Stampin' Mama: A mama that stamps

King of the Grill.....and GUY BLING!

During GinaK's release party this past Sunday night, I showed this card as one of my sneak peeks.

The images I used are from Rupa Shevde's new set, King of the Grill. If you're looking for an ALL-guy sort of set, this would be the one. It's not all BBQ-ing images....there's a golf bag and clubs, hammer with tools, fishing pole and fish plus coordinating greetings to go with the images.

I don't know about the men in your life, but my father and hubby love to cook on the grill. Davy loves to stand out in the backyard with a cold beer, standing over his grill, feeling like the king of all things BBQ-ed. And I'm happy to let him because it means I get a night off from cooking (even as much as I love to cook and bake, I do enjoy letting him take over once in a while). My parents live on their sailboat year round and have a small kitchen (aka: "galley" in boat-speak) so they make good use of their grill during the warm months. My mother is usually the one that does all the marinating and prep and then lets my dad feel like he's had some important part of the process when all he does is stand there flipping the food over a few times until it's done. He's quite the social extrovert, so he's usually chatting it up with a friends on the dock with the big grill spatula in one hand and a margarita in the other (which my mother ALSO made for him).

Anyway......all that to say.....this is a great set for me to use for the two most important men in my life. And my parents like to fish off their boat, so the fishing images could also work for a card for my mom.....as well as my grandfather, who adores fishing and always has. My hubby is a carpenter by trade (and my brother-in-law is a cabinet maker) so the hammer and tools images will also work for me. The only thing that none of the men in my life do is golf....but we do occasionally go mini-golfing so I'm sure I can find a use for the club images, too! Talk about an all-around great set that will get put to good use!

I've fallen in love with Confetti White cardstock all over again. For a while there, I forgot that it even existed, never mind that I had almost a whole pack of it in my paper files. How DOES one not notice something like an entire pack of cardstock?

I find that Confetti White cardstock holds up really well to watercoloring images. The cardstock doesn't pill up easily and it holds the water really well.

I stamped my image with Jet Black Staz-On ink and then heat set it. You don't technically have to heat set Staz-On ink, but I'm impatient when it comes to having the ink soak in and set on the cardstock, so I usually hit it with the heat gun for a few seconds.

I then watercolored the image using my ink pad lids. I was recently asked what I meant by "watercoloring with the lids of my ink pads." All this means is that I squish the lid of my ink pad against the pad itself a few times. Then, I open my ink pad and there's a layer of ink that has transferred onto the inside of the lid. I add a few drops of water to the ink on the lid with my paintbrush and that becomes my watercolor paint. So easy and you never have to worry about having an ink that doesn't coordinate with your cardstock and other inks.

When making a guy card, I try not to go overboard with pretty ribbons and other "bling" that guys just don't care about. Using up small scraps of ribbon and folding them over and stapling them onto a piece of cardstock works for a small amount of bling that doesn't scream "GIRL BLING!" I mounted the stamped image on the polka dotted paper (from the retired Cerise Designer Series paper) with pop-dots.

Speaking of bling.....Gina has some amazing "Guy bling" that she's now carrying over at her store.

Check out these awesome Bling & Dazzle Screw Brads!

These brads are the perfect addition to any guy card.....and what's more awesome than having brads that look like screws? There's both Phillips head AND Flat head screws!

I used my 1/8 inch hole punch to punch holes for my brads and they were done. Now, how awesome would these look on a card using those hammer and tool images from this King of the Grill set.

Oh.....and I just thought of something else. They would make a great embellishment on scrapbook pages of house remodeling.

Supplies:

Cardstock: Real Red, Confetti White and Basic Black; Ink: Jet Black Staz-On, Real Red, Going Gray, Really Rust, More Mustard, screw brads, black grosgrain ribbon, staples and stapler, 1/8 inch hole punch, pop-dots.

 

Happy Creating!

-Stampin' Mama

Lovely as a Tree card and some questions answered...

Can you believe that I've had the Lovely as a Tree for about 4 years now and have NEVER used this oak tree stamp?

I got the set with some hostess credit years ago because I loved the line of naked trees that comes in this set. For the last 4 years, it's been all about that one stamp for me.

