Stampin! with Jaydee

Home for Christmas - and my bow making video unveiled!

Hi Everyone.  Happy Sunday.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend.  I was in the Christmas mood this weekend and managed to make a couple of Christmas cards for challenges. Tonight's card uses the sketch from the talented team across the pond at Waltzingmouse.  In fact, I used one of the waltzingmouse stamps that work beautifully with my nestabilities die!  I did make a small change to the sketch, I turned it on the horizontal instead of the vertical.  Don't forget to pop along to see what the talented DT has created for you.

I also.... yes.... I did.... I really did... this one is for you, Beth... I made a bow making video!  Now.... this is only my second video... so you are going to have to bear with me, as it is not without bloopers (err more than 1!); my voice is really croaky; and ... I forgot to turn on the lamp on the right hand side of my desk - so it kind of looks like the Dark Side of the Moon.  (one of my favorite Music CD's btw!)  However, I remember being told by my mother - and my teacher's - practice makes perfect.  I doubt that my videos will ever be perfect, but hopefully they will get better.

Before getting to the card and the video.... I'd like to do a shout-out for Sue.  Sue celebrated her 67th birthday on September 8.  Happy Birthday, Sue.  I hope you had a wonderful day with John and your friends.  Sue is an amazing lady and a very talented crafter and you can find her blog here BerkerBlog.  Sue is one of our regular commenters, so, please leave her a little love and say Happy Birthday, Sue!

Here's my take on the waltzingmouse sketch challenge.

 

Card recipe - all products Stampin' Up! unless otherwise specified:

• Card stock:  Very Vanilla, Cherry Cobbler
• Stamp Sets:  Home for Christmas (sentiment), Peaceful Season (holly), Vintage Labels 10 (Waltzingmouse)
• Ink:  Cherry Cobbler, Always Artichoke (holly)
• Accessories:  Very Vanilla Satin Ribbon; Dazzling Diamonds embossing powder (holly), Gold Elastic cord, Regals Buttons
• DSP:  Jolly Holiday
• Tools: Nestabilities labels 10, Big Shot

I love the look of the Vintage Label stamp with the Nestabilities Label 10.  It really helps to ...well.... frame... the sentiment and give it more presence!  The embossed holly leaf is really pretty in real life.  I wanted to shine the light on it more than normal, so that you could see it shimmer.  The little pop of green bling helps to lift the colors.

THEN..... FOR BETH......Tonight I show you how to do the ribbon treatment - and the bow - from last week's Paper Players challenge card.  So.... with lots of fanfare, trumpeting, drum rolls and everything else you can imagine.... here is my first

On a personal note:

Today, the weather is just about perfect.  It did reach 80 degrees, but the humidity did not get over 50.  There was a slight breeze and it was glorious.  The leaves are starting to turn, so it should only be another couple of weeks before we see a great display of color. 

Poor little Charlie.... the dumped kitten that Lou rescued a few weeks ago..... ah.. yes.. talking about Charlie.... remember he was living in the bramble bushes when we picked him up.  Well, I'd like you to take a look at the photograph I took of him yesterday whilst I was stamping.  He is usually somewhere close by where ever I go.  The red couch in our basement is his favorite haunt when I am stamping. 

Errr..... think he's comfortable?  Seriously, how did he get into that position.  However, he got there... he was comfortable and FAST asleep!

Prayers tonight for Bob and Nichole (Trish's DH and DD), Germaine, T, Pri, Arthur, John and Sue, Lesley and Cyrus.

As always... thank you for spending time in my little area of the stamping blogosphere.  Your visits, your support and your comments are greatly appreciated.  Don't forget to say Happy Birthday to Sue!

I hope you all have a fabulous Monday.  One filled with love, laughter and time to spend doing the things you love.  As Trish reminded us on her last post.... we should all be glad and joyful for what we have.

Hugs

Jaydee

And then you go and spoil it all by....... Blooper night

Hi Everyone.  Happy Saturday night.   Everyone remember these lyrics:  "And then you go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like, I love you"?  Well..... in this case, it's knowing when to stop on a card!

This card is a perfect example of how knowing when to say enough is enough... is ... well...enough!

