April Card Classes

I am holding my first sessions of papercrafting classes at the Bemidji Hobby Lobby in a little over a week!

Where: Hobby Lobby Classroom in Bemidji
When: Wednesday, April 22, 2015 at 6:00 pm or
Saturday, April 25 at 10:00 am
Cost: $15 per person

At this class, we will create three cards in  about 2 hours time. All of the supplies for these projects, including envelopes, are included in the cost of the class.

Please bring a basic crafting kit with you (not mandatory, but will decrease wait time for tools) see my website for details.

Class size is limited so reserve your spot now!
To reserve your spot, click on the Class tab to purchase your spot using PayPal. You do not need a PayPal account to make a purchase, it allows you to use your credit/debit card.
boser@paulbunyan.net
http://tinkerin-in-ink.blogspot.com/p/classes.html

text: 218-368-6538

Stamp Review Crew: Painted Petals Edition

Welcome to the first April 2015 edition of the Stamp Review Crew! If this is the first time you have visited us, an extra special welcome to you :) We are a group of Stampin' Up! demonstrators that holds a blog hop every first and third Monday of the month. Each time, we select a single stamp set and all of the blog hop participants create projects with that set. Sounds awesome, right?! If you every get lost, or just want to check out past hops, click on the banner at the top of this post and it will take you to the official Stamp Review Crew blog with master list of this hop, and the archived master lists for all of our hops.

If you are following along in order, then you just came from Adriana Benitez's blog. Inspiring, right?!

My first project is a bit on the predictable side, but pretty none the less. I love that you can create your own patterned paper with such ease using this set! Just three colors of ink and away we go! I did do some stamping off to achieve the softer colors on some of the flowers.

Since I used the pink to mat the main panel (which is embossed with the Spring Flowers embossing folder), I thought I should use the orange ink for the flowers on the inside. I think this is going to be a Mother's Day card, but I haven't decided for sure yet :)

Next up is this fun watercolor card. The dots in the background are the line of dots image from the stamp set. I just sponged the colors on the panel of watercolor paper, spritzed with water to blend, dried with the heat tool (cuz I am not patient), then spritzed my stamp with water and stamped. The water pushed some of the color away and created this lovely pattern!

Inside has more of the stems stamped like grass, weeds, or reeds depending on how you want to imagine it :) I think this makes a lovely masculine card. Makes me think of sunsets or sunrises.

How about a tag? I have lots of scraps of watercolor paper and I was just experimenting on this strip. I liked it so much I decided to make it into a tag! I stamped the images once (doing a little rock-n-roll technique on the blooms) spritzed with water, dried, and repeated the stamping. Then I took some of the Gold Perfect Pearls water that I have in a mister bottle (recycled from work by the way) and spritzed a little of that on it. Let that dry. Then mixed a smidgen of Pewter Perfect Pearls with water on a little paint brush and spattered that onto the tag. Heads up, make sure you only have the project you want spattered on you desk when you do this. You can guess how I know that :)

I tried to catch the shimmer in this picture. It is so pretty in real life! And it sounds like a lot of steps, but it goes really fast. I also used the Scalloped Tag Topper punch and the corner rounder punch and some twine to finish it off.

That's all for me, it is time to go see what Lisa Young has created! She always does something amazing :)

Recipes:

Amazingly Floral:

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Sunset What You Love:

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Watercolor Blue Tag:

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Stamp Review Crew: Project Life Point and Click Edition

Hello from the Caribbean everyone! I just had to say that because I am so, so excited to be on our very first cruise as this post goes live!! OK, back to business. Welcome to the next edition of the Stamp Review Crew! We have lots of great inspiration for you here :) If you have never hopped with us before, we are a group of Stampin' Up! demonstrators that do a blog hop every 1st and 3rd Mondays of the month, and each time we pick just one stamp set for us all to use. If you want to see the master blog hop list, you can find it on the official Stamp Review Crew blog here.

If you are following along in order, then you just arrived from Martha Inchley's blog. Wow, right!

My first card for you is this very talkative card. It is just full of love! I only used 2 stamps from the set, and 1 from another  I chose colors that kept it gender neutral, even more towards the masculine, though. Since I have so many guys in the family, that keeps it more useful for me. It would be cute in any color though, I think.

