Fall Tag

Hi everyone! I'm here with a project for Lindy Stamp Gang...

I LOVE Fall... I come from Northern California where the summers are hot and dry and the best way to spend your summer days are either in a pool, in front of an air conditioner or at the mall (hey, I don't mind that! LOL!) But kidding aside, Fall is time to bundle up and see all the BEAUTIFUL colors outside as the trees turn this beautiful greenish brown color. The sun can still hit you in the face, but it's a soothing, relaxing feeling versus the scorching feeling you get during the dry summer time! LOL!

What I love best about Fall though... are the colors... the warm greens, the browns, the maroons and burgundies... I'm in heaven with those colors!

The base of this large shipping tag was dry embossing with a Tim Holtz Alterations texture fade, rubbed with Versamark and then embossing using the Midnight Emerald Obsidian from the Rich Royals pack. I love, love, love this green color and the shimmer is amazing! After heat setting, I sprayed on some Moon Shadow Mist in Pirate's Plunder Gold to add more of a vintage feel with added glimmer.

All the flowers are sprayed using Glitz Spritz Desert Moon Cactus Gold, my all time fav when you want a ton of Gold shimmer with no color. ❤

The gold Dragon Fly and small gold Butterfly charm are from the Lindy Stamp Gang store... love these, so versatile!

Click HERE to watch my video on this tag to get an up-close look.

Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope your week is going well! ❤

Follow Your Dreams...

HI everyone! I'm here today with a project for Stampers Dream!

I wanted to travel back to my crafting roots and create (or should I say "distress") a tag... and what better stamp set to choose for my tag than a Tim Holtz cling mount stamp set! And Michelle has a great selection of the coolest ones on the Stampers Dream store. I used the Papillon Cling Stamp set. I just LOVE all the vintage butterflies in this set.  For the sentiment, I used Impression Obsession's All Occassion Stamp Set. I did a bunch of distress work and stitching on this tag and just had a BLAST!

What do you do with a tag you say? You gift it, just like you would a card! :-)

Here are some pics...

I'm going to keep this one short and sweet today and include all the deets on a vid. Click HERE to watch the video explaining how this tag came together.

Here's the recipe for my tag:

• #8 shipping tag (backed with chipboard)
• Tim Holtz Papillon Cling Mount Stamp Set
• Impression Obsession All Occasion Stamp Set
• Butterfly Garden Metal Charm
• May Arts Brown Twisted Burlap String, May Arts Brown Shear box Pleat Ribbon,  May Arts Brown Burlap String
• Vintage Photo Distress Ink, Vintage Photo Distress Stain, Spun Sugar Distress Stain, Ranger Embossing Ink, Clear Embossing Powder, Archival ink
• Prima Peridot Love Letter Roses
• Webster's Pages Sparklers
• Crate Paper Eclectic buttons - Portrait collection

Thanks for stopping by today! Have an awesome week!

hugs!

Accordion Photo Stand

Hi everyone -- TGIF!! Wow, what a week it's been and finally the weekend is here. One word ------ aaaaaaaaaaaah! ** Big sigh of relief. ** LOL!

I'm here today with a fun, FUN project for Stampers Dream. A week or so ago I picked up the new Donna Salazar Creative Book Pages Grand Dies over at Stampers Dream. And oh my!! I've been dying to create something with these dies. My Dad's birthday is coming up on Sunday and we're getting together to take him out to a nice dinner. Instead of a birthday card, I thought I'd create him an accordion photo stand of his 3 grandsons! The creative book pages dies were PERFECT! I used the larger (ticket shaped) die to cut out thin chipboard & design paper. Then I used the smaller page die to create a matting for the boys' pictures, which I fussy cut. The papers are from the Prima Reflections paper collection available at Stampers Dream. The embellishments are random metal & wood findings from my stash by Tim Holtz, Making Memories and Maya Road (notice how I used the Maya Road Bingo chips to call out each son's age?) I used the banner die cut from the Regal Crest Alterations Die to adhere alpha stickers to spell out each of my sons' names. I then used my Crop-a-dile to punch holes on the pages and affix large eyelets. The pages are joined together using Tim Holtz Ideology bead & chain.