I love this Home for Christmas set.  It really is one of my favorites.  Not only do I love the sentiment, but I also love the image and love being able to color it.   I also love the DSP - Deck the Halls - that I used.  I also really like the Cherry Cobbler Seam Binding (ribbon) and love the vintage brad.  However.. sometimes, a recipe looks good - all the elements individually are fabulous....in your head its all going to work so well..... and then something goes wrong when you are in the kitchen!

OK.... so lets take a look at what is right with this card.  

The coloring on the focal image is good.  I caught the light in just the right places and the blending works really well... EXCEPT.... Hello.... Didn't I know when to stop with the tea stain distressing ink.  I mean seriously.... it looks as though someone rubbed snuff all over the focal image!  Aaaaarggghhh and it took me a fair amount of time to color in the image too... and it was all spoiled in a matter of seconds.

Then... how to spoil a perfect good piece of DSP.  I used the tearing edge to create the distressing.... big mistake.  I hadn't realized that the tearing edge was so even... I mean.. there is nothing random about it! Also, I had the paper the wrong way around, so I ended up with the with edge on the side I wanted to use and no amount of tea stain was going to fix that problem.

Oh yeah... and what's that halo above the ribbon and the brad?  It was the sun reflecting off the lens of my camera and reflecting back onto the card.... oh seriously! 

Finally... where on earth was I going to put the sentiment?

Well.... all I can say is that this is my prototype :-)  

Sorry I was late posting tonight, but I was running around and then had to get ready to go pick up Lou and then, of course, we had to go to dinner!

I will be posting my card for the Paper Players challenge tomorrow morning.  I am also hosting the challenge tomorrow, so do hope that you will play along with us.

Prayers for Trish, Germaine, Arthur, T, Pri, Angela, Hugo, John and Sue

I hope you all had a fabulous Saturday and thank you so much for spending time in my little area of the stamping blogosphere.

Old Olive Home for Christmas

Hi Everyone and welcome to Jaydee's SU stampin space.

Today's card is a case of one of my own cards.  Back in September I combined the Delightful Decorations and Home for Christmas sets to make this card.  I used Ruby Red and Very Vanilla for that particular version.  For today's card I decided to simplify the card a little by removing the back DSP and losing the glitter from the decoration.  I chose to emboss and change the position of the decoration.

I love the combination of the background DSP and how it echoes the pattern in the center of the delightful decoration. I also love the crisp clean look of the Old Olive and Whisper White color scheme.  I absolutely love this sentiment and, as many of you know, I have used this on a lot of the cards I've created this year.  This is a really quick card to stamp and assemble.

Card recipe:

• Old Olive and Whisper White card stock
• Merry Moments DSP
• Delightful Decorations and Home for Christmas stamp sets
• Sentiment stamped with classic Old Olive Ink
• I used my Craft Old Olive ink pad and then used clear embossing powder.  The great thing about the craft ink is that it is slow drying and is perfect for embossing. 
• A half pearl mounted with glue dots finishes the decoration
• A piece of the mistletoe satin ribbon with the white edging helps to tie the white and old olive color scheme together

As you read this, we will be half way across the Atlantic and we are hoping that we manage to avoid any major storms on the way and that the weather is reasonably tranquil for our sail but...  we've got sea sickness pills in our luggage - just in case.

Hope you have a fabulous day and, as always, thank you for spending time in my little area of the stamping blogosphere.

Jaydee

Home for Christmas - Easel card

Hi Everyone.  Happy Monday and welcome to Jaydee's SU stampin' space.

Tonight's card is an easel card.  This is such an easy card to make and is really cool.  It's a really impressive looking format and guaranteed to make your card stand out from others when they are on your friends' mantlepieces or buffet:-)  BTW - palspaperarts are running a Christmas cheer challenge this week - mosey along to see the inspiration and submission cards - I promise you will find inspiration.  If you feel up to it - why not submit one of your Christmas cards to the challenge.

I had to use the Home for Christmas set - you all know by now that the image - and the sentiment - have a lot of meaning for me.

Tonight, I had to photograph without my tent - adn the end result of the photo isn't quite right.  The colors in real life are really rich.

