More Mail Art

Here is more mail art. I love stamping on envelopes. It's funny, it's almost destined to end up in the trash, but whatever! It will be a lot of fun in the mailbox. I always hope it arrives on the same day as either a bunch of junk or bills. You know to balance out the boring box syndrome.


All the stamps are justjohanna. I colored with copics. Oh this is a tip, I have a cut down piece of cardstock that I put in the envelope when I'm stamping and coloring. Then my stamped images don't get lines from the folds and flaps on the back and my marker ink doesn't end up on the back either. Because copic will make short work of bleeding through envelopes. Clouds and cat are glittered. :)

Ribbon Weaving

I've been seeing it everywhere, Ribbon Weaving. Now I have a history with weaving papercraft supplies. I once saw Anna Griffin weave paper and was entranced. This was back when I just first started scrapbooking. I raced to the craft store to get some pretty papers. Raced home and cut it all into 1 inch strips and got weaving. It totally came out wonky and generally not anything like Anna's sample. And of course I did what any reasonable person would, I swore off weaving forever.

Then in the past few weeks I started seeing ribbon weaving all over the net! "NO WAY" I said, "I've sworn off weaving" I refused to do it.

Friday night I went up to the stamp store. It was innocent enough, I went to get one of my copics refilled. But the crop room was packed with my stamping friends, so how could I not pull up a chair? Next thing I know Roniece is pointing out some ribbon weaving card samples she's printed off the internet. Before you can say, "No Erin, you've made a commitment to forswear weaving" I had a pile of strips of ribbon in my hands!


I will admit there was drama. I started by taping my ribbons to the edge of the measured cardstock, *I'm using a technique I saw on Kristen Werner's blog HERE* I wanted a checker board type patern. So I tape the green, then black, then green on one side, and black, green, black on the other. NOPE. I got stripes. So I change it up. MORE stripes. I give it dirty looks and think "I told you so!" to myself. But then, with the help of Penny, who is a quilter *quilters know everything* I figure out that I need to do all black on one side, all green on the other!

And here are the cards. I actually made 3 so far. I left one with Roniece at the crop, I made these two yesterday at home.

The "thank you" stamp is by justjohanna, the patern paper is making memories, the ribbon and flowers are stolen out of Ronice's stash, because remember I went to the store with my one copic.

Oh and this is scary. I've been really busy all weekend. I've made time to stamp, but not time to clean up! I usually clean my stamp area after each session. I'll get to this later today, I refuse to do another project before I clean it!



ETA I KNEW I was spelling Roniece's name wrong! Sheesh! Spelling is corrected. Sorry!

Reuse it!

My challange for the justjohanna Earth Day Extravaganza is Reuse It!


In our efforts to be kinder to our planet one thing that we can do, and really I think the first thing we should do, is try to get more than one use out of our stuff! My everyday example of this is shopping bags. We are commited to either remembering to bring our canvas sacks for shopping, or reusing the bags we get stuff in. We use them for all sorts of stuff around here.


So my challange is this. Look at your stamps. Can you get a different use out of them? I mean use the immage in a different way. (not use them as something other than stamps, that idea scares me! What if we hurt our stamps. The horror!) I mean can that lime slice be a flower? Can your submarine be a blimp, or even a rocket? *yes, yes your submarine can be a blimp or a rocket, and almost everything can be a flower*



To do this challange you may want to do some masking, adding different images together, or the trick where you tape off part of your stamp when you ink it, then remove the tape and stamp just part of the image. Just have fun!



Here are some ideas to get you started. *sorry if you've seen these, I've had sick kiddos all week. Sick kids require a ton of mommy time*

This is a ladie's skirt and a ladie's fan from the Limited Edition Ladies Dancing kit.This is the submarine.
Lime slice flowers.

After you make your card load it to either your blog or to the justjohanna gallery. Then come back here and leave me a link. I might not find you if you don't leave a link. You have until midnight Pacific time tomorrow. Then I will draw a winner of the awesome stamp seen here:

And don't forget, everyone who plays in any of the challanges will be entered to win grand prizes!