You can see the little word bubble I put on the inside here. I had to add more little hearts. Of course, there is some white gel pen going on inside and out :)

Next up is a card that I made using the Nacho Average Color Challenge. That was a tough one for me at first because I did not think those colors went together, but this card proved me wrong :) Again, I used just 2 of the images from Point & Click, and the sentiment is from the monthly photo-polymer release from February.

Inside is a repeat of just one design row and some more of those stars. And white gel pen, lol.

That's it for me! I will be thinking of all of you on Monday as we are cruising! I'll be back next week, and I hope to share some great photos with you all then. It is now time to hop on over to Dawn Tidd's blog. I can't wait to see what she has created!

Sea of Green

 More watercolor, I know! I hope you all are not sick of it yet, lol! With our upcoming cruise to the Caribbean, I have been thinking about the ocean, warm sun, and beaches quite a bit, and it is definitely influencing my stamping. How could it not, right?!

This card started with the idea for the background, and then I hunted through my stamps looking for just the right big sentiment to carry it off. The sentiments in the set are huge! And I love it!! This would have been pretty cool with a circle of vellum embossed with the sentiment also. I may have to do that soon...  As the technique is pretty simple, I will just list the supplies I used at the end of this post.

The watercolor panel is popped up on some dimensionals. It is so hard for me to not use dimension :)

I stamped the anchors in each color I used in the watercoloring. There was a little gap left and I thought it was the perfect place to put a sentiment :) This sentiment is from the Seriously Amazing Paper Pumpkin kit, which is currently available to Paper Pumpkin subscribers to purchase. And the stray black mark, yeah, that is from my finger... oops.

If you place an order, please use this hostess code:
XA3QREMN
unless your order is at least $150 before shipping and tax.

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Love that Paper Pumpkin Kit? You can get your own once you are a Paper Pumpkin subscriber. Several of the past kits are available, as are refills of the consumable products in the kit. Sign up now or take advantage of the sale on the 3 month prepaid subscription ($5 off!) and earn a SAB freebie!

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I hope you enjoyed the card for today and that it inspires you to get out your stuff and stamp!

Psychedelic Agate?

On Wednesday, I posted a card that I had made while stamping with Geoffrey's girlfriend, Amanda. I also mentioned that it was not the first card design we made together. Well, this is the first one.

Amanda said she had not done any watercoloring or heat embossing in her crafting experience, so I had to show her those techniques! She picked out the sentiment and the embossing powder color, and I went from there.

1. I started out with the embossed sentiment. 
2. Wet the paper a bit, then added Pool Party ink with an Aquapainter. Then I added some Hello Honey ink around the Pool Party. 
3. I spritzed some water on the drying work and dabbed off after letting it sit for just a few seconds to remove some of the color. 
4. Then I dried it with the Heat Tool. 
5. I spritzed it again with some Pearlized water and let it dry. 
6. Then I trimmed it down to 4"x5¼" and stitched it to a Pool Party card base.

 The inside is simply outlined with the Signo white gel pen.
I titled this "Psychedelic Agate" because it reminds me of the agates I have found over the years. Except they were never these colors, lol!

Again, I did not think to take a picture of Amanda's work. It was the same day, after all :) Hers had the yellow int he center and the blue around the edges, and her colors were a little lighter, but still perfectly lovely!

The only things I used that were not SU here was the stamp: Think Big Favorites #15 stamp set from Papertrey Ink, and Pearl Perfect Pearls in the Pearlized water.

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I hope you enjoyed today's card. If you want to purchase any of the supplies used to create it, just click on the links above to go right to my online store.

If you place an order and the total is less than $150 (before shipping and tax), please use this hostess code:
XA3QREMN

And have you checked out this week's specials? Here they are!

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Soft and Shiny Sweet Flowers

Do those words really go together? Well, today they do! I made this card with Geoffrey's girlfriend, Amanda. I am so glad to have a family member to share this with again :) She loves to craft and had never done any watercoloring. I thought this was the perfect time to pull out and ink up this stamp set! This was not the first thing I had her do with the watercoloring. I will post that later :)

I used some Pearl Perfect Pearls at the end to add some shimmer. See how shiny those flowers are?! At this angle, they look too shiny as all of the detail in the flowers is lost.

At this angle you can see the detail and colors on the flowers better. This was all colored with Tim Holtz Distress markers, then I used an Aquapainter to blend the colors. I created the background with some distress ink squished onto a piece of plastic and picked up with the Aquapainter. I stamped the Hello greeting with Gathered Twigs ink and the edges are not as crisp as I was looking for initially, but I think the way it turned out is more in keeping with the rest of the work. Except, if it had been crips and clean, it would have tied the die cut word in more with the rest of it. What do you think?

