You Make Me Happy

Today’s blog post features a card made with the absolutely stunning Stampers Anonymous stamp by Tim Holtz called Glorious Bouquet CMS325 with a touch of Ornate Trimmings CMS326, two of my immediate favorites!! Both of these stamp sets will be shipping THIS WEEK! Yay!!

This is a very simple card, but it isn’t quick to make. I stamped  a corner of the Glorious Bouquet stamp onto the corner of some Distressed Mixed Media Heavystock in Ground Espresso Archival Ink. Then I watercolored with Distress Markers in all the various greens and purples. The water coloring is what takes all the time, but it is so worth it! I added one of the sentiments from the Glorious Bouquet set, and added a couple of the Ornate Trimmings stamps along the right side in Antique Linen Distress Ink.

 I LOVE the Ornate Trimmings!! I have so many plans for them! They can be so versatile - lovely, lacy, and feminine or bright, bold, and masculine. Stay tuned for more cards I’m currently working on with this set. If it isn’t on your wish list it should be. :-)

Making Plans with Side Orders

I don’t know about you, but I thoroughly enjoyed all of the videos and photos from Creativation 2018! What fun and so much great inspiration! If you missed anything, Tim Holtz has a fantastic recap of all of his booths and demos on his blog here.

Today I wanted to start sharing some of the samples I made for some of Tim Holtz’s product lines. I’m beginning with some Sizzix Alterations dies that are released and shipping THIS MONTH!

With so many planner artists out there, Tim added a die called Stitched Slots to his die cut line. This die has several uses.

1. My first thought was that it would be perfect for mini albums. You could tuck additional photos, journaling tags, and souvenir tickets, and other ephemera into the various slot spaces.
2. It could also be put into a card for a loved one with gift cards, notes, even photos.
3. I used it as a place to hold tags and decorative paper clips for a planner exchange. I’m not a planner, at all, so I just pretended that if I was, I’d be in a group that does exchanges and this would be what I would bring to the exchange. :-)

To make my little Planner Exchange Gift , I folded a piece of cardstock and cut out a card using the largest Stacked Deckle die. Make sure you place the fold INSIDE the cutting edge or it will cut out two separate shapes.

Then I cut out three of the next size smaller Stacked Deckle dies out of patterned paper for the front and insides of the card. Adhere them to the front and insides of the card.

Then cut out two of the Stitched Slots. Adhere them to both inside pages of the card. The key to adhering these pieces is that you ONLY PUT ADHESIVE ALONG THE OUTER EDGE, not on the Slots.
Using the Side Order Dies that go with the Sidekick, I cut the various pieces for the shapes I wanted for planners. The only difference when making the paper clips is that you need to cut an additional one of the base shape so that you can sandwich the paper clip between the shape and the extra base piece.

The Side Order dies really are perfect for planners!  And although these are all cut from paper, I was able to cut out shapes from felt, fabric, and fun foam as well. So many possibilities!

Since I knew these would probably take a beating in a planner, I covered them front and back with a layer of Distress Collage Medium.

Then I attached them to various slots along with some small tags, and it is ready to give to a friend for a planner exchange.

Would you like a Side Order with that Sidekick?

Adding to all the fun that is the Sizzix Alterations Sidekick, Tim Holtz has released six sets of Side Order dies and the best part is that they are available TODAY! How cool is that? You don't even have to wait!

Below are the sample tags I had the privilege of making for Tim's live Facebook reveal. There were several questions about how I made the frames for the shaker tags, so I took a few pictures that are at the end of this post that I hope will explain how I made the frames.

 

Making the frames for the shaker cards is actually really easy! I started by pulling out the following die sets: the tag that comes with the Sidekick, the Labels set and the Gift Tags set.

If you take a look at the dies in the Labels  set, you will notice that most of them are too big or small for the shaker tag frames, but there are two in this set that work well. The large postage stamp and the one I've termed the bulging rectangle.

As you can see in the image below, the bulging rectangle and the large postage stamp fit within the tag and leave a nice border or frame.  The ornate oval is too wide and doesn't leave a sufficient frame.

I cut several tags first, since you need two for each shaker tag. Keep one whole and the other, the one that is going to be your frame, center the smaller die in the center of the tag and tape it down with removable tape. Run it through the Sidekick, and voila, you have a shaker frame. Now you just need to cut foam to go around the outside of the tag, add your shaker items, acetate and adhere it to the bottom tag. 

The Gift Tag dies all fit on the Sidekick but not all will work for a shaker tag frame. Some are too wide or too tiny, so check carefully to see which fit on the tag.

These three are the best fit for the shaker tags. Now these tags have holes in them but that's of no consequence since we just need the outside shape. Cut them out the same way you did the labels.

As you can see from the image below, each of them make a fun shaker window in the Sidekick tag.

 

For the birthday shaker, I cut a bunch of the stars from for the hat

 

For the Valentine tag, I cut a bunch of the tiny hearts that go on the envelope. 

 

I colored some of the Rock Candy Distress Glitter with Butterscotch Alcohol ink 

and added that as sand in the Summer shaker tag.

 

I cut a bunch of the stars from the banner for the 4th of July shaker tag.