Here's a picture of the side

and another good thing about it..... it fits into a normal envelope (5 3/4 x 4 1/4) - so no extra postage is required :-)

How I created the card:

1. I cut a piece of Handsome Hunter 4 x 8
2. I cut a piece of Sahara Sand 3 3/4 x 3 3/4 for the base piece - where the sentiment is placed
3. I cut three pieces for the front of the card - Real Red 3 3/4 x 3 3/4, Handsome Hunter 3 5/8 x 3 5/8 and the final piece of Sahara Sand at 3 1/4 x 3 1/4 (i wanted a broader frame around the stamped piece than the matted pieces
4. I scored the Handsome Hunter strip at 4" and 6"
5. I folded the paper at the central fold - 4"
6. I then folded the 6" fold as a "peak fold" and folded it towards the front of the card.
7. I stamped the Home for Christmas image and colored with water color pencils and highlighted the snowy areas - and other areas where I thought the snow would stick, with a light application of shimmer white paint
8. I attached the matted sections to the base of the top of the card.. I know that sounds odd.... but.. you line up the base of the matted sections with the piece that is folded into a peak.  if you look at the side view - you can see that the matted pieces are only attached to the bottom of the front of the card.  I lifed the matted piece just off the bottom a little, as I wanted to leave a border.   TIP:  I strongly recommend that you use double sided - strong - tape for this, as it's the part of the card that will get picked up and played with a lot and you want to make sure that it stays stuck :-)
9. I glued the Sahara Sand base down and stamped the sentiment (using the stamp-a-ma-jig)
10. I then took a button - tied a little piece of gold electric elastic cord through the buttonholes and stuck the glue down with 3 glue dots -- i really wanted to make sure that it stayed stuck :-)
11. This leaves space for you to write your greeting above the button placement.
12. I stamped the "A Christmas Wish" onto a piece of Sahara Sand and punched it out with my modern label punch.  I added no embellishments to the sentiment, as I didn't want it to be the focal point.

Here's a picture of it open so that you can see the score lines, the button placement and the sentiment placement

I'm sorry I couldn't get better pics for you tonight - because it really is a rich card with traditional Christmas colors and the shimmer paint looks fabulous in the light!

I hope you all have a fabulous Tuesday.  I got no time to spend in my stamping space today - sigh! and it doesn't look as though I'm going to get much time tomorrow either.  double sigh :-)

Thank you for spending time in my little area of the stamping blogosphere.  Your visits are always very much appreciated - as are your comments and questions.

Tomorrow...as many of you have written asking what happened.... I promise to show you what happened to the corpulent Christmas Chef = you can see the beginning of the story in this post.  If you have any questions on this card, or how it was made - just send me an email - or leave me a question in the comments section.

Peace

Jaydee

Home for Christmas - Vintage

Hi Everyone.  Happy Thursday and welcome to Jaydee's SU stamping space!  Today's card was created using the fabulous square layout from the Stamping411 team.  I really liked this layout so decided to use it a couple of times this week.  This card will be sent to several of my friends this year!

Today's card features one of my favorite Christmas sets - Home for Christmas.  I've made several cards using the sentiment, but this was the first one I made using the main stamp.   The first thing I did was stamp the image in StazOn black ink, as I wanted a really crisp clean image.  (I've made the images pop-up capable for you, in case you want a closer look :-))

I took out my SU water color pencils as I wanted to use them to color in the image.  I used a mixture of greens and browns for the foliage, the wall, the door, the sled and the skis.  

I really wanted to use my shimmer paint to create a snow effect on the steps, some of the foliage, etc.

I decided to use my trusty stylus and my White shimmer paint to create the snow.  

Especially, as I wanted the snow on the steps to look as though it wasn't as pristine as when the snow is fresh ..... like it must be in many parts of Colorado and Wyoming today :-)  Using the stylus allowed me to "blob" and spread the paint and get it just where I wanted.... in some of the folds in the stone, on the tree, etc.  Any places I thought the snow might stick.

The next thing I had to worry about was .... what do I do with the greeting.  I thought a great idea would be to use the Shimmer paint for the sentiment.  Mmmmm... let's try that...  

Well, it looks OK in the light.... but in reality..... it really didn't work out.  Here's what it looked like without the light.

   Mmmmm... where did it go!!! Flat as a pancake as my mother would have said.  It really disappeared without the light.  So, I decided to go with the red instead.

And here's the finished card.  I must admit, I was very happy with it.  Jaydee tip:  you could use a blender pen to actually blend the colors, but for this card, I decided not to do that.