• one winner will receive $250 in justjohanna stamps
• one winner will receive $50 in justjohanna stamps
• five winners will receive a 25% discount coupon when they place a justjohanna order

Also please go to THIS LINK, which is the justjohanna forum, it should take you directly to the Earth Day stuff. All the challanges will be posted there! New ones will be added all day.

I think that's all. I'm sure I'm forgetting something important, so I'll probably come back and type that at the end in green! HAHA.

Eat Cupcakes.

Do you really need someone to tell you to eat cupcakes? I didn't think so.

This is another card I made for the April justjohanna sketch. I LOVE this sketch. It's my favorite sketch ever. This time I made another cupake and paper pieced it with the sprinkles paper from the Basic Grey Cupcake line. *I think it's called cupcake... I'm 90% sure* The phrase is made from the stamp that says "Life's short eat cupcakes" I just masked some off while inking it and then arranged it to just say "eat cupcakes" because I think that sends a strong pro-cupcake message. *which cupcakes need, I read on Cupcakes Take The Cake HERE that cupcakes have jumped the shark! Never let it be so!* Here is the sketch again, in case you don't get the justjohanna newsletter, or you forgot it, or you want it for any other reason.

ps, what program is used to make these 3D-ish looking sketches? I want to make some!

Don't forget, tomorrow night = BIG announcement from me. An announcement so big I felt I had to include candy with it! Candy you want to win. And there will be cards too, I know I've been heavy on the non-card posts lately. I've had lots of info to share... I'll try to do better about always including a card though.

Earth Day Celebration

You do not want to miss out on the justjohanna Earth Day celebration. It's all day Saturday. There will be challanges throughout the day hosted by the Design Team members. I will be having one, of course. I will be posting my challange here on my blog, and in the justjohanna forum at 9am EST. Which is 6am for you peeps on the west coast.



I'll let you know my challange shouldn't be terribly difficult, so please do play.

And you do not have to use justjohanna images to play. So if you got them, use them! If you don't, use what you got! I will be drawing one of the people who play my challange to win this stamp:Tell me you don't love him. I mean, it's an owl, in outter space, with the Earth in the background.

And if that wasn't enough listen to this part! Everyone who does any of the challanges will be entered in a drawing to win:

• One (1) grand prize of a $ 250 justjohanna shopping spree
• One (1) second prize of a $ 50 justjohanna gift certificate
• Five (5) third prizes of 25% off coupons for the justjohanna online store

note: to play you will need to either have a blog or a membership to the justjohanna forum. You can get a free membership to the justjohanna forum by clicking here. Forum access will give you all the info in one spot, a nice gallery to see the other entries in and the ability to chat about the challanges with other players and the jj Design Team. You can definately play along from your own blog though.

Stephanie DosReis and justjohanna

First let me introduce you to the blog of an outstanding artist. Stephanie DosReis. The link is to her blog. She's awesome, mixed media type stuff, cutting cool bits of images to make other totally different things. YUM for that! She also designed a line called The Wonder Years for Daisy D's scrapbook/papercraft company. Johanna connected up with her and also liked Stepanie's artwork, so she procured stickers from the Wonder Years line for those of us on her Design Team.

And that is what I have to show you today, I used the stickers Stephanie designed, with the justjohanna stamps to make the following cards:


This one actually uses the April Sketch from the justjohanna newsletter *see sketch in previous post*

I had stickers to work with. They were really fun, they looked like they had real fabric on them and all this cool stitching and all. And the mixed up patterns were just really fun to work with. I looked on Stephanie's blog and it is an entire line, paper and all stuffs. I might have to procure some of that. Now really, go click the link I gave you to Stephanie's blog, it's fresh and fun and colorful and unique. Serious eye candy.

Big news!

Lots of justjohanna related news today!

First of all there is a new Design Team Call for justjohanna. Would you like to be on this team? Then click HERE for a link to Johanna's blog explaining all the details. I'm loving it on the team, and definately am applying for another round!