Hope my Dad enjoys this for years to come!

Thanks so much for stopping by and have a GREAT weekend!

hugs ♡

Haberdashery card

I love, love, LOVE me some Tim Holtz, how about you?! ☺ I'm here today with another Dream Team project!

I created this fun card using Tim Holtz's new Haberdashery Cling Mount set. The stamp set in itself was my inspiration. I love dress forms and how beautiful and vintage they look! I inked up the dress form, then I took the script stamp from the new Tim Holtz Reflections Cling Mount set and stamped it dry directly on the dress form that I inked up, then I stamped the dress form to kraft cardstock. You can see the script text on the dress form, it's so cool! It's called the "kissing" technique and Tim Holtz has a SUPER cool tutorial on how to do this on his Youtube Channel HERE. Uber cool! LOL! ☺

 

Incorporated onto my card is some really awesome zipper trim by Maya Road. It used to be Lilac, then I colored it up with my Distress Stain in Walnut Stain to match the card. I stamped some label images from the Haberdashery stamp set and punched them out with my 1 3/8" circle punch (perfect fit!) and popped them up on some dimensionals. The large vintage button is from the Crate Paper Portrait Electic button pack. My sentiment is from a JustRite stamp set called Vintage Oval Labels and it's stamped onto a Maya Road mini tag. I tied a bow on the tag using my all time favorite May Art burlap string in brown.
 
I love how the pink Prima flower just pops on this card. It's so pretty, I wanted it to stand out. I layered it onto a rose bud from my black Frogfeathers trim. Love, love! ☺ I created a custom stick pin using black glass pearls and a Swavorski crystal finding from my stash. And do you spy an itty-bitty spool? Yup! That is a Maya Road mini spool... so tiny and CUTE! I wrapped some of my May Art burlap string around it like string on a spool... fun, fun!

 

For the background of my card, I used black cardstock. Then I inked up some of the stamps from the Haberdashery collection and stamped them onto the cardstock using white Memories ink. Then I sprayed it up with my Lindy Stamp Gang Glitz Spritz for some shimmer. Behind the dress form is some corrugated chipboard sprayed with Dark Chocolate Truffle Starburst stains.

All the products I have linked up here on my post are available at Stampers Dream. ☺

Hope you like my card and thanks so much for stopping by to visit today!

hugs!

MFT: Caged Bird Christmas Tag

This is my second blog post today, so be sure to scroll down to see more projects I've been working on! :-)

I created this tag using My Favorite Thing's Caged Bird stamp set from their "Inspired By" collection. This is by far my favorite stamp set, but you know what... I really love them all! The stamp sets are so versatile and you won't find such a HUGE variety of sentiments and styles of stamps than with MFT, which I LOVE. :-) I also used MFT's Die-namics "Let it Snowflake" die and used the die cut shapes as a mask to create subtle images of snowflakes in the background of the tag. I love the masking technique, it's perfect for backgrounds of almost anything from cards, to tags, to layouts!

I stamped the bird on Blending Card by X-Press It, available on the MFT website. I then colored it in with my Copic markers & cut it out and placed it on a bed of oak leaves punched out with my Martha Stewart punch. The brown fiber is sorta like the bird's nest... hehe!

Stamping on acetate is one of my favorite things to do! I stamped the bird cage on acetate, cut it out, punched a hole on top and tied it to the tag with some seam binding that I distressed by giving it a good roll between both hands. I LOVE the distressed look of it. :-)

Check out the video tutorial I created HERE.

Thanks so much for stopping by and peeking! :-) Don't forget to scroll further down for more project uploads.

Happy holidays!

