided to try overstamping mine with brown (without much hope of getting it lined up I might add.) I loved the resulting blurred image, but I don't think it would have been very easy on the eyes when viewing it online... lol! So I photographed the clear image card for my blog, but I'm keeping my original "blurry tree" 'cos I think it's pretty funky looking! Speaking of which, the stamp in question is from Unity Stamps. I just got them in last week and they're gone already! I had to borrow one to do the class LOL! The pink and black card is mine.. a quick and easy one that could work for many occasions.
Well I'd better get busy creating or I won't have photos to post in time for next week's class either. Have a great weekend:)

Happy International Women's Day

To all you wonderful women out there....mothers, daughters, sisters, cousins, aunts....FRIENDS!!!! Celebrate all the great things about being a woman this week. We all have fun complaining about the downside of being female, but honestly....we have so much to be happy about don't we? In honour of all the women in my life, those who have passed away, those I don't see as often as I'd like to, and those who are always there for me.....THANK YOU! I love the sentiment on this card and I have been blessed to have such friends in my life. I hope everyone who reads this has at least one friend who "Knows the song in your heart, and will sing it back to you when you forget the words."
Have a great week:)

Feeling a bit shabby....

Yes I do need a new wardrobe (don't we all????) but the title of this post refers to my recent cards. I didn't actually get last weeks class cards posted before the class took place but here's my favourite. I'm lovin' these little birds from the Crafty Secrets "bird notes" stamp set. We used both sides of this Kaisercraft patterned paper from their "Homemade" collection, and the dry embossing on the blue added some great texture. All the edges were ink distressed with Vintage Photo and we also used the scalloped rectangle Nestability as a stencil so we could ink around the birds with weathered wood distress ink. The other "shabby card" is for next week's class and uses a heart punch to create a shamrock. Most of the products out there use a four leaf clover to represent St. Patrick's day when it really should be a shamrock and it's hard to find the real deal( one of my pet peeves ) so I just made my own! I have a bit of Irish in me so I thought I'd just put the record straight LOL! More dry embossing on patterned paper here and the shamrock was actually adhered to the paper before it was run through in the embossing folder, to get that pressed flower look that we did a couple of weeks ago. This might be a bit too grungy looking for some, but you could use a lighter colour for the ink distressing (I used walnut stain) or not ink it at all for a brighter,fresh look.
Well it's been a rainy day here, but the birds were singing up a storm as I left the house this morning, so that means spring is definitely around the corner.....I hope:)