Compendium of Curiosities Challenge Week 23

Hello to all. If you celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you had a blessed day full of good food, friends, family and fun! I've been loving my 4 day weekend which is sadly coming to a close tonight. But, I thought I'd get my submission in early just in case I can manage to find any time to play along with T!m's 12 tags of Christmas later this week. I'm so excited i can hardly stand myself!

Linda's challenge this week over at Studio L3 is the Double Distress technique (details of the challenge can be found here at her blog and details of the technique can be found on page 40 of T!m's Compendium of Curiosities. I've departed from my pennants for this week.

Double distress was done with the brick & woodgrain texture fades (on the fireplace front in grungeboard & and trim pieces in paper, but my Silhouette was working OT on this challenge. I cut about 45 holly leaves for the wreath and several sets of flames, all of which were colored in one way or another with distress inks and sprayed with perfect pearl mist. The stockings were also cut on the Silhouette. The paper (as almost always) comes from Club Scrap (it's just the best quality stuff out there!!). I've used several pieces from an older kit called Old South. The fireplace and hearth are constructed from book board (which I cut on my power miter saw....felt good to use a power tool for a change!) The Peace On Earth text was just done in PSE and printed onto another piece of CS paper from Old South, and the banner is a trick I picked up from the abundantly talented and lovely Jennifer McGuire.

I'm planning to dig through my basement stash and find an 8x10 shadow box frame (which I know i have somewhere, lol) to put this in. I was thinking of making these as gifts, but this one took me so long, I'm not sure i have enough time to invest for the number of them I'd like to make. Now that I've made one though, I'm sure subsequent ones would go faster.

Compendium of Curiosities Challenge Week 18

Another week, another Compendium of Curiosities Challenge at the Studio L3 blog....this week it's Dabber Resist. My papers (as almost always) are from Club Scrap....these are from the Textiles & Notions and Simply Beautiful kits (oldies but goodies). I think this corner stamp is from Kelly Panacci, but don't quote me on that! I've added some dollar tree jewels and some lavender stickles for a little sparkle. Oh, and I used dusty concord & Rusty Hinge distress inks as well as my favorite pearl glimmer mist.

I'm still feeling like someone has stolen my creative mojo, but I managed to eek this out just under the wire. I wish you all a productive and creative week ahead! I'm super excited because I'm starting an accelerated college course tomorrow night (yes, at 43 years old I'm going back to school!) I guess you're never too old to learn, right?

Compendium of Curiosities Challenge Week 11

The challenge continues...we are on week 11 and the ever lovely Linda at Studio L3 has chosen a most wonderful technique called Blended Batik which is featured on page 36 of T!m's A Compendium of Curiosities book.

I chose to do my card in silvery blues & greys because looking back, so many of my submissions were red and yellow and orange (which is really not me at all). So, hold on while i bore you with all the details (that i can share). The flower shapes are from Outlines Rubber Stamps which I cut on my QK Silhouette (my most favorite toy...i mean tool, ever!) as is the leafy vine image. The flowers were inked with Broken China & Pumice Stone distress inks. The buttons and the butterfly bookmark are from my stash. Most of the papers are from Club Scrap's Destinations kit (with the silver from the Culinary kit). 2 of the stamps used on the flowers are also Club Scrap (Henna & Michael Strong Paisley kit), the other flower uses the friend definition stamp from Hero Arts...they are sprayed with Pearl Glimmer Mist (which is an absolute must to own..i use it VERY frequently). The ticket is made with Autumn Leaves ticketed stamp set. Oh...and last but certainly not least, there's a hint of faded jeans distress stickles near the bottom.

Compendium of Curiosities Challenge Week 10

Hello all...I hope you are having a good week! I was finally inspired for Linda's Compendium of Curiosities Challenge tonight looking at my photos from Stampaway 2010. One of the booths had some Wizard of Oz themed cards and I instantly thought, what needs stickles more than a pair of ruby red slippers??? So, here's the card I made. The paper is all from Club Scrap (Black is from Cruisin Kit, Red is from Ornamental Kit, Yellow is from Common Threads Kit and the tiny Silver is from Culinary). I ran the yellow thru Tim's brick embossing folder and sprayed with Pearl Glimmer Mist. The ruby red slippers were manipulated a bit in PSE and then printed out and then covered with rock candy distress stickles. The wand is made from a narrow strip of grungeboard that's been inked with Black soot. The phrase is from a stamp set called "You Go Girl" made by The Paper Company Studio and was snagged recently on a visit to Big Lots. Thanks for looking.....Thank goodness tomorrow is FRIDAY!!!!