Next we have a justjohanna event coming up! If you are so inclined, mark your calendar for the 19th which is next saturday. The design team will be having challanges all day on their blogs with prizes, yes PRIZES. And there will be a Grand Prize, no not a Major Award, a Grand Prize of a $250 gift certificate to shop with justjohanna! I am definately doing a challange and I know already what some of the other girls' challanges are and they are going to be fun, perhaps get you to do something you've not done before! And all this is in honor of Earth Day, which is Tuesday the 22nd. The winner of my individual challange will win an extra special earth day limited edition justjohanna stamp! I don't even know what it looks like yet, it's so ultra insider and cool! teeheehee





Ok and now for a card! Have you hard of Cakespy? There are all these adorable, funny paintings featuring a cute little cupcake having adventures. (you can buy the paintings and they are reasonably priced! I may need one.) I was inspired by him to make the following card:



This stamp is the justjohanna "frosting only" cupcake of course. I used a post it note to cover the line part on the frosting so I could draw this face instead. I'm really happy with how this turned out!
The card layout is based on this month's newsletter sketch. Here's the sketch:

Don't you love it? I think it's the yummiest sketch ever. I have another one I'll be showing later using this sketch. You can see cards made by the team and other justjohanna fans for this sketch and past sketches HERE in the justjohanna gallery.

Ok that's all for this morning I have a whole pile of related projects to show you later, using stickers! But these stickers, they rock, they are not your normal boring stickers.

More owl stuff.

I'm so glad owls are hot, I love them! I made this card so simply! The paper is by making memories and it's a sheet from one of thier spiral journaling book thingies. This one is themed "Garden Party" and I just tore the sheet out, and stuck it on the card. The diecut is already done as well as the scallop edge. We all know how I feel about the office inspired grid pattern. Then I stamped my owl on it. Colored him with copic markers and added a greeting in the corner. Super quick. I think this card took about 5 minutes. Gotta love that!
I've been using my justjohanna stamps a bunch and I had tons of them out. I also unmounted a pile of stamps the other day. So I took these three that came apart really clean (most have icky stuff on them and I just tossed them, I try to be green when I can, but I'm not trying THAT hard to reuse stuff) and made them into blocks for my kids. My kids have a stacking fetish. So they will enjoy stacking these. I stamped them with my justjohanna stamps and then colored with copics. I made some a while ago and colored with tombow markers, but the ink bleeds onto my kids all the time. I'm too lazy to actually put a clear finish on them, so maybe this will work. If not I'll just toss them, they were intended for the trash anyhow.

ps,I know the dark gray on priscilla pretty much washed her out and took away all detail and generally was a poor choice, luckily my audience for these is a two year old and a three year old, so it doesn't matter. *wink*

Is this the end?

You may know I've been making cards where Michelle fish is in love with Jacques bird? Well last week I bought a new different fish and a new different bird. You know, the right size to be in relationships with Michelle and Jacques. I didn't ask them first though. Maybe they WANT to be in an interspecies relationship?

Do you wonder how they took the news? I'm sure you do, so I captured it in the form of a comic inspired card:

looks like this has potential.

all images justjohanna. I wrote the words and drew the speach and thought bubbles. Colored with copic markers. white accent on the red card with white gel pen.

Get Busy!

I've been busy today! FUN stuff too.

I further organized my craft area. Love it now. I mean I loved it before too.

Then I made this envelope. It's inspired by the awesome envelopes that my friend Kim is always doing and making me jealous. *kim, you DO have my address right???*
Next I have a card I made Brian who was having a stinky afternoon. He's ok now though because he knows owl always love him! :)
After that I made this simple card with this dancing lady. I love her all in pink. If I had a super fancy dress like that I'd want it all in shades of pink.
I tried a large art envelope too, but it wasn't as great as the small. I did put about a poud of glitter on it though. I'm sure the lady at the post office will love it.
I think I got enough glitter on it!


all images by justjohanna. all colored with copics. glittered with stickles

This month's special deal is SPECIAL.

Look at this Special Deal! A birthday owl! You gotta love that. These cards were done by other memebers of the justjohanna design team, not me. I will find out who and credit them properly, later today. *BECAUSE THEY ROCK!* Look how cute this owl is! LOOK. I, Erin, do not have any of these stamps, so we all know how that's going to go down. (buying this ASAP is how)

Look how this artist made the pendant thing out of the party hat. I love that!

Note on t his one how the hat becomes a tie!
Need more? Ok, how's about we put the owl IN the package?

Well then maybe in the package WITH the hat on?

working with the Ladies Dancing Kit

Here are the first three projects using my new Ladies Dancing kit.