I've seen beautiful cards done with this oak tree and thought, "Oh, isn't that gorgeous." But I could never wrap my head around being able to use the stamp myself.

I set a challenge for myself yesterday and told myself to not only make a "Guy card," but to also use a stamp in my collection that I either haven't used in a long time, or that I've never used at all. This was kind of hard for me as I don't really have a lot of stamps in my collection that haven't been kissed with ink.

This oak tree stamp stared at me and taunted me. I told myself, "Oh, heck with it, Erika. Suck it up and use the darn thing. It's not THAT scary of a stamp. IT HAS NO POWER OVER YOU!" And so here you go.

So many of you have asked how my creative process works. To be honest with you, it's all over the place. Some things that work for one card may not work for another card. Sometimes I have the card already envisioned in my head when I start and I nail it just like I saw it in my head. Other times, I have something envisioned and when the card is finished, it's completely different than what I saw in my mind. There are times that I start a card and have something in mind for it and only half of it comes out the way I saw it in my mind and I tweak things as I go along....add a new color, change a greeting out, turn things a different way, etc.

There are two things that always stay constant for me in my creative process. One is that I always start with the stamps first and then work the rest of my design around the stamp images. The other is that I try to stay FAR away from magazines, websites and books when I'm in the middle of creating. I get quite a few magazines and LOVE to look at them and get ideas, but I find that I'm easily overwhelmed if I look at them WHEN I'm in the midst of the creative process. For some people, it helps. For me, it overwhelms.

Some of you have asked what I do when I have a "creative block." When I have a creative block, I usually walk away from the desk, put on a Putamayo CD (these are a collection of cultural music CDs and run the gamut from Turkish to Greek, from Reggae to Celtic, from Gypsy to African.....they cover the globe in music) and come back a little while later. Sometimes a bowl of creamed corn helps, too. Now......I'm not guaranteeing that if you eat a bowl of creamed corn and dance around your craft desk to the tunes of Bob Marley that you're going to be hit with creative inspiration, but it does work for me most of the time. :) If you DO try it, though, definitely let me know if it worked because I just might be on to something. ;) The point is.....I find that if I walk away from the project for just a little while and redirect my thoughts somewhere else, I usually come back with a fresh perspective or a new idea that I didn't think about before.

For this card, I knew that I wanted to watercolor the tree image, but that was about it.

When I watercolor, I like to use either my Watercolor Wonder Crayons or pick up my  color directly from the lids of my ink pads. I used the lid of my ink pads for this card. I went over it first with Old Olive ink and then touched it up with some Always Artichoke ink. Same thing for the ground and the tree "shadows" under the tree. I used Creamy Caramel and Close to Cocoa for the tree trunk. I used a wide flat brush and did a wash of Bashful Blue ink for the sky.

I used my handy-dandy little distressing tool on my Cutter Kit to rough up the edges of the cardstock layers before I mounted it to my card. It just seemed so appropriate for a natural looking card.

You all know how much I LOVE to swipe my cardstock for added texture so I did that with the Creamy Caramel layer under the tree and also on the Close to Cocoa card. I used Close to Cocoa ink to swipe around the outside edges of the card for more definition. The Creamy Caramel ink on the cardstock surfaces give it such a nice rough-velvet look. (Click on THIS POST to read more about the "swiping" technique)

I'm not sure yet who I'm going to send this card to. Maybe I'll slip it into the husband's lunch box next week as a surprise.

I'm so excited that it's Friday. There's just something about them that makes them so enticing to me.....maybe it has to do with the fact that it's payday for the hubby. ;) Or maybe it's the fact that I can spend the whole weekend with him....okay, maybe it's both. ;) ha!

Have a lovely weekend.....I plan on FINALLY putting together a scrapbook page that I've been thinking about for a while. And yes, you'll get to see it sometime soon.

Happy Creating!

-Stampin' Mama

Supplies:

Stamps: Lovely as a Tree & Sincere Salutations stamp sets (both Stampin' UP); Cardstock: Close to Cocoa, Old Olive, Creamy Caramel, Confetti White; Ink: Old Olive, Always Artichoke, Creamy Caramel, Close to Cocoa, Basic Brown, Jet Black Staz-on; distressing tool from the Cutter Kit; fine and wide flat paintbrushes and water