Christmas Carol Book

On the Next Generation Stampers Group, we were challenged by Trish B to create with old Christmas wrapping paper. I didn't have much of that, but it reminded me: I had saved some Christmas cards from last year to possibly alter. I gathered up the cards, and decided they were too pretty to change much. I used them to make a book of some of my favorite Christmas carols. Also thanks to Trish, I discovered another beautiful carol to add to my collection: In the Bleak Midwinter by Christina Rossetti. I had plenty of old tissue paper to play with, some gesso, acrylic paints, brillance ink pads, alcohol inks and glitter. I have loaded the finished book into the slide show below.

Glorious Morning

I'm working on several projects, but not ready to post them. Early this week we had a glorious purple sky with the sunrise. I grabbed my camera and ran out to the deck and snapped this picture.

Pay It Forward

I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this Pay It Forward exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow, or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog. So basically, if you comment and you’re on, I’ll send you something crafty that I’ll make!
Once you sign up, copy and paste the above paragraph on your blog, and three other lucky people will be recipients of your handmade work. I'm getting paid forward by Beth and thought it would be fun to pay it forward to you. I will check my blog daily to see who the first three sign ups are, and if they've joined this Pay It Forward exchange, they will be the recipients from me. Make sure to leave your blog address with your message, so I can check your blog.

Winter Colors

On Next-Generation Stampers, we were challenged to create using Winter Colors. When I was playing with mica to make the book covers in an earlier post, the blue & platinum card stock was so juicy, I laid a sheet of glossy card stock on top and rubbed off the excess. I took a look at this sheet of glossy card stock and noticed the platinum ink was still wet, so I used a paper towel to wipe off the wet ink. The sheet looked a bit spotty so I spritzed on 3 different blue inks and dabbed the excess with a paper towel. I cut the card stock down to three 1-1/2" x 2-1/2" pieces and used a large bare tree stamp to create 3 different images on these pieces. I embossed the image with silver pearl embossing powder. I added some crystal glitter glue and mounted in on dark blue card stock and then onto a plain card.

More Mica Play

I decided to try dropping reinkers on a craft sheet with Pearl-ex powders. Thinking of making more small blank books for presents.
First, I dropped diluted red reinker with gold pearl-ex powder mixed in on a craft sheet. Then I dropped on some Dr. Ph Martin's Bronze, it immediately blended in with the red reinker without any mixing or swirling.

I dropped a piece of card stock on the inks, which were quickly soaked up. I spritzed some water on the card stock to make it very damp and placed a second sheet on card stock on the first and pressed them together.

After the sheets dried, I ran them through my Cuttlebug with the swirl embossing folder.

To finish off the sheets, I rubbed Red Gold Brilliance Ink over the raised areas.

For the next set, I dropped green and yellow reinkers on a craft sheet, added some gold Pearl-ex powder and spritzed with water.

Then I dropped card stock on top to absorb the inks, flipped it over, placed a second sheet on top and rubbed together.





I wanted the colors to be more intense, so I sprayed on 2 different greens and a dark yellow color spray over the paper.






When dry, I ran them through the Cuttlebug using the floral embossing folder.
I wanted this set to have more contrast., so I rubbed a Cosmic Copper Brilliance Ink pad over the raised areas.











For the last set, I dropped blue reinker on a craft sheet with blue interference Pearl-ex, some platinum pigment reinker and spritzed on some water.

I dropped on some cardstock and rubbed them together.

The plantinum pigment ink almost completely took over, so I added more blue reinker to the card stock and spritzed on more water and swirled it around.
When dry, I ran these through the Cuttlebug with the swirl embossing folder.
I rubbed Mediterranean Blue Brilliance pad over the raised areas.

Mica play & Image Challenge

On the Next-Generation-Stampers Yahoo group we were give 3 challenges for the month of November. I decided to combine two of them: mica play and using the image of the month. I'm still fascinated with using gesso for texture, so I mixed gesso with Forever Blue perfect pearls. I felt that the gesso really took away the mica sparkle and wasn't enough of a blue for what I was going for.

I mixed several different blue inks with Pearl-Ex Interference blue and washed that over the gesso.

I liked that better and finished it off by rubbing a Moonlight White Brilliance pad over the top of the ridges.

Finally, I cut up the cardstock into ATC sized pieces. I cropped the image of the month and printed it onto a transparency sheet. I used the image to create faux postage for an ATC swap on ccswaps. I call it Winter Dreams. The mica glimmer is very subtle, but it is there.

Quilts

I have made quilts off and on for many years, but wasn't happy with only knowing how to tie them together (my hand stitching was very large and uneven). Almost two years ago, I joined Comfort Quilters at my church, and have been encouraged to learn new techniques and skills as well as making lap top quilts for people with cancer, other illnesses and for babies. I didn't think to take pictures of the quilts I gave away, but have taken them of the ones I kept and placed them in the slide show below.

The Hawaiian Memories, Scandinavian Blue & French Floral quilts were all professionally quilted. The table cloth was pieced using a friends serger, so it has no back and no quilting. The other three I quilted by machine.
I bought a beautiful red fabric in Paris, that was heavier that cotton, so I decided to use it mainly as the back, with some pieced on the front. Then I didn't have enough to be the entire back, so I created a similar design "stripe" down the center of the back. My most recent quilt, the batik entitled "Glorious Grandchild", I deliberately pieced the back with leftover batik fabrics. It was a lot of fun and my favorite so far. I have many more quilts in various stages to be completed and will try to remember to take pictures as I complete them. Quilting is a addictive as paper crafts!