Feature a Friend {on Friday}

Happy Friday and welcome back to Feature a Friend!  I'm so glad you are here!  Today's post is a great one so get yourself a cup of tea and take a look at some of these great projects using stamps!  Our guest today, Hilde, is all the way from Norway and a dear friend of mine through the Scrapping Everyday Miracles facebook group.  Hilde is married with two boys ages 10 &13.  Her home is shared with her father-in-law and a number of pets: dog, cat and budgies. She works full time as an engineer at construction sites and spends her leisure time driving kids to activities, running this place called home and scrapping and make cards.

Hilde shares this about herself to help us get to know her better . . .

"I started my paper craft career as a card maker in 2005, but transformed to a layout scrapper a year later. My main scrap subjects are - quite naturally- my family, but I also scrap about subjects found in our everyday life – the pets, our friends, funny signs and anything that makes my day special. With two boys, my specialty is making masculine cards!

As life is busy, I hardly have time to sit down and scrap or make cards for hours, and this is reflected in my style: often simple I-can-do-that creations with plenty of white space or quite linear. But on occasions I get carried away and keep adding details as if I were paid by the number  J 

I’m on the DT at Cardabilities (http://cardabilities.blogspot.ca/) and Once Upon A Sketch (http://onceuponasketchblog.blogspot.no/).  I have been published several times and I still enjoy participating in challenges on challenge blogs!"

Here is Hilde . . .

My creative journey with Close To My Heart (CTMH), started a while back when I won a prize donated by Elizabeth. She was kind enough to sent me an idea book, too, and I immediately fell in love with the stamps. We don't have any CTMH consultants in Norway, but luckily we have internet so we can shop abroad :-)

One of the stamp set which really caught my eyes was C1459 Stitched Together. I'm too lazy to pull out my sewing machine to use on my layouts and cards, so these stitch stamps were perfect for me.

Card: example from CTMH

As I both make layout and cards, I though this stamp set would be a great all purpose set - and I was right - I have used it on layouts, cards and even canvases. I have a few ideas to share with you today, as well as a few tips too.

Have you ever tryed stamping on shrink film to make your own embellishments? It's so fun and easy!
For this card I made buttons by stamping with the circular stamp on transparent shrink film. If you want to do your own, make sure you make the holes large enough, or the thread will not pass.

I used white shrink film and the heart shaped stamp to make some of the embellishments on this canvas:

"God Jul" means Merry Christmas in Norwegian.

As you can see I have used one of the border stamps from the set around the edges . I have heat embossed them to make them stand more out, and I did that with the red large heart, too. When it comes to stamping on uneven surfaces, as on modelling paste I have used for this canvas, I suggest to not use the acrylic block:  just ink up the stamp, place it where you want the image, and press gently with your fingers. If you notice there are some missing parts of the stamped circles on my canvas, I have done it on purpose, applying randomly a second layer of modelling paste, after stamping.

My last example for you is a 12x12 layout.  I was happy to discover the border stamps could be used to make a continuous border around the edges (which is easier to do because they are clear stamps)! A few stamped circles as part of my design, gave the layout a uniform look.

"Fingernem" means Dexterious in Norwegian

It's not easy too see it's faux stitching, right?
I hope you have enjoyed this post, and that you have gotten some ideas on how to use stamps on your creations!
And you are welcome to visit my blog - I just love visitors!

Thank you so very much Hilde!  I love each of your creations!!  I do hope you'll stop by Hilde's blog and say "hi" - she has a lot of talent to share.  I'm so glad to call her friend and sister in Christ.
Happy Crafting,   

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Close To My Heart Mini Album Guest Post

I'm guest posting over at Nap Time is My Time blog with a tutorial on how to make this cute mini album - so fast and inexpensive this will make a great gift for grandparents this Christmas . . . thanks for stopping by :)

 
Creatively Yours,
 

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Feature a Friend {on Friday}

I am so happy to welcome you to Feature a Friend {on Friday} because I actually have a friend to feature :) 

I stumbled across the blog Clips-n-Cuts last winter and immediately fell in love!  Vicky is such a talented artist and I have been inspired by many of her creations.  When she agreed to do a guest post I was thrilled!

Vicky is a happily married mother of two living in Greece.  She is a full time Information Technology and Communications Teacher and a midnight crafter.  Her passion is cardmaking and she shared with me that she is always looking for some free time to hide away in her craft room :)  Vicky blogs over at Clips-n-Cuts sharing her cards and a weekly how-to video.  She has a YouTube channel with a ton of inspiration.  You may be most familiar with Vicky's website Inlinkz!  Yes that is right Vicky is the owner of Inlinkz, a website that provides on-line tools for bloggers, to organize challenges and link products.  So here is Vicky . . .  

