Lisa E Design Blog: Valentine Giveaway Winner

Lisa E Design Blog: Valentine Giveaway Winner: And the winner of the Valentine giveaway prize is Anna  who posted on February 16 at 2:23 p.m.

"!!!!!!"

A beautiful conclusion to a terrifically scrappy weekend. Yesterday I met with friends for croppin' and taught a newbie how to create her own lovely mini album. Too much fun and just the right amount of wine :-)
Today I was given the liberty to continue playing with paper, and wrapped up about ten pages from my work-in-progress Christmas album. Sometimes it was just a title or a bit of journaling  that needed to be filled in, but there were quite a few blank page-turned-layouts as well.
Now this awesome contest announcement... what a wonderful way to end a fantastic weekend with my family and friends. Thanks for stopping by and sharing my bliss...

& thanks, Lisa!

New Stamping Technique

Hi there stampers! My apologies if you stopped by here before and there was no text for this awesome new stamping technique, but let me tell you , it is super easy and the effect is awesome!

Simply lay a piece of washi or painter's tape across the paper you plan to stamp on. I used a couple sizes of flower stamps, but was thinking this could be really cute with some stars or firework-like shapes for the fourth of July coming up.

Randomly stamp around and over the top of the tape with an ink that dries fast, or thoroughly heat set your pigment ink. Carefully peel off the tape and you have a cool blank stripe going through your design!

The example I watched on YouTube was stamped with black ink on black paper. Hmm, you're right, it just barely shows. But, it shows enough that you could trace over the top with your colored pencils of choice for a really sketchy look. I decided to use dark red ink on purple paper for a more feminine look. I still filled in the flowers with watercolor pencils and I love the vibrancy of the color.

Embossing Powder shows off your Sentiment

A simple sentiment stamp down the center, embossed with either clear or otherwise colored embossing powder brings a bit more sparkle to the card. It would have been cute to add some tiny sparkles as well, either to the centers of the little flowers or even surrounding them in some of the emptier looking spaces. 

 For a little drama, and to help hide the fact that as usual, I miscut my paper and it doesn't line up perfectly with my card base, I added my rhinestones to the bottom right corner of the card, overlapping the focal piece and the background.

Now, go back with a ruler and run your colored pencil along the edge of the masked area to finish it off. Pretty, AND Awesome!

Christmas Cards Continued

I've been concentrating so much lately on getting organized around the house that I haven't taken much time to write about it, what a bummer. But, as usual, in between my chores I have still found ways to release some creative energy, so here is another fun way I figured to use my Christmas cards received this year; enter the hole punch.

This relic of our school days still comes in useful and makes it really easy to slip just about anything into a binder, provided it can span the width of two of the binder rings. Otherwise things get a bit wobbly, which bothers me, but may not bother you?

I put all these cards in between the couple of Christmas pages I've created and I love the way they break up the monotony of my regular 12x12 album pages. For some extra visual and textural interest I added this large chipboard piece and glued on all the postage that was on the mailing envelopes. I just couldn't let all those pretty little pictures go in the garbage :-)

I accomplished two things with this dash of inspiration: 1) I got that stack of Christmas cards received off my craft desk. Who put them there anyway!? Oh yeah, me, whoops! Anyway they are cleared and there is more room for crafting yeah! and 2)Now we have the names and addresses of those thoughtful clients and family members who spent the time and postage to let us know they were thinking of us over the holidays. Every year it seems like I hear of more and more people doing away with card sending. Even Ray has made the comment a few times, but of course I still make him take my homemade cards around to all his clients heehee.

I even included an extra Christmas letter card Rainier helped me make for my Close To My Heart friends. I think this is a really neat way to include a little summary of what I thought it was important to share with people I don't see very often but think of while crafting regularly. Since I didn't do any journaling yet on my Christmas layout, I now am feeling completely guilt free about what I consider to be "unfinished business."

Last bit of this post, and then I'm going to spend some time on a new process video I'm hoping to release in conjunction with this Saturday's Valentine Die Cut Crazy Blog Hop... I've got a couple other blogs started up and put some new posts on there tonight as well. So if you're interested in what I have to say about the latest in our families lifestyle/food choices, or what I'm up to with my PartyLite business, just click on my blogger profile and you'll see them listed under my name.

Thanks for stopping by!