Distress ink colors: Spun Sugar, Milled Lavender, Peeled Paint, Shabby Shutters, Gathered Twigs, Vintage Photo, Pumice Stone

If you place an order and the total is less than $150 (before shipping and tax), please use this hostess code:
XA3QREMN

 

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Inside, I stamped the floral branch in Sahara Sand in the corner, then outlined with White Signo gel pen.

Now, I wish I had thought to take a picture of Amanda's work, it was gorgeous! Very soft and delicate. But she had it packed up and was out the door before I thought of it. And she has already given the card to her sister for her birthday!

Stampin' Up! has surprised us all with a fabulous idea. MORE Sale-a-bration goodies! There are 4 new offerings this month, the last month of SAB for this year. Check out the new stuff here!

And in case you missed the original SAB brochure, check it out here:

Check out the Weekly Deals!

If you place an order and the total is less than $150 (before shipping and tax), please use this hostess code:
XA3QREMN

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Stamp Review Crew: Sheltering Tree Edition

Can you believe we are so far into this year already! It is just flying by, just like last year did, lol! It is the first Monday of the month, which means it is time for another edition of the Stamp Review Crew. This time we are featuring a wildly popular set from the Occasions Mini. Almost every demo I know has purchased this set. It is so very versatile, good for any age, gender, and occasion. If you don't have it yet, you are going to need it by the end of this hop, I can guarantee it! I think this set just cries out to be used with techniques :)

As always, this hop is set up in a loop with links that will always take you directly to the posts for the hop. If you get lost along the way, or just want to see the full blog roll, click on the banner at the top to go straight to the Stamp Review Crew blog post for this hop.

If you are following along in order, you just came from Betty Traciak's blog. Fabulous, right?! I am stop #15, and here is what I have made for you all to enjoy!

My first project is a subdued general card. I thought about using a sympathy sentiment, but decided to keep it open to use for just about anything.

1. I used a panel of watercolor paper and embossed the tree with White embossing powder.
2. Then used my Aquapainter to alternate stripes of Crumb Cake and Sahara sand. 
3. After drying, I stamped the leaves on with Mossy Meadow, but I only inked up once and just kept stamping. I then went back and wiped off the excess ink from the white trunks. 
4. Then I cut about 1½" off the bottom of the panel, marked the placement lightly with  a pencil on the card base, and stamped the sentiment in Early Espresso. 
5. I then laid the remaining portion of the panel on the card base to figure out how much to trim off the top to get it the right size.
6. Stitch around the edges, pop up on dimensionals. Front is done.
7. Stamp the tree trunk with Whisper White ink on bottom right corner of inside of card. Then stamp leaves in Mossy Meadow. 
8. Outline inside with Signo white gel pen. DONE!

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Here is what the inside looks like. The Mossy Meadow does a nice job of overlapping the white tree trunk. You can see the dimension here on the card front also.

Next up, I wanted to use those adorable little bikes! I love that there are 2 stamps for this image, it makes it really easy to make the frame bright and shiny :) I used 2 embossing powders for the bike frames. I must admit, I was thinking of our Heidi Baks when I made this card. She is quite the mountain bike racer!

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I did not emboss the bikes on the inside. I was just too lazy :)

This is my last project, and the watercolor background takes center stage here. I just love how this turned out! It was pretty easy too. I was going for a soft and artistic feel with this card. I adore the font of the sentiments in this set! Isn't it just gorgeous embossed here? I must confess, I used the retired Pewter embossing powder here. I love that stuff so much, I bought a backup container of it before it disappeared. But, I am sure it would look lovely in Silver also :)

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Another view, because the picture turned out great and I couldn't waste it, right! The hearts are leftovers from Valentine's card, Confetti Heart punched Dazzling Diamonds Glimmer paper.

 To decorate the inside, I just took the trimmings from the front panel and adhered them the right side edge. I wanted to continue that soft blended look with being overpowering.


That's all for me! I hope you liked at least one of these. Please, leave a comment and share your thoughts with me, it means so much :)

Time to head on over to Bronwyn Eastley's blog where she is sure to WOW you (and me too!).

Challenges used:

1st Card:

 
3rd Card: