The only time "Housework" comes before "Stamping" is in the dictionary! Ruffled skirts and Santa Fe trip

These colors will be leaving....   :-(    Oh my it's been a whole week since I posted...getting back from a long vacation takes another vacation to get caught up, and that's what I've been doing - does thinking about stamping, etc. count?!  I received a super nice email from another stamper in Australia who I sent the skirt card info to....she immediately made up two adorable skirt cards and shared them with me....her motto is the title of today's post!  LOL.  Here is my version of the skirt cards that I posted in an earlier post (which are cased from Paper Crafters Samplers March 2010 issue):

 

Here are her 2 versions of them - don't you just love the ruffles, flowers, and pleats at the bottom??! 
 

I bet her cards will be a hit at the swaps she will be doing!  Thanks Ingrid, for sharing these, and for the quote about housework and stamping!! 

I will be getting the new Stampin' Up catalog this week and I can't wait to see what new stuff they have, since I have been seeing previews and sneak peeks of products made with the new Stampin' Up from other demonstrators....I can imagine my wish list will be rather long!  Are any of you going to see Eclipse that comes out on June 30th? (Team Edward or Team Jacob?!)  And look here, what we got in Santa Fe, NM - kinda matching copper and silver bracelets...copper is suppose to have medicinal properties you know....if you have anything to say about that, I would love to hear about it...copper on your skin can sometimes leave a greenish halo I noticed!

Can you see the cover on the steering wheel behind our bracelets?  We got that in Santa Fe too.  I love this decoration they put on the ladies' restroom at this beautiful indoor shopping mall (a mini-flamenco dancer), the water faucet, and this picture they had inside this mall - this mall is set up like a museum!

Here's the beautiful sunset at the restaurant we went to in Santa Fe:

The food was excellent at this restaurant - they make everything there and you know the herbs are fresh when you see their herb garden outside by the parking lot!!

There was a park in Santa Fe called the Frank S. Ortiz Park that has an off-leash dog area that is an enormous chaparral and dirt trails looping about everywhere with junipers, birds, a few surviving piñons, and of course, dogs and dog owners - an awesome doggy paradise!  Here is a link to an article about what it's like at this dog park http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Scoop/The-Dog-Park-Yule--mdash--A-Santa-Fe-Christmas.  We were lucky to get to it just as the sun was setting and walked around one of the trails with our flashlight, meeting and greeting other friendly owners and dogs.

Last but not least, like most KOA campgrounds, we had to check out their enclosed doggy park with our furbaby:

Oh yes, we will definitely be going back to Santa Fe again!

Fathers Day doggy mini-tissue holder in red, white, and blue

Gee I almost forgot to make something for my hubby for father's day tomorrow from our furbaby....my very bad!  Since I was doing the Inkspirations online classes  and wanted to combine several challenges to make that class' project, the red/white/blue challenge, & anything but a card on Sudsol, but had really limited supplies on hand since we are still on our RV cross-country trip heading back home, I had to get super resourceful....Fortunately I had the sample cardstock of some of the new colors from the Stampin' Up! Stampin Success, so used the Cherry Cobbler and Marina Mist, and scraps of the 6 x 6 designer paper pack. (BTW you can still join and get all the past class projects, as there are 11 projects total and we are only on project #7 now: http://thestampingstudio.blogspot.com/p/inkspirations-4u.html)

I distressed and wrinkled the navy/white background and used the scallop square punch in several places. I made the polka dots with the eraser end of a pencil, along with SU markers – these kinda give the effect of “stress” and measles, along with the sick doggy pic lol. When I cut the opening for the tissues, I didn’t fold it all the way back, so the marina mist cardstock showed thru….and edged everything in red. When I started this project, I had no idea of the color scheme but as I went along, things kinda just happened and there was paper and glue strips flying all over!  But I love dog themes, so just had to use this dog stamp again.

I changed things up a little from the project tutorial - this is for our furbaby to give her daddy for father’s day tomorrow….figured he could put it on his desk and then always have a few tissues handy….Hope it brings a smile to his face every time he looks at it lol. And he will see what I have been up to when I am up late at night!  I think he will be totally surprised....

The more I use the cherry cobbler paper, the more I like it....:-) 


If you want to get the fabulous projects in these online classes, it is only $20 - we are doing color challenges, sketch challenges, and there are 3 other designers - having a blast since there other participants from all over the world! Madeline is doing a super job - check it out before the current class is over! 

http://thestampingstudio.blogspot.com/p/inkspirations-4u.html - Maybe I'll see you there!  And have a great  Father's Day with however you celebrate it!!

Last project for red and white shabby chic/vintage – are you sick of it yet?!

Okay, one more project for the red/white shabby chic/vintage designs….since I adore the white bride designer paper by Stampin’ Up, I used it to make a gift pillow box (aka Puffy box) – for a Christmas present (it's not too early to start, right?!) I embellished the pillow box with a belly band from red designer paper with fuzzy velvet decorations on it, along with silver, which I thought added to the sheen of the designs in the white box. Even though the color scheme is simple here, using textures and papers with shine, really blends well and has an elegant shabby chic/vintage feel.

To give you an idea of the size of this puffy pillow box, here it is with the necklace I made to go into it (aka Potato jewelry) - With a little tissue paper, it fit perfectly (and continues with the vintage/shabby chic theme....you can put a little picture or something into the locket that opens up)

You might be glad to hear this is my last project for the red/white shabby chic/vintage theme (!) ….hmmm, I think I want to decorate my craft room in shabby chic/vintage. Maybe cream, baby blue, lilac….throw in a little green?  We went to the Titantic exhibit today in Branson, and I got a cream colored vintage mini-loveseat pincushion, shoe, and picture frame for my room - cute, cute, and cute! And when we get back from our trip, I will have to finish unpacking my crafting stuff, now that I know what I want for my craft room/sewing/spare guest room theme!  Thanks for looking at all these projects – would love to hear what your comments are!

