Simply Firefly

One of my favorite things about summer is the beautiful fireworks each evening, in the form of lightning bugs. They are much quieter than the human version of fireworks! I decided to get a little artsy and make this firefly shaker card:

The shaker is made from the plastic safety cover off of a Fiskars paper-trimmer blade...so glad I kept one! It has a little bump in the middle, but I felt like that gave the "body" some dimension. I filled it with a chunky glow-in-the-dark glitter (Martha Stewart brand). A lightning bug got into the house the other day and I wanted to recreate the surprise of its glow in a dark room. I couldn't get a good photo of it in the dark, but it does glow!

The wings and antenna were cut on my BigShot with a Memory Box die. The top wings, antenna, and body background are a shiny black paper (Recollections), and the bottom wings are vellum.The bases were cut with a Spellbinders die (included the base card; I cut it from a folded piece of paper.) The top is a shiny green (Recollections again), and it's glued  onto a black piece that I embossed with the die, cut out, and decorated with Holographic embossing powder (Sweet Stamps). I added some red Stickles as a border, reminiscent of a firefly's coloring.

The sentiment stamp is from the Let It Shine set by Verve Stamps. I heat-embossed it with a glittery white, and added a sprinkle of the white and holographic glitters to the card. That was supposed to look "whimsical" but I'm afraid it just looks messy!

I'm always inspired by our garden, and I'm glad I finally got around to making an homage to these real-life fairies of summer.

Inspiration/Challenges:
Cut it Up #48: Twilight
Just Add Ink #221: Just Add Shakers
Simon Says Stamp: Shake It
Tando Creative Challenges: Come Fly with Me

Thank you for visiting,

Summer Garden Friend

Many thanks to all of you who left comments on my Praying Mantis card post, and shared your stories about these groovy little creatures.

The day after I published that post, the praying mantis featured in it moved on to bigger things; I haven't seen it, but I'm pretty sure it had outgrown the pot it was living in. I know enough about them to know that once they can fly they often move on, but I did find myself missing the ritual of finding it amongst the leaves. Happily, a new little guy showed up on the other side on the porch. It's still pretty tiny, and I hope it sticks around long enough for me to watch it molt, because that's cool.

Can you see it?

I was pleasantly surprised to find a praying mantis stamp in my stash; I've owned these wood-mount stamps forever, and I was glad to have a chance to use it.

Using a green stamp marker, I stamped the Praying Mantis directly onto the Core'Dinations cardstock base, and filled it in with a colored pencil.

The design was inspired by CAS(E) this Sketch #38 (right). I glued on the lengths of fabric leaf trim with ZipDry.

The "hello" sentiment is made with green plastic Marquee Letters from The Paper Studio. I adhered them with Glossy Accents.

After notching the top corners with a Marvy punch, I mounted the decorated piece onto a a piece of the same green cardstock, but with the shiny side up. The card base itself is Kraft paper.

Inspiration/Challenges:
CAS(E) this Sketch: Sketch #38
Craft Your Passion: 3D
Dynamic Duos #63: Garden Green & Pear Pizzazz
Lady Anne's Challenge: Monochrome

Thank you for visiting,

I see you! Praying Mantis shaped card

I was very pleased to see that we have a Praying Mantis in our garden again this year. They're really fascinating creatures, and I've had fun watching it molt and grow this past week.

It went for a little walk today, possibly because some noisy meat-creature kept taking photos of it!

Anyhoo, I was inspired to make this simple shaped card:

I was also inspired by this week's Shaped/One Layer card challenge at Less Is More, so everything is stamped & heat-embossed directly onto the card base, which I cut on my Cricut with the Campin' Critters cartridge (I cut the "sign" card at 3 inches from <bird1>).

I want to make a brown version, but since the color of a praying mantis has everything to do with camouflage, I can just wait for my little friend to change!

Inspiration/Challenges:
Less Is More Week 128: One Layer card, not Square or Rectangle
The Stamping Chef: Monochromatic or no coloring

Here's a photo of my dog Walt... can you see the mantis in the foreground?

click images to enlarge

Thank you for visiting,

Stampin' an' Holtzin'

It's another great challenge over at Stampin' Dymonz Creative Space: this week we have a sketch & several fun rules:

"This week's challenge is a tag challenge...with a twist. We will be using inspiration from the PageMaps website (www.pagemaps.com) and utilizing [this] Tag Map [on the left]...This week's challenge will have you put your spin on this sketch, including the following elements -- your tag must have a functional folder on the front and the piece of paper inside of the folder must be in the shape of a tag. There should be space on the tag for a small photo and some journaling. This space can be on the inside and/or the outside of the folder and/or the inserted tag...Since this week's challenge is a tag challenge and when I think of tags I think of Tim Holtz, as he's done so much with tags and making them a popular paper crafting project, we will have a bag of Tim Holtz products as the blog candy for this week's challenge." --Stampin' Dymonz

Be sure to check out the DT & Participant projects; they all are unique takes on the challenge & all incorporate scrapliftable ideas.

