September 7th, 2010 -- Posted in family, scrappy / stampy |
For one of our family craft activities this summer, we bought and played around with these cool things called Shrinkydinks. My son had tried them out at his daycare and proudly brought home his creations so we thought we should give it a try at home. We bought a combo pack with different types of papers – clear, white, cream, etc. The idea is that you colour on the sheets with some type of permanent marker, then you heat them up in the oven so that they shrink…
What I decided to do with my share of the paper was to stamp images on it with black ink, letting it dry before putting them in the oven I’d just bought the new Baby stamp set from Stampin’ Up too and was eager to try it out.
“Before”
“After”
You’ll actually be surprised how much these things shrink. I have no idea about the science behind how the papers “bake” or anything, but it was quite cool to watch. It happens relatively quickly, right towards the end of the baking time. Here’s a pic showing the size difference: the duckies are stamped on to the paper and that tiny duck is the one that’s been through the shrinking process…
So at the time I just tucked away the pieces I created, to be used at another time. When I later had time and inclination to create a baby-themed card, they were the perfect little embellishment. You would definitely want to stick them on with Sticky Strip or another strong adhesive, because they can be pretty bulky and heavy on your card.
So when it came time to make a baby card, I had these extra little embellishments on hand. They actually made a great centre-piece to build a design around. Here’s how the first baby card turned out…
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August 23rd, 2010 -- Posted in scrappy / stampy |
I was so excited when a friend posted a link (on my Young Mommies site) to this really interesting craft : created using clear marbles with small strong magnets underneath, they create really awesome magnified tiny photo mementos for your fridge. Since I already have a 1/2″ circle punch, all I needed was clear marbles and some 1/2″ magnets to get started…
I decided to first try the craft at one of my Scrapbooking Crops, and it was very fun to create them! They turned out really well!
I created the ones with the family photos inside, and since my friend didn’t have photos with her, I came up with the idea of just stamping little images on scrapbook papers – so cute!
The only thing I was not too too happy with for these batches of magnets was that I used magnets (bought at Michaels) that were not all that strong. So they make great decorations on a fridge or board, but they can hardly hold anything up. So I bought a set of super-strong magnets (purchased online) to try again…
… and this batch was better able to hold lots of paper! I had to be very careful with the magnets actually because they were SO strong they could pull each other off the backs of newly-drying marble magnets (yep, learned that the hard way and wrecked one!). I gave this set (in the tin) to my son’s daycare on his last day there as a thank-you gift. It was a big hit! 
Here’s what all you need if you’d like to make these yourself:
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May 12th, 2010 -- Posted in scrappy / stampy |
I’ve been really enjoying playing with my Floral Fusion die cut set (almost as much as the scallop edge punch). So of course I incorporated some punched flowers into the cards I made for Mother’s Day!
I did not have any tissue paper handy in order to try out the tissue paper flowers technique I’d seen, but I did have vellum handy so that’s what I used…
To make the flowers, I sent the die cut and vellum through my Cuttlebug to get one of each size flower per card. Then I inked onto the velum (with cotton – you could also use whatever ink dabber you have) in different colours. I used Green Galore, Lovely Lilac, and Pixie Pink because they coordinated well with the card colours (Pirouette Pink, Certainly Celery, Lavender Lace, and white).
Other materials & techniques used: 1/2″ brad (made by me using the Build-a-Brad kit and the small flowers and centers of the Beautiful Thing stamp set!), purple ribbon, green rhinestones, scallop edge punch, two-step-stamped butterfly in Whisper White and Lovely Lilac, Flight of the Butterfly stamp set
BTW, have you heard about the upcoming colour changes for Stampin’ Up?? They will soon be adding some new colours AND a bunch of favourite “In Colours” to their permanent products (very excited about this!). At the same time, they will also be retiring other colours (less excited about this, but it’s understandable they have to clear some out to make space for new ones). This blog post (by my Demonstrator’s upline) has a copy of the charts available to see which colours are being added or taken away…
I’m sad to see some of the pinks, purples, and greens go (many of the inks and papers used in the cards above are on the chopping block!) but am keen to see the new colours Early Espresso and Cherry Cobbler. And I’m thrilled that they are adding Pirouette Pink and Riding Hood Red to the collection because I’m almost out of those two papers that I’d bought a full pack each of!
Who knew that colour changes could bring on such a mixed bag of emotions? 
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