Done with cake class.

Tonight was the last night of my Wilton Course 2 cake decorating class. I really enjoyed the classes. There were fun girls in with me. Tonight I made this:
Here is a closeup of the flowers.
It was really not hard but time consumeing. See the flowers we have been working on for weeks. We would make a few different ones each week then let them dry. They are royal icing flowers, they dry totally hard. They taste sorta like those dots candy that are on a strip of paper, you know the ones? Ok, so we'd make a few each week, If I had to sit down and make all these icing colors and make all these flowers it would take hours. Then the basket weave takes about an hour for me, I'm sure I'd get faster over time. The rope border is super easy and took no more time than any other border. Then you glue the flowers on with globs of icing. Then add the leaves.

so... will I be making piles more cakes this complex.. probably not.

For those who like to imagine eating the cake it's spice cake with pumpkin pie spice flavored buttercream icing and filling. The flowers are boring royal and taste like sugar because that's pretty much all they are.

I will be taking this cake to my church's Fall Festival this Friday night. If you live in the area and want a slice that's where it will be 6:30pm at the LDS (Latter-Day-Saints) church on Hendricks Ave. :)

chicks dig me

Here is one of the cards I submitted for the justjohanna design team call. All stamps are justjohanna. I watercolored the card. It's a fabriano note card.

I LOVE this little chick with the hat on him, why wouldn't gaggles of other chicks love him too! I t hink that one in the front is gonna get her man, but I'm pulling for the one that is 4th from the front, she is cute, and I know her heart is true. It's important that someone catch him, he is running the risk of becoming a little TOO sure of himself. I mean confidence is sexy but you have to be careful you don't get too vain.

bunch of random stuff.

I haven't had time to update lately so I'm going to put a bunch of stuff on the one post.

First is one of those adorable chipboard photo thingies I've seen everywhere. I think I'm going to offer this as a class at my local stamp store.
here's the "back" of it.
Next is a "Cars" (Disney movie) card. This stamp is by All Night Media. It was a set of 4 pretty large stamps and the normal price was only $9.99, but this week all stamps at AC Moore are %40 off so I got it for a cool $6! I HAD to buy it because Stephen was with me and the kid is a Cars fanatic. One of the ones in the set is a party invite type stamp so I'm hoping I can convince one of the boys to have a Cars theme party. This is colored with prismacolor and copic markers. Can you tell that the black paper is glossy? It is.
Next are two with my new holly sprig stamp. It's by Great Impressions. It's the "Stamp of the Month" (although I went online and they show an ADORABLE snowman one for this month and I rekon this one is NEXT month's stamp, but anyhow my LSS has this one as the stamp of the month) and they had this sample thing up with this one stamp used like 7 ways. Turns out if you take a cute stamp then show me a pile of unique ways to use it I will purchase it. OH and because it was the "Stamp of the Month" it was half price. Here's a link to what I'm talking about although it will show the cute snowmen instead of this: Stamp of the Month. The phrases I used are Papertrey.

I colored both with the water based marker, waterbrush, on watercolor paper technique. I'm loving this all over again, I did it a while back, then sorta forgot about it then have been seeing it around a lot lately.

Ok, that's what I have for you today.

Have a great one!

I know this artist...

So Asela is this rad artist who does stamps for Cornish Heritage Farms and they are wicked cute. She also lives one town over from me! Because I stink at keeping in touch and actually calling people and stuff I don't see her as much as I wish, but anyhow I feel all excited when her stamps come out, like I know a celebrity or something!

There are adorable Christmas stamps out:
The first (square) one is my entry for the Hop-A-Thon contest she has on her blog. You should check that link out, it's a cute contest with a great prize. (It's free stamps!)
On this one the jewls are RED, not orangeish looking. That makes me sad they look orange, the rest looks right. This is for a friend who loves "bling" and I try to always make her a special bling card. Also it uses the Fabriano Notecards which are great. (the link is who I purchased them from, you can get them other places, but I did have a great transaction with this seller.)

Ok on both cards I did the water based marker blended on watercolor paper with a waterbrush technique. That's it, no fancy techniques. Oh I drew the "lake" in with a pen. And the blue square card came that way, it's by Bazzill and they are very cute I think. I buy one almost every time I'm at the LSS.

And that's what I have to say about that.

justjohanna Design Team projects

I think I'll share a little sampling of my projects for the justjohanna Design Team Call:




I will show more of them as it gets closer, I don't want to jinx it or anything. But I'm done! :) I finished the last project two days ago. I will ship them Monday, not today because me and the boys are sick. (AGAIN, I swear I'm sick more than anyone I know, but it's just colds this time)

So what do you think? Can you eve tell from these little samples? I see other people put these cute little samples and I wanted to try them out.

