Twiggy Tree

Memory Box Twiggy Tree die, Martha Stewart butterflies, Hope sentiment is from Catslife Press and the dotted border is a clear stamp is a mystery.

Tip for Memory Box dies

So the detailed steel dies from Memory Box are gorgeous right? But it is sometimes beyond frustrating to get the paper out of the darn die after cutting! I have ruined countless pieces trying to get them out...the die pick works sometimes but it is better for removing the small pieces that are supposed to come out and can actually damage the parts you want to keep. I love this Twirled Heart die... I mean L-O-V-E it but usually ended up mangling the top heart trying to get it out of the die until I simply took a piece of double stick tape,folded it in half to make it a little stiffer and used my fingernail to press it into the groove and TA-DAH, it pulled the paper out enough for me to be able to gently remove the entire thing without damage! Hooray!

new desk chair

From basic, boring black to super cute in 30 minutes! I used some checked cloth napkins and recovered the cushions-didn't even take the old fabric off. I had no idea it was so easy to take these chairs apart, a couple of screws and voila!
So i kind of dropped the ball on the 'creative everyday" idea..it's been one of those months. I'll try to do better.

Tags and Memory Box

A couple of small tags made today, it was a weirdly Spring-like day today in NW PA,so odd for the beginning of Feb. Usually we are buried under several feet of snow and the sidewalk and driveway are starting to resemble tunnels with the snow piled above my head on either side. Today there is not a speck of snow to be seen...I LOVE it.

Also today a fairly large order f Memory Box dies arrived and I managed to get them all listed in my Ebay store (link to the right)-grab them while you can, they tend to go fast!

Creative Day Three

Wasn't feeling the creative bug today...so i flipped through the new Stamper's Sampler and found a tag that caught my eye by Rachel Carver so I used that as my inspiration. I dug out a tag that was already inked up, stamped a Hero Arts fern in Weathered Wood distress ink,stamped a little sentiment from Printworks and punched out some squares from a different piece of inked cardstock I had in my stash. I threaded a few seed beads onto some wire and attached that around the squares and secured the wire on the back with masking tape. Added a punched circle to the tag hole and some fibers and called it done.

Day two

Cute card for Spring even though that darn ground hog said 6 more weeks. I can't complain though, we've had such a mild winter.
Entering this one in the current
Penny Black Saturday Challenge
The stamp is an oldie but a goodie from Penny Black. I used Twinkling H2O's to color and also for the background splatter. I distressed the edges lightly with Pumice Stone distress ink and a touch of Lipstick Pink and added a bit of Perfect Pearls(pearl) along the edges to soften it.

Creative Everyday

In my never quest for organization I decided to take advantage of the free color charts PDF's you can print from Ranger Industries website. I started with the Alcohol Inks since mine were a disaster-I had to throw out several bottles that had fallen over and leaked recently(a new plastic storage box from Creative Options is on order-I'll let you know how that works out). Well after all was said and done I realized I have a lot of holes in my collection!


My 2nd order of business was to fill up the awesome Ink Palette that Tim Holtz/Ranger came out with last Fall-a few drops of alcohol ink in one of the wells,let it dry(takes about 15 min) and you now have a fabulous palette of alcohol inks to color with using the Refillable Alcohol Ink pen(you fill it with blending solution, pick up a color and away you go!) I will be testing it out later this week.
































I also filled in a color chart with my beloved Distress Inks,only missing a couple of colors-I'll have to take of that ASAP.











And finally I decided to challenge myself to do something creative every day in February...here is today's offering. I had the distress ink background sitting on my table for months so I tore it to size,punched some butterflies from the remaining piece. Used a stamp from Unity that I have never used before( I have a lot of those,hoping to get more of them inky this month) and then used the same color distress ink(spiced marmalade) to spatter a little ink. I love that background-it is my absolute favorite technique!

I am entering this in the current Less is More Challenge