Hi everyone! I am so happy to be here with you today.  Thank you Elizabeth for the honor to introduce me to your readers!

Today I decided to share with you a simple card I made using Gelatos.

I will share with you the process step by step.

To make the background I heat embossed my stamp with white embossing powder.

And then I used three shades of green gelatos to color the whole embossed cardstock.

Looks awful, doesn’t it?! LOL!

Gelatos react with water and they resist embossed areas. So you can spray with water on top to make the colors blend or use a baby wipe. I did the second and look how soft the colors turned out. Perfect for a background image.

Then I white embossed my flower twice. I will cut it out later to create two layers for dimension.

I used three shades of gelatos to color my flowers

Yeah … I know… same awful look. But now I blend it with my fingers. No water at all, cause I wanted the colors to remain vibrant.

No need to be neat. I cut out the flower so I didn’t have to stay inside the lines.

I added a button and the sentiment to put everything together.

Hope you had fun and got inspired to use different coloring techniques.

Thank you Elizabeth!

 

Thank you so much Vicky!  I can not say enough how much I love your card!  The colors just pop and I'm excited to try my own card using these techniques.  Please stop on over to Vicky's blog and thank her for a great tutorial.  If you are interested in being a guest on Feature a Friend {on Friday} please e-mail me at alwaysdeeper at hotmail dot com for more information.

Have a wonderful and blessed weekend!

Creatively Yours,  

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Feature a Friend {on Friday}

Welcome to the party :)  We are partying for ten days straight and today's game is taking place over on my facebook page!  Today is Feature a Friend and I am happy to introduce to you Deborah Nolan.  I found Deborah through pinterest - seriously there are a ton of talented artists over there!  I was super excited when she agreed to share her talent with us!

Hello, everyone! My name is Deborah Nolan and I was very nicely invited by Elizabeth to write a blog post for today. I'm a Christian, a wife, and the mother of a 10-year-old daughter. I'm back at my personal blog, Society of Stampaholics, after being all but AWOL after a year of being the editor and co-owner of Lily Pad Cards (a card challenge blog). I'm now attempting to restore my personal blog to its former state and am again hosting the Card Chain Challenge (a monthly card exchange where participants make a card for the person above them on the list and receive a card from the person below them on the list).

Enough about me - onto the good stuff! It seems like I've had a great need for sympathy and get well cards this year, so I thought I'd make a get well card for today and be ready for the next patient - lol!
I'm on the Memory Box design team, and I was in the first batch of Hero Arts Hostesses for their Flickr group, so I am constantly using products from these two companies - which is idiot-proof, really, as they complement one another beautifully. Today's card is a little busier than usual (for me) but I think it's good to try to stretch yourself creatively.

S U P P L I E S: Memory Box cardstock; Basic Grey patterned paper; Hero Arts stamps; Memory Box dies; Stickles; foam dimensional tape.

I often have trouble choosing between elements when I'm making a card - probably because I have too many supplies and tools (yes, I'm a Horder). But I've recently discovered a method that is helping me overcome this problem - which means that I am making cards more quickly, and I'm enjoying myself more because I'm not struggling with indecisiveness.

Here's what you do: cut a variety of cardstock in 3.75" x 5" and/or 4" x 5.25" panels and then stamp them with background stamps using different inks. Do this until you have about 20 different stamped panels. Then mat them and adhere them to cards. (This is how the card above was started.) They're ready to go when you need them, and you can mix and match your sentiment stamps, chipboard items and other decorative elements to whip up a card in a jiffy! The card above could easily suit almost any occasion just by switching out the sentiment. If you choose different die cuts/chipboard elements/patterned paper, you can really change it up! The important thing to me is that I'm not facing the intimidation of a blank slate - which really seems to prime my creative pump. Give it a try - I'm pretty sure you will like the results!  

Thank you, Elizabeth, for inviting me to guest host for the day. I hope to see y'all around the web. Come visit me at my blog sometime!
Have a blessed day,


Thank you Deborah!  What a great tip and beautiful card!  I might just go make some stamped card panels now :)  This background reminded me of a stamp I have from the new Close To My Heart scroll workshop on the go!   Fun, fun, fun!  We are still partying so head on over to my Facebook page for a fun ABC game.  One thing you need to make stamped panels is ink - so the winner chosen at random from all who play over on facebook will get their choice of CTMH ink pad and new Idea Book :)  Hope to see you there!
 

Great party going on this week - check out the details here 

One Year Anniversary/New Idea Book Party

 

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