Inkspirations cupcake.

I made this card for my mother-in-law who is having a birthday this Sunday. I got this cool paper at Big Lots, a package of 8 sheets was one dollar. It is flocked paper. (As Brian would say, "Of course it's flocked, that's why there were EIGHT of them, not just one" if you don't get it, don't worry, it's not that funny) The cupcake is Inkspirations, the shadow oval thing is by A Muse, the "Happy Birthday" is from my stash and says, "Annette Waters" on the side. The cherry has a glossy accents by Ranger on it. (Same as crystal laquer, glassy effects, and whatever that stuff SU sells is that is called something like that.) Colored with prismacolor and copic markers.

By the way, if you ever wonder why I use prismacolor AND copic markers it's because I'm cheap. I bought a bunch of prismacolor markers before I was convinced that copic were any better. I do love them both, I tend to like the copic more, they don't dry out as fast and you can refill them if they do, also I like the brush tip. But I am not going to get rid of my prismacolor ones, so I'll use them up and as I replace them or add new colors I use the copics. (Which I'm lucky because my stamp store sells them for $4 a marker, but you can use a discount card they sell and get them even cheaper, I think I get a great price on them)

Hanna can rock any look.

Played with my Hanna Stamps! set again today. She's just adorable. I love her!

Today I tried to do some different things with her.

This Hanna has a glittery dress, can you tell in the pic. Also a ton of stitching. I did the glitter by stamping her on a sheet of sticky paper (double sided sticky paper stuff...) and cutting the dress out, then after I layered her paper pieced dress and colored everything I stuck the sticky dress over and then put the cryastal snow glitter over it. (it says white for the color, but it's pretty clear)
This Hanna is black. I noticed the other day when I made that Hanna that I tend to color all my stamped girls to look like me, I mean not fat and lazy, but reddish blonde hair and white skin. So I wanted to try something different with this one. I had to make her really dark though because at first she just looked like she had a bad tan. She has the glitter dress treatment again. And a touch of glitter on her shoes, I mean if you are gonna go with glitter, why not do it head to toe?

And this Hanna is suprised to see three huge spiders coming down at her. She's not terribly upset, as you can see by her black hair, super white skin and black lipstick she's a bit goth anyhow. (spiders and "spooky" are Papertrey) She also has a paper pieced dress.

I really did color a dress too but that card didn't work out so I had to throw her out.

Holiday Planner

This is for another class I'm doing in November at the LSS here Scrap N' Stamp.

It's a Holiday Planner. My friend Sherri showed one to me recently and I wanted to make one. Apparently they are nothing new though and "everyones doing it". (Erin, aka Last To Know)

So here it is:

This shows the little clip boards if you take them out:
Taa Daaaa!

It's really easy and pretty cute. I'm hoping a bunch of people take this class.

Hanna Stamps

I placed an order last week with Hanna Stamps and they arrived yesterday. Totally cute! They are clear stamps, super high quality. (You know what I mean right? there are stinky clear, nice clear and super high quality clear... I won't name names.)

Had to ink her up last night. She is super fun because her dress is easy to customize, it's like having a paper doll sorta. So today she is wearing a polkadot dress see:

Do you like these stamps? If you do you probably want to go ahead and order them. Hanna Stamps is offering free shipping this month. ANYWHERE, even international. So that's awesome! AND they have this deal where if you get published with her stamps and they credit them and all you get $100! Not a store credit, actual money! Now who doesn't want to try for that?

Oh I almost forgot, the oval she is standing on is by A Muse. I love that oval.

Calendar book.

This Calendar Book is for a class I'm doing at Scrap N' Stamp in November. When you first get it you go through and put everyone's birthday, anniversary, whatever else on the pages. Then yo put their address on a sheet you tuck into each envelope pocket. You stand it on your desk, opened to the current month. When you do your card making in that month you have a reminder of what events you want to make cards for as well as the address right there handy so cards don't sit on your desk for days/weeks waiting to get addressed. You may even want to tuck a few stamps in!

It's a LOT of pictures so don't worry, it won't hurt my feelings if you sorta scroll through them quick! We will start with the decorated pages. These are actually the "backs" of the calendar, when it stands on your desk this is what is on the wrong side. I like to think they are decorating your space for each season:

January

For this one I will encourage them to use any winter stamps and this perfect pearls technique.

February

March
April
May
June

July

August

This uses a patern paper that has a variety of these cool images on it, the colors may be different so that they match the image.