 

This shaker has a bunch of little "eggs" that are actually the bird's wings. I speckled them

 by using the Distress Sprayer with the Ground Espresso Distress Marker. 

 

A Mid-century Modern Merry Christmas -

 This Christmas card evokes the feeling of a mid-century modern Christmas with the tinsel trees, and the mint green and pinkish reds with very clean lines and minimal decor.  I used several of my favorites from this year's Tim Holtz Christmas stamp and stencil release through Stampers Anonymous.

 The sentiment is from Christmas Classic CMS322 and the green Cracked Pistachio Distress Oxide background is made from the Sparkles and Christmas CMS324 stamp set.
The pinkish red background is the Starry THS093 stencil  made with the Candied Apple Distress Oxide.

All the the silver stamped images from Christmas Classic were stamped in Black Distress Oxide and heat embossed with Fine Silver Embossing Powder by Ranger.
The pine cone technique is the same one I used on a previous card to make holly leaves, and I used the same Festive THS029. You can see the technique on this post: Special Delivery.

A Christmas Memory Vignette Tray

I made this memory Vignette Tray using Christmas Ideaology and Sizzix dies in order to showcase some of my treasured Christmas memories.  I couldn't be more pleased with how it turned out.

When I was growing up, my family worked every December at a Christmas Tree farm in Central California called Friendly Pines. It was owned and managed by an older, retired couple from our church at the time. It was a Quaker church, also known as a Friends Church, thus the name Friendly Pines. Because this was a Christmas Tree farm in California's very warm San Joaquin Valley, in all the years we worked there there was never once so much as a single snowflake. Consequently it was always very green. That's why there is not a bit of winter snow in this vignette. 

The top of the large Vignette Tray is decorated with two Tim Holtz Tree Dies - Evergreen and Treeline. I cut multiples from these dies, inked them up and spritzed the with water to get the variations in color, then I trimmed them and popped them up and layered them to try and get them to look like rows of different sized Christmas trees on the lot. I used the Christmas Red Alpha Dice and added some pine branches from the Sizzix Tim Holtz Pine Branch punch and the pine cones are some Beaded Berries (another one of my favorite things from the 2017 Christmas release! I would love to have these beauties around all year long!)

The Wood Slices are one of my favorite things from the Tim Holtz Christmas Ideaology 2017 release. I especially love the ones with the little bits hanging off the sides that aren't perfectly round. My Dad cut slabs of burl wood and did tree pruning and cut the Christmas Trees when I was younger. Even at almost 80 he still prunes trees, and cuts small slabs of wood, usually for craft supplies for me and my mom. So when I saw the imperfect wood slabs I fell in love! They HAD to be part of my title for this memory vignette. I stamped the letters on them with the Ideaology Cling Foam Christmas Alpha stamps and Festive Berries Distress Paint. They, as well as the lights, are hanging from the Vignette Hardware screw eyes and hooks.

The Letterpress letters are painted with Festive Berries Distress Paint and then I lightly sanded some of the paint off once it was dry so the wood shows through.
In this part of the vignette, you can see I used the Christmas Paper Doll family. They represent the many families who would come to Friendly Pines to purchase their Christmas trees each year. The Christmas Paper Doll man with the tree represents my dad, who worked every weekend cutting trees for families and he would hold it for them and carry it to their car and help them get it tied down for the drive home.
The Christmas Baseboard and Christmas Ephemera represent some of the walls on the check out stand where they had tons of things posted.
The strings of lights represent the actual strings of lights that hung over the rows of trees so people could see at night when they were purchasing trees.

In this part of the vignette, the Christmas Paper Doll boys represent the kids who never stayed with their parents and ran around climbing on things and playing. The wood slices at the bottom represent all the wood slices from the bottoms of the trees that were everywhere throughout the farm.
The Christmas Paper Doll girl in the small Ideaology Vignette Box Top represents my sister, Melissa.  She was a serious seasonal entrepreneur. During the week my dad would help folks out by pulling mistletoe out of their trees around town. Then at night, my mom and sister would make clippings of mistletoe and tie it with pretty ribbons. The first year, my dad made her a sales booth out of a refrigerator box and they decorated it and handpainted a sign that said "Missy's Mistletoe." Mom put matching bows in her hair and she sat out in that box on the weekends and sold mistletoe for 25 cents a bundle and made a ton of Christmas Cash. No one could resist the cute little girl in the box selling mistletoe. Eventually she outgrew the box and sold it from a window in the Tree Farm sales booth. The decorations on the Vignette Box Top are from the Tim Holtz Village Christmas Time dies.
My job wasn't nearly as cute nor as lucrative. I was the greeter/parking lot attendant. I was tasked with sitting on a wooden crate and as soon as a car came down the driveway I said, "Hello! Welcome to Friendly Pines Christmas Tree Farm! You can park here, or in the parking lot further down. Have a Merry Christmas!" probably about a thousand times every Christmas season.

Thanks for taking the time to meander down memory lane with me as I described my thought process behind this memory Vignette Tray. When my mom saw it she said it perfectly represented our family  Christmas memories of the many Decembers we spent at Friendly Pines Christmas Tree Farm. one of the only things it is missing is that amazing fresh cut Christmas Tree pine scent that is hands-down one of my favorite scents of the season.