Christmas "Ornament" Card

Hey everyone! Here's another holiday project coming your way... this is what I call a Chistmas "Ornament" card. hehe! Super fun idea to send good cheer AND a gift in one envelope! :-)

I used the Sizzix "Ornament Ball" Bigz die to cut out the ornaments using medium weight chipboard. I embossed them using Sizzix holiday themed texture plates, then painted them with gold acrylic paint, sanded it, rubbed Distress Fired Brick Red ink on it, sprayed it with Lindy Stamp Gang's Starburst Spray in Golden Sleigh Bells, then heat set. Whew! May seem like a lot of steps, but OMG what an outcome! It looks amazing! I learned this technique from Mr. Tim Holtz himself (via his "Compendium of Curiosities" book of course! And maybe through a few of his older YouTube vids hehe!) Anywho, be sure to check out the YouTube vid HERE for more details on how I created this super fun card. Product list is included at the bottom of this post. :-)

Thanks for stopping by everyone and Happy Holidays! :-)

Products used:

• Sizzix "Ornament Ball" Bigz die & holiday texture plates
• Lindy Stamp Gang Starburst stains in "Golden Sleighbells", "Poinsettia Red Gold", "Desert Moon Cactus Gold" and "Cathedral Pines Green"
• Gold acrylic paint
• Ranger Distress Ink in "Fired Brick Red"
• Tim Holtz sanding block
• Sentiments from "The Homemade Christmas" stack by DCWV
• Poinsettias from iamroses.com
• Leaves from Prima
• Stamp sentiment from Crafty Secrets

Twilight Canvas for Bona

Everyone who knows me knows I am a die hard Twilight fan... I'm so super excited for tomorrow 'cuz Bona and I are catching the premiere of Twilight Saga: Eclipse in IMAX. I can't wait!!! I haven't seen Bona in awhile and thought I'd make her something "Twilight-ish" as she has recently jumped on the Twilight band-wagon and I'm so excited that we have another thing to enjoy together! hehe!!!

Here is the canvas I made for Bona. Be sure to check out the YouTube vid to see how I created it. Thanks for stopping by!

hugs,
Arlene



Click HERE to see how I created this canvas.

New Tag and RAK for Amy

Happy Friday everyone! Are you as excited as I am that the weekend has come?! Gosh, what a week. One word -- insane!! hehe!!

Here is a new tag that I made for Amy at "worker4ever123" on YouTube. You can check out Amy's channel here. She is the sweetest lady ever. She went to her local Michaels and bought me the large Martha Stewart deep edge Doily Lace Punch after watching one of my vids. I had bought the punch, then later discovered after opening the package that the handle was broken. I checked and called every Michael's within an hour of where I live for a replacement. Nothing. I was nearly in tears (well, I think I actually was... LOL!) Don't you get like that when you really, REALLY want something? I know for sure I do. :-) Anyhow, Amy sent me a message on YouTube and she said "I picked up the punch for you, shipping to you UPS this week!" I was nearly floored... okay, I "was" floored! Even more excited than the Mariposa papers (OMG, is that possible? YES it is!) I offered to send her money through Paypal, even for the cost of shipping... but she wouldn't have it. Anyhow, Amy is just the sweetest ever to go out of her way to do something like this for someone she hardly knows (we only "know" each other through YouTube.) And to top it off, she sends the punch with a TON (and I mean a TON) of scrapbooking goodies. Everything was just AMAZING!!! You can check out my video of Amy's RAK here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaK4k7zm0As

Anyhow, I put together a package for Amy as my way of saying "thank you." :-) I made a Valentine's Day tin mini album for her, a Valentine's treat box and a tag. I hope she enjoys it all and I wanted to share those creations with you here. Thanks for stopping by, and enjoy!

hugs,
Arlene

Some new tags!

Hi everyone! I've been in a tag making mood lately... might have to do with the tag swap coming up, so I'm just warming up! hehehe! Here are a few tags I made that I wanted to share.

Also, I had a Glass Bead Embossing tutorial up on YouTube but it was set to private... ooops! I just made it public for everyone's viewing. This video will show you the technique I used on the frame of my "Me" Mariposa mini album where I used hot UTEE to set the glass beads.



Thanks for stopping by! Enjoy! :-) hugs, Arlene