September

October

November

December

This next photo is of the front cover, in case you choose to store it shut this is what you would see. Also if you give it as a gift this is what your recipient would see when they open it.

Then this shows the working part of the book. Here is where you write the names of the people who need cards, as you can see it opens up and you can slip a piece of paper ( I just use notebook paper) inside and have addresses on it. This part is really important, this is what gets the book USED, you can grab just the book and have all you need to remember the people and get the cards written out.

Here is the pocket, I cut notches in the flap so that it can still open when bound on the top.

More cupcakes, black and white.

Today's cupcakes have a dark, not too sweet, cake toped with real butter buttercream icing. There is a touch of almond flavor and vanilla in the buttercream. See this swirl? Here's how it's done.

• First purchase a 1M Wilton tip. It's sold individually or in the cupcake decorating kit. The cupcake kit is the only place you can get the bizmark tip (used to put filling in cupcakes) so I got the kit because I wanted that tip too. (the kit has a few other tips and some disposable bags too)
• Put it on your bag, I don't use a coupler with this tip as it's a larger tip and I don't have any larger couplers. I just cut the bag and stick the tip in.
• Fill your bag.
• Pick up your cupcake and hold your tip at a 90 degree angle to the cake, just above the cake. CENTER of the cake. (this is what makes it cool, the book tells me to start at the outside and that's a totally different look)
• Start squeezing, when it comes up to the tip start to pull your tip around in a tight spiral, go around and around until you cover the whole cake. Even pressure the whole time. (It's always more pressure than I think it should be)

It's super easy and sorta looks like a rose on each cake.

I think the white on black is very classy.

WCMD Challanges part 2

I was going to put them all in one post but I had quite a few I decided to do so I'm staring a new one.

This one is for Julie's paint challange. I painted on the black cardstock then stamped the images into the wet paint.

This is for a challange on Marnie's blog. We were to use glitter and shine. I did a tag because Christmas is coming up and I'm going to need some.

This one is for the sketch challange at Paper Squares. It was a super cute sketch. I changed just a few things because I'd been wanting to make a little boy birthday card featuring this paper and I wanted to show it off. (so I moved the word/tag element down)

Gothic Vampire 80's Chicken

:)

My friend Jessi and I were talking about Halloween costumes I was thinking of being a Vampire Chick, a Gothic Chick or an 80's Chick, she said I should be all three as a Gothic Vampire 80's Chicken.

This inspired me to make the following card:

The spiders are by Papertrey (and a tasty snack for Vampire Chickens) and the "Trick or Treat!" is House mouse.

Oh and it breaks down like this

Gothic: Clothes and eyeliner

Vampire: Fangs

80's: purple hair and striped stockings.

Art Journal

So I wasn't sure I was going to share this here. It's for ME ya know? But I thought I'd share at least a few pages so you see the idea behind what I'm doing. I'm doing an "Art Journal" type thing. When I used to take art class I had one and I really just picked up the same ole one and started playing with it again. It's a place I can just play with any techniques or anything I want at all.





So here are a few pages:

This one is on chipboard. I used modgepodge to glue stuff down. Then I wrote notes about what I did on the page I glued it to.
This is playing with these clocks Brian found in the little kids park my kids like to play in.
This is playing with techniques, peeled paint on the center (using petrolium jelly only I used lansino because I didn't have any p. jelly) Then I put masking tape on, painted it, covered it with embossing powder and heat it. It's a mess, but I made notes on there so if I ever need this look on a project I'll know how to get it ya know?

That's all I've got for now.

WCMD challanges

I think I'll edit this one post for any more entries I do for any challanges.



This is for Julie's challange. She's with Just Johanna stamps.

The background is torn from a newspaper I found in the lobby of some store. It's one of those ones they have around that are free. I think it's Folio Weekly.













This one is for Shuggy's Challange. She's a good friend from The Shack. Her challange was just to do a holiday card. The main stamps are Papertrey, the background is unknown.

This is for twinspire's challange, to use your favorite stamp:

This one is for a challange by The Tamarisk you had to use text print paper on your card. This card is for a challange by Durcan Designs. It was to do faux stitching. This card is for a challange at My Art's Desire. We had to paint on transparency. I stamped the Queen on transparency (OK, it was plastic packaging I'm out of transparency) and then painted her on the back side with acrylic paint, flipped her over and glued her to the black piece.

This next one is for a one layer card. I love one layer cards! This is from Durcan Designs. I have a thing for putting this fish together with this bird. But even though I always try to hook them up I know "it will never work".