I decided to make a scrapbook tag about this year's garden (a tradition I've kept up for 3 years so far). I used mostly Tim Holtz products. I certainly have Stampin' Dymonz to thank for getting me into his style! I'm really feeling more comfortable with it, and found myself trying lots of techniques on this project.

All the coloring is done with Distress inks. The pine tree stamp is from a Tim Holtz Christmas set I won from IslandV at Scrap InnoVations (thank you!), and I hand-stamped "garden" and "11" with wood-mounted rubber letter stamps (not from Tim Holtz, but in the spirit). For a little some thing extra, I made ploymer clay buttons from molds I made earlier this year of a whirlybird and a very young walnut. I colored both with Distress ink.

The file folder is cut on manila cardstock, using a super cut file from Heather M (Be sure to check out her link; she uses the folder to organize her embossing folders in the most lovely way.)

I used a Tim Holtz embossing folder for the base tag, and sanded the paper a bit. All the pieces are distressed with the handy Tim Holtz paper distresser.

I color-matched the ribbon and clip with distress inks. I also made empty stitches on the tags with my sewing machine.

I stapled ribbons onto the inside of the folder, and hung the tags off of them.

I used photos from this year's garden, and journaled on the back of each tag with a gel pen. I made lines for the journaling text with a pencil.

Tim Holtz Products: Idea-ology paper stash, Winter Sketchbook stamp set, Distress inks, paper distresser, scissors, embossing folder
Die Cuts: File Folder svg by Heather M (Thank you!), Bread Tags from Walk in My Garden Cricut cartridge
Other Supplies: Wooden letter stamps from stash, Core'dinations & Recollections cardstocks, clip from stash, sandpaper, WetOnes, paper towel, nail file, Elmer's gel pen, Offray ribbon, staples, thread, Sculpey polymer clay, Copic marker G99
Other Tools: Sizzix Texture Boutique, Cricut Personal Cutter, SCAL, stapler, needle, awl, oven, sewing machine

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I made the following project way back in May but never did publish the post. It used part of the same Paper I used for today's project, and the two certainly go together. So here it is, my Plant Tag Booklet:

May 5, 2011
I am seriously feelin' the Spring Fever; On Saturday we picked up some veggies & herbs for our back porch garden and I've already made a yummy pesto with the first cut of the herbs (cilantro, mint, basil, pine nuts, oil, that's it!). I hit my two favorite plant sellers at the famous 32nd Street Market: the $3 specialty varieties and the 75¢ everyday varieties. We've purchased from both before, and gotten great results. At the specialty table they have lots of heirloom varieties, so I treated us to an Abraham Lincoln tomato plant; they also provide nursery tags.

The 75¢ table (where we bought pretty much everything else) does not provide tags, however, so once again this year I found myself back home unable to remember which plant was which. Wishing I had remembered to write down what was what, I decided to craft the heck out of the problem.

I'm pretty sure I've seen this idea before, but I thought that a little notebook with plant tags would be really handy. I cut a bunch bread tags on my Cricut and attached them to a matchbook base. I included a holder for a small pencil. It's small enough to fit into a pocket. Then you can just attach the bread tag to the plant:

Scrappin' the Garden

I realized recently that I have almost no scrapbooking examples on my blog. It was only recently that I focused so completely on cardmaking; for the longest time, I mostly made memory books. Of course, most of those got sent off to family, so I have few examples in my home either. So I decided to make a memory book of our garden this year. As inspiration I used the If It's Groovy Birds challenge.

I used a paisley for the birds, my new favorite trick. I also incorporated the info stakes that came with our plants.




Inspiration: If It's Groovy November challenge: Birds
Cutting files: Design Elements and A2 Cards for All Occasions from SVGCuts.com
Supplies: Recollections & Core'dinations cardstocks, ZipDry glue, Fiskars papercutter, Cricut personal cutter, SCAL2 software, HP printer & ink, Adobe InDesign & PhotoShop, Michaels brads & ribbon, Grumbacher pastels, Pebbles Inc. pom poms, Pergamano reverse-action tweezers, AquaNet hairspray, Xyron sticker machine (sticker machine!)