Shabby House Warming Gift

We got new neighbours this weekend. I was really disappointed when no one welcomed us to the neighbourhood so I was determined to say hi to our neighbours in style. I started as soon as I saw the For Sale sign, calling the real estate agent to find out the closing date.

So I made this adorable little house from a PTI template to hold some brownies I plan to take over. It doesn't look like it but it is actually a box with a detachable roof. Then I saw a recipe for caramel and I was determined to make my own. (That is a whole other story of it’s own.) So that ended up in there waiting for the brownies. I have a bit of a cold so I haven’t taken it over yet.

Here is the side, the other is the same just without the tag. I poked a hole through the button hole to attach the tag. That way if they want to remove it, the hole won’t be very noticeable. The door is stmaped with celery but it was too bright so I toned it down with glitter. It really is still too bright, I should have used moss cardstock instead.

The roof was airbrushed using another piece of punched CS as a mask. I was kicking myself that I hadn’t offset the scallops as I would have entered it in the Paper Crafts or Moxie Fab challenge to use offset scallops. Oh well. After airbrushing the ‘shingles’ the contrast was a bit stark so I continued to airbrush getting the look you see in the photos. The gable roofs were airbrushed similarly but without the masked parts.

The flower is made from scalloped music paper circles with a silk flower in the middle, I removed all the parts of the flower except the petals (it had these weird little thingies to hold the petals closer together but they showed somewhat, eww, and the stamen/pistil/whatever was ugly too) and used a brad to hold everything together. Then I placed a drop of glue on the brad head and added clear microbeads; I do wish I’d had some gold or yellow ones though.

I’ve been trying really hard to edit my photos so they won’t be so dark. They always look fine on my laptop but since the screen angle adjusts, it seems to always make me underexpose my photos or choose ones that are underexposed. GRR. Here’s hoping this is better!

Enjoy, Rebecca

RECIPE
Stamps: Home Made-PTI
Ink: chocolate chip, celery, pale plum-SU!, Antique Linen, Tattered Rose Distress ink
Paper: PTI natural white CS, chocolate CS-PTI, Melissa Frances DP, vintage music paper
Accessories: scalloped circle Nestabilities, Spellbinders tag die, silk flower-Michaels, pearls-Dollarama, Copic Airbrush system, E47 Copic Marker, MS microbeads, butterfly and border punches, PTI buttons, gold cord-SU!, vintage lace, Scor-Tape

Clear Dollar Stamps Sneak Preview-Vintage Spices

Hi everyone! I am so excited to be part of the Clear Dollar Stamps Sneak Preview for June. Today, I am previewing a great kitchen set called Vintage Spices. This is my first project for this set.

This is a pillow box, perfect for a gift card or other small gift. A packet of spices would be perfect in here! The flowers hanging from the shelf are covered in Flower Soft. The background paper is gently airbrushed with my Copic Marker Air Brush system keeping my shelf nice and white.

The pillow box template is a Timeless Template from PaperTrey Ink. I used glittered and embossed paper. I actually don’t recommend it because it is really hard to score the curves without a ruler or template.

This set will be available June 1st. The link on Lori’s blog, Clearly iStamp will be active then. Be sure to visit the rest of the DT who are previewing this set today.

Katie
Linda B.  http://mylittleyellowcottage.blogspot.com
Cassie  http://cassietrstamping.blogspot.com/
Sarah T  http://auntbeespickles.blogspot.com/
Nancy  http://inkcicles.blogspot.com/
Tracy  http://tracyjohnson.typepad.com/scrappin_sanity/
Candy http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/gallery/showgallery.php?cat=500&a...
Laurie  http://clearlydelightful.com/

(I would have hyperlinked them all but for some reason, it just wouldn’t work after Katie!)

Enjoy, Rebecca

RECIPE
Stamps: Clear Dollar Stamps
Paper: MME Organics, white CS-Taylored Expressions
Ink: Memento black
Accessories: Copic Markers, Labels 8 Nestabilities, Airbrush System, Flower Soft

Love it or Hate it? the Saga of a Shaker Box

OK, heads up! This post is going to be long; I am not writing this later, I already know it. I’ve been trying to write shorter posts lately but this will have to be an exception.

PTI released a new Template, a set of Shaker boxes. Great, I love shaker boxes and unfortunately don’t have any real ones so paper versions are perfect! I wanted to combine a few challenges as well so I started with yellow paper to go with a baby theme. The template pieces printed beautifully and I was ready to cut them out. If you have ever tried to attach a straight piece of paper to a round/oval one, you know the round one needs a ton of tabs cut beyond the desired shape to fold down and glue to the straight piece.

So this was part of the lovin’ of this project. Don’t care about my idea? then skip this paragraph, just know that I came up with a clever idea to save time! I realized the last thing I wanted to do was to cut all those tabs from the template (I always trace templates even if they are supposedly printable directly to the CS or DP.) and then trace them and cut them from the cardstock. And they aren’t hard to cut freehand if you have guidelines.So,  I cut around the outer parts of the tabs on the piece, called a tabbed oval, not down around each one, then I cut double slits, very close together along the score line in a few places and I removed the sliver of paper. Next, I printed up a second set of ovals, from these I cut off the tabs, cutting on the score line.  After that, first, I traced the untabbed oval on the CS, second, I over laid the tabbed one, sighting the pencil lines through the slits and traced around it. So what I ended up with is two concentric pencil line ovals, now all I have to do it cut little v’s out of the paper, from the outer oval to the inner oval which creates tabs. I know, this  may not make sense but if you buy this template it might matter to you! If you want, I could take pictures of the pieces to show you.

So here is the hatin’ part. I put the whole bottom together using the oval lid as the oval bottom. Not only didn’t the sides line up but even if I had chosen to leave it and cut a new oval lid, the lid wouldn’t fit! So I sat there for a few minutes wishing a bottle of Undu would miraculously appear in my hands and finally tried peeling it apart; yes this was crazy having used red line tape but strangely it sort of worked but the pieces ended up a bit mangled. Then I put it all back together, CORRECTLY.

Now I was back to liking the project at least. It looks really cute from the outside, the little blue brads I chose look cute on the yellow CS. Now all I have to do is put in the liner, seems easy right? Nope, for some reason, probably the amount of ‘distressing’ the parts of the box received before assembly, the liner wants to bulge in places and crease in others, seriously?? I finally had to cut the liner twice to make it fit and this was after it was red line taped in (not so forgiving on thin DP) so no, the edges do NOT overlap and the error is NOT hidden! I did look really nice from the outside though so I was back to loving it. It is amazing how closely it resembles a real Shaker box!

But now I decorated it. Oh no. {{SIGH}} Do you have any idea how hard it is to get paper on straight when working with an oval? And I HAD to chose a graphic sketch to work with! I figured because it was a circle sketch it might work well. And it would have helped if I’d had a straight line as a reference. On top of that, I find it a bit boring, maybe because I am so used to popping up, Nestabilities, border punches, paper piecing and Copic colouring; none of which I used here. The good news is that I can still enter it in a Laurie’s challenge #2, CDBC2 on Clearly Delightful to use a duck on your project to get a gorgeous fluffy-looking baby duck digi image she designed but I know I won’t win! I encourage you to enter too! The sketch was for Mojo 123 and Stamp Simply Challenge #125 to make a baby project.

Thanks to anyone who made it this far!

Enjoy (maybe), Rebecca

RECIPE
Stamp: stash
Ink: Scattered Straw Distress Ink
Paper: barely banana, white CS-SU!, DP-Dollarama
Accessories: buttons and twine-PTI, yellow trim-stash, SU! markers