First is a project for an assignment for the Design Team. I've never even considered doing something like this before. It took me HOURS *this is significant because I'm usually a 15-30 minute stamper* I tell you this because if it's totally garbage I need you to say nice things anyhow! teeheehee. I think I like it ok. I'm glad I added the owl on her hand, that was an afterthought. Course his wonderfully expressive eyes seem to say, "hmmm not sure about this outfit my friend!" haha. I colored her outfit with copic markers, the owl too.

Next is a really soft card that I like. I stamped a skirt again, this time as a flower. I stamped it once each of three sheets of vellum. Then I colored it on the reverse side with copic markers. I did it really bold. Then I layered it all together and sewed the top to secure it, but hid the sewing under the yummy gray ribbon. Stamped "thank you" on the top layer and added a pin. Oh there is a white layer under the vellum sheets. Otherwise the gray paper really dulls everything so much you can't see the bottom flowers.
And yet another flower! I'm a HUGE fan of big fat flowers, so expect to see these used as flowers pretty often. The bug is actually a ladie's fan from the set! The "antenna" are little dangly accent things from the fan. I made the center line thicker and added little dots on the "head" for eyes. I colored this with copics too. Of course I had to draw the bug flight patern and the stem of the flower.

And there you have it. These are from my new LadiesDancing kit from justjohanna.

Enabler Alert! justjohanna

Ok, mail came! I was on the fence fora while about the Ladies Dancing kit from justjohanna. Finally, after seeing the cute cards the other Design Team members made I decided I must have it. So I ordered it of course. It arrived today and I'm thrilled with the contents. I wanted to show you a photo.

Note the full sheet of rubber images. The white thing over them is an index of them so you can know what all is on the sheet. It's parts and pieces to build your own super fancy bird ladies. There are some completed ladies too in case you don't feel like building. And of course you can use the parts and pieces in that type of stamping where you put a vintage head on a body you stamp, you know what I mean right? There are a few other tricks I'll be showing you soon that you can do too, this set is very versatile. *also that ribbon is YUM, although please note other than the stamps your goodies will vary with each order, they will be stuff like this, but not necessarly this very same stuff*

There are choices for the kit. I purchased the Vintage Ladies Dancing Kit hence the vintage looking color scheme and papers and such. If you choose the Bright Ladies Dancing Kit you will get the exact same stamps but totally different accents and papers, bright ones, go figure.

Ok, soon I'll post projects. I'll give you a hint, I have an idea for some vellum layered flowers with this kit. Yes, flowers.

Scene stamping with justjohanna *and published!*

This afternoon I decided to do some scene stamping with my justjohanna stamps.

This is what I came up with.

I painted the blue and green background with watercolor paints. I also used my stamp-a-majig a lot on this. Then I colored the scene with both watercolor pencils and copic markers. I also added glitter on the clouds, inspired by the clouds Lim does with glitter. (side note, Lim is new to me and AWESOME. You should check out her blog here. ) I left Priscilla white again, I'm still really liking her white.

This next pic is of some of the stuff I used to make the card. Note the yellow post it on the tree stamp. I use this stamp a BUNCH and often want to mask it, so I just keep this mask right on the wood of the stamp. Then I don't have to cut it out each time. I also have this on a bunch of other stamps. Also see on the grid paper how I stamped the animal grouping out? I do that when I'm making a brand new to me scene to make sure it really works. The owl on the tail was an afterthought but I tried it out on the gird paper and it made me happy so it got to go on the card. You can also see my stamp-a-majig here, I use it a LOT. Like a super freak out ton, lot. I thought they were totally silly before I got mine but now I use it every time I stamp almost. In other news I have 9 cards published in the current Just Cards! magazine. Here is the cover. AND look in the top left corner. That cute bird card with the two birds and the heart? That's by my friend Awana and it uses justjohanna stamps too!

Here is a close up of Awana's card. Too cute!

It's a cute magazine, I always like Just Cards because, well, it's just cards. It is card/directions, card/directions. Over and over. Tons of them. *says right on the cover, "over 300"*

Ok, I rekon that's all I have for today. :)

Tracey I love you!

First of all nods to Debbie who was the first person I saw make the submarine stamp into a rocket HERE.