A paper bag purse to match the flower pin card

I am finding I really like the shabby chic themes – when I first learned about it from a TV decorating show and book, I didn’t care for it at all….but now I am loving it – it can be used anywhere and in anything! And mostly I like that it is inexpensive lol!! I had a tutorial on making a paper bag purse (http://inkingidaho.blogspot.com/) and since I absolutely LOVE purses, and had all the red and white items out, I discovered my paper bag purse matched the red, white, and navy flower pin card I made and just posted – see here is the paper bag purse (shabby chic) and flower pin card (vintage):

 

Isn’t it great when you find you accidentally make things to match?! If you look real close at the red and floral paper in this paper bag purse, you can see the glitter – the paper came that way so it saved me some messy glitter work. I just bought a spray can of glitter but haven’t tried it out yet. If you have used the spray can glitter and have a minute to post, I would appreciate hearing what your experience has been with it – thanks!

A flower pin card a la shabby chic/vintage

Still doing shabby chic/vintage projects with red and white! Here’s another ruffled distressed flower pin with red and white/cream colors, and a little bit of navy….I put it on a card made from Stampin’ Up’s bridesmaid cream designer paper and edged with one of their border punches….so the recipient would get an elegant card and a flower pin she could take off and wear or use elsewhere. Only 5 layers of ruffly flowers in this flower pin lol!  I just love projects that can be used in more than one way...

Another shabby chic/vintage project…

              

I’m still making a few more projects based on the red and white vintage teapot, and for this ruffled distressed flower pin, I used some pink color. Also, I used old book pages for the flower – 10 layers of ruffled flowers and distressing! Wow, my hands got a little tired with all the rumpling, crumpling, rolling into little balls, and unfolding, and then doing again. I did each layer 3 times, so that is 30 times I did this process….phew! But I love how ruffly the pin came out – what do you think?

A different color combo for shabby chic/vintage -- 2 flower pins

I’ve been designing some projects for a challenge that uses a vintage teapot for the design inspiration – in researching to learn more about shabby chic and vintage, I read that the usual colors for these themes are white, bleached colors, faded and/or soft, pastel colors. The vintage teapot for this challenge, however, is cream/white with red edging – here is a picture of it

My 2 previous posts feature red and white/cream colors. Since I had quite a few red and cream/white items that I bought, had, or made, I had lots of fun designing and making projects with the shabby chic/vintage style….Here is yet another one! These are two distressed ruffled flower pins – here’s a pic of the flower pins before I added embellishments – I made one of them mostly white/cream and the other mostly red. Can you see the cute button on the red flower that has white edging on it?

Here are the pieces I used for the red flower, and the pieces for the white flower – I did lots of distressing/edging, crumpling, swishing, dabbing, more crumpling, wadding, rolling into little balls, to get that wrinkly faded look!

 

Then I used red ribbon for the red flower and white on the white flower, and gathered up tulle to put behind each, and then a ton of sticky glue to make it all stick – the pin is hot glued on the back. The final touch was to put a real stick pin with a pearl on it on the front.

Two things I learned in doing these projects, was that the color of my background makes a big difference in how the picture turned out – see the difference between the blue background and the black? I usually use white or off-white, but thought the projects would fade into the white background, so tried out different background colors….I have seen where other crafters use really pretty setups for their pictures and a variety of lighting, so I will work on doing that since it adds a lot – presentation is a huge part….And the biggest thing I learned was that I need to get a better camera! A lot of the details in the projects just don’t turn out well with what I am using right now….grrr. Have to save my pennies to get one soon. My son has a super good camera so I will have to ask his advice!

So which flower pin do you like best?  I appreciate any comments or feedback!!

Another flower clothespin hanger

Thought I would share some of the deets on another flower clothespin hanger I just made....I used red and white inkpads to distress the flowers and butterfly - on the edges and crumpled one of the flowers and then dabbed it in the inkpad....I bought a couple of those silk flower bunches on sale and took them all apart so I had tons of flower parts to use:

Some of these got the red inkpad too....I used the flower's pearl center for the butterfly, and tulle behind the flower, and then a vintagey red button was held on with a pearl pin, and a red gingham brad in the center - see here:

Here is a side view of the flower clothespin hanger where you can see the red painted clothespin:

 

All in all, I spent very little $$ making this and ended up with lots of spare parts to make more!! 

Shabby Chic and/or Vintage Challenge Projects

These are some projects I've been working on with the shabby chic and/or vintage inspiration - how do you like them?  There is a flower clothespin holder hanger, flower clothespin magnet, two vintage flower pins, distressed ruffled flower pin card, paper bag purse, snowflake gift pillow box, ruffly newsprint flower pin, and the gift pillow box with the necklace I made to put inside it (believe it or not, the large beads are made out of potato nuggets!)....Here is the picture that is the inspiration for the theme, and here are my recycled project boxes with some of the finds I bought and made for them (the project boxes are the bottoms of water bottle cases lol!)

The only things I really spent more $$ on were the crystal beads and pendant for the necklace!  I had many of the products already, or got them on sale real cheap, or recycled stuff.... Now that is the true heart of shabby chic and vintage, don't you think?  I can't decide which one(s) I like the best....which is your favorite?  Do you think these projects reflect shabby chic and/or vintage?  I would love any feedback or comments, and suggestions on how these could be made even more shabby chic or vintage!  Thanks for looking.  Hope you find something today for shabby chic or vintage!