 

In the light the snow looks fabulous (as you can see from my earlier work in progress pic).  I also added a score line above and below the striped matt piece, just to give it a little more definition.  I used Always Artichoke and Ruby Red, as I wanted the softer greens and reds to go with the Kraft paper.  Jaydee tip:  Don't forget to add a little color to the lamp to make it look as though there's a flame... doing that as opposed to just coloring it yellow, gave it a more vintage feel - which I thought fit with the sled and the skis.

The sentiment is from the fabulous Christmas Greetings set which is 115448 and is $10.95 on preferred pricing.  I love the font they used on this stamp, the sentiment... and the fact that the size fits perfectly on so many of my cards.

And if you are wondering why my photograph of the finished card isn't as crisp as usual.... well this is what was going on in my photo tent whilst I was trying to take pictures.

All the other pics I took had either Bilbo or Bailey in the background.  It was a disaster in the tent, so I gave up for the night!  Jean.... has Sandycat been communicating with my two mutts? :-)

As always, thank you so much for spending time in my area of the stamping blogosphere - your visits area always appreciated - and I really appreciate your support and comments.  They really are what keep me going.

Peace

Jaydee

P.S.   My Feedburner link has been broken..... hopefully it should be fixed today or tomorrow and you should start getting update notifications for me.  I'm sorry that we haven't managed to get it fixed yet...but really appreciate your patience!

Delightful Decorations - Our hearts come home

Hi Everyone.  Happy Saturday night and welcome to Jaydee's SU stamping space!

I managed to get a couple of cards done today - not as many projects as I wanted to - but any time spent in my stamping space is better than nothing at all.  I did get a couple of challenge cards done - and tonight's is the latest from the design diva's at Stamping411.  This sketch is so versatile and open to great interpretation - as you can see if you go check out the submissions and the inspiration cards.  Challenge sites are a great place to find inspiration and CASE-worthy cards.

Tonight's card is quick, simple, easy and yet, has a great amount of meaning.  Especially for those of us who are far away from home at Christmas.  

 Here's the sketch... you can't see it that well because the card base is actually white - so go along and check out the website.

I used the Delightful Decorations and the sentiment is from Home for Christmas

• I wanted the card to be clean and simple and highlight the emotive sentiment.  Instead of using Real Red for the ink, I used Ruby Red as I wanted a softer feel and love the Ruby Red with the Very Vanilla.
  
• For the Delightful Decoration, I stamped it first in Ruby Red ink and then used a Versmark pen to color the area to accept the Dazzling Diamonds embossing powder.  If you have the craft ink - you don't need to use the Versamark to take the embossing powder.  (That's a great thing about the craft inks!)
  
• I used a little piece of the silver elastic cord - available from the new mini to make a hanger for the decoration and a small pearl from the Pretties Kit.  The ribbon is the retired Red Riding Hood... and it works so well.  The little stripe of vanilla on the edge of the ribbon, helped tie the colors together.
• Jaydee tip:  when using embossing powder, I use two things to make things easier for myself - I use the Embossing Buddy to help lessen the chance the powder will stick where I don't want it!  Then... cleanup.... is a breeze when you use a small piece of a Swiffer dusting cloth.  I keep a box in my stamping space and use about 1/8th of a sheet. 

  
The end result was clean and simple, just as I wanted.  Something that can be made en masse, with very few components.  Also, because the Delightful Decorations stamp actually has 4 different designs, you can make them all a little different. 

However, how can I get anything done with this amount of distraction.  

Bilbo to Bailey... Oy, you!  What are you doing up there.

 So, you think you are the king of the castle... but not for long, mate!Now.. its just a tail fest.  And what do cats do after all this activity?

Get ready to sleep in Mom's photo tent.  But even then, Bailey couldn't bear the fact that Bilbo might be more comfortable and was getting ready to pounce!  Does anyone care that mother now has to go fix this mess?  Yeah, right!

On that note.  I want to thank you for spending time in my little area of the stamping blogosphere.

You can buy any of the products to make the designs that you see on my blog - in your pyjamas and face  mask - 24 hours per day - by clicking here.

I hope you have a fabulous Sunday - doing the things you love - with those who mean the most to you - whether they are 2-legged - or 4-legged, or in the case of my late and much beloved Kit-Kat - 3-legged!

Peace

Jaydee