Today my good friend Tracey says to me, "Erin you know that blimpmarine stamp you use all the time? You should make that into a rocket, I'm sure you can, cut something off, add something..." Now Tracey had not seen Debbie's rocket (she has now I showed her). But I had to make a rocket because I make all the cards Tracey suggests because she's wicked clever. The shredded ribbon flame trail was her suggestion as well. There is also a totally different rocket take she wants me to do but I only had time to do this one tonight. :)

all stamps are justjohanna. The rocket is from the submarine. The earth is part of a WCMD limited edition stamp I WON before I was even on the jj design team. It's wicked cute, it has an owl holding the earth up and it's too cute. I just cut the earth part off the stamped image to do this though. The bird is "kim's barette bird" and my friend Kim designed her for justjohanna. Isn't she cute? I used her especially because of the look in her eyes.

I've been busy!

I made a lot of cards yesterday. Let me show them to you.

First I have a cooking card using new stamps from justjohanna *actually all these cards are justjohanna, so I won't say that each time*. Is this owl the most adorable owl you've ever seen? If not please link to the more adorable owl. As a matter of fact, I don't usually link to the stamps, I usually let you look at what you want but HERE is a link right to this owl. So anyhow the owl is cooking. On her new stove. I colored with copic markers. All these stamps are under the "new" section on the jj website, as they are brand spankin new!
Next up is a farm scene. Is this not the bestest barn ever? You know it is! Also, this cow, you can get it facing forward like this or facing right or facing left. I love that! Look forward to a whole herd of cows from me later. This is also colored with copics. These stamps are also new.

Next up is a lime card. Now I'll admit that I've had the lime stamp for months. I only just started using it and all the sudden it's one of my favorite stamps! go figure. For this one I stamped the lime on glossy white cardstock with versamark ink and embossed with clear powder. Then I brayered some versamagic keylime ink over it. For the main image I stamped the lime and masked it and stamped it again. Then drew some stem/sticks. I ment them to look like lime flowers, but they sorta look like some sort of super yummy confection don't they? I colored with watercolor pencil and used the clear stardust glitter pen over them for extra sugary yumminess *by this time I had realized the candy potential*

This one is another submarine as blimp card. It occurs to me that I usually put someone in the window of the sub. Even when it's a blimp. But you don't RIDE in that part, you ride in the basket part. So this time I left it empty. Brian, my DH, suggested that the window part is the... oh heck, what's the word.. omnitron? Anyhow that video message thing they have on blimps, and that I should fit a tiny greeting in there. I colored this scene with watercolor pencils. Did I mention I love owls?

Now for an Easter card. I colored this bunny with white colored pencil. We all know how I feel about white coloring on a colored background.

The next two use the same stamps but look really different if you ask me.

First I have a cupcake on an Alice in Wonderland background. The inside is stamped with the "Life's short, eat cupcakes" greeting.

Next is a much brighter cupcake card. I used the cupcake row over and over on my paper to make custom patern paper. Then I colored it with colors from the dot paper. I used the same dot paper on the "paper" part of the cupcake. Colored the frosting lime green, because, well I have this lime thing going on right now! I added a polkadot brad where the little cherry would go on the cupcake. Can you read the greeting? It is the "Life's short, eat cupcakes" stamp again, this time clear embossed.

Next up is a fairly simple card featuring the intertwined kitties. I love these kitties. I colored them with watercolor pencil. OH this brings up one of my tips. I can't color black animals well. I rarely see it done either. So when I want a black animal I use my watercolor pencils and use the black, but don't apply it all over. The end result is dark gray, but you can still see the stamp lines, and any highlighting I decide to do. I will also use a dark gray marker sometimes. Anyhow the point is that I don't color them black, I do dark gray. :)

Next is a card with the lovely, sometimes naughty Priscilla. This card was really by chance. I wanted to do the cat and use the cat paper. I started coloring her brown. I was doing two of these at once, so when I got to the pink accents part I did that on the uncolored cat too. I LOVED it just white! I've never left priscilla white before, I usually do her the gold color. But I decided to do her in just white this time. I feel it really works on this card, I'm not sure brown would have made me as happy.

And that's all for yesterday. :)