I’m quite pleased with how my card front as well as the coordinating envelope, back of card and card inside turned out using the techniques from class. I actually ended up using gold embossing powder rather than gold foil but believe that it would have turned out quite similarly had I used foil. There were a few simple techniques that added a bit extra to the card as well. First the scoring of a few lines with the scoreboard to add a bit of texture to the card front. And then adding a wee bit of water to some ink and using a paint brush to splatter a bit of ink on the card front. I also did some spattering on my coordinating areas. I didn’t take a photo of the stamping portion, but I did have to use masks when creating the images since the flowers and leaves overlapped. Even though I didn’t end up using foiling on this card I did a lot of experimentation and will definitely be finishing a lot of cards using the backgrounds that I made using that technique.
After stamping the outline images with versamark ink I used gold embossing powder. I really like the simplicity, ease and look of this technique. I watered down a bit of ink with a bit of water from a mini spritzer and used a paint brush to splatter it. This seems to work a lot better than the white and black sprays that I have tried recently, so I can foresee a lot more splatters happening on some upcoming cards now that I have a technique to do it that I find easier to use.The coordinating envelope, back of card and insert for the inside of the card turned out well. I do like how the small black inked sentiment adds a pop of contrast on the card front.You can see how nice the gold embossing looks coupled with one layer of colour that just highlights a bit of the flower.
100DayProject Day 28
I haven’t done any actually cardmaking today, but I did spend over an hour talking with Shelli about making cards. And I did get the card I made yesterday posted today. Maybe I’ll pick the die that I’m going to use tomorrow to try a faux letterpress technique before heading up to bed.
So many options to choose from to try out a new-to-me technique for Lesson 4 (Faux Letterpress / Embossing) of Altenew Clean & Simple Boutique Cards course. The class card uses a beautiful ‘Happy’ die cut to make a Happy Everything card. My Happy die is nice but perhaps not as nice as some of the other dies I pulled from my stash as potentIials. I may end up experimenting with a few.It’s kind of crazy the photos we can take with our phones these days. I love this close up of the centre of one of the orchid blossoms on the plant that Louise game me about 6 weeks ago on the day of my mom’s Celebration of Life. It’s also kind of crazy how long orchid blossoms last. I am glad that I have a few friends that will take my orchid plants once they eventually lose their blossoms. While I love flowers and plants I don’t actually love tending to them that much (or as much as I like some other things so my poor plants get neglected).
Sweeping Saturday
We left home about 7:40 for the Rideau Curling club for our three 5-end game Bonspiel. No early morning walk with Luna today. The first game was at 8:30 then 11:45 then 2:00. We stayed for quite a while after the final game since the prizes were awarded after the 2nd draw finished. We placed 8th of the 20 teams with a win, a loss and a tie. We zipped out between our first 2 games to pick my car up from the garage where it had regular scheduled maintenance yesterday but we didn’t have time to actually pick it up yesterday. I called Shelli on the phone on my way home about 7:20 and just finished the call about 8:40. Lots of fun crafty talk. She’s busy working on some SCT C&C cards. It’s going to be a while before I can work my way through those classes. We spoke about a fun colour scheme system called Color Cube which Vicki recently bought. I think we’ll start doing the weekly Color Throwdown Challenge together. I’m going to quickly finish this post and head to bed, hopefully before I get overtired.
I still don’t have a finished card 17 to report. But I did have a great lunch and crafternoon with Ivana, Vicki and Josee. We did fit in a bit more experimenting with foiling, stamping with metallic inks and embossing. Definitely more things learned and more things that I’d like to try.
Cardstock seems to make a difference. I think the one that I used was too light.Or I left the transfer gel on too long or put on too much of it. I was trying to make cover a full cardfront so that I could use the ‘negative’ of a foil that I already ran through my foiling machine, but the paper was a soggy mess when I lifted it to pull off. I also think I made a mistake in trying to roll the gel on right on the paper. In my next attempt I rolled the gel onto the brayer then rolled it onto the paper.Here I am trying to roll the gel out first onto the brayer before rolling it onto the paper – it seemed to work better.But it did take a while to get the texture that you see on the brayer (which also transferred to the paper at first) smoothed out on the cardstock. I forgot to take a picture of the texture showing in the early stages of braying on the cardstock and of the relatively smooth final surface on the cardstock. There was definitely not any ridges like I had from the palette knife yesterday.I tried to put some on a pre-ink blended piece of cardstock through a stencil using a palette knife. I think the thickness of the stencil makes a difference, as does the tool with which you’re applying the transfer gel. As you can see I had troubles getting it totally smooth using a palette knife. I don’t yet have a scraper which Vicki had seen used in some videos but we did try with the edge of a piece of cardstock but it wasn’t that effective. I wonder if using a sponge brayer might yield better results – smoother and less thick. It’s going to be interesting to see how this turns out when I run it through the heat foil machine. Maybe I’ll cut this paper and half and try half of it using pressure to try to transfer the foil and the other half with the heat transfer technique.In this example I tried to use a brayer to remove some of the thickness of the gel after I had applied it with a palette knife. There seems to be quite a lot of texture to the gel; it’s not nearly as thick as when I didn’t try to remove some of it with the brayer, but there still seems to be quite a bit of thickness in spots. This is a full 8.5 x 11 paper so I’ll cut it into 4 pieces to try a few different ways
Vicki also delivered some 2023 Spellbinders Advent Calendars that she was able to get on sale; instead of just me and Shelli working our way through the 24 doors of products, 5 of us (Vicki, Ivana, Shelli, Nancy and I) will gradually work our way through. The plan is to open 1 door each week starting in June after I finish my 100DayProject. I’m not sure if I’ll continue with my blog posts after that project but if I do you’ll see some more cards using Spellbinders products.
Thesaurus Thursday
This morning as I stepped out of the house, I was greeted by a symphony of bird song. So many different ones singing at the same time and it sounded lovely. I wondered if there might the a word that I could use as my theme for today. The closest I came was troupe, it’s not a ‘th’ sound at the beginning so doesn’t go quite as well as I like for my theme for today. But I did use the thesaurus to find a word similar to symphony. As I am trying to write more, I find myself using my phone to look up words, so thesaurus seems like a very good theme for today.
I similarly wondered if there might be another word for the V formation that the Canada Geese utilize when they are flying. So I looked it up. Apparently it is referred to as a skein. I don’t quite understand how it looks like a skein of yarn. But it was interesting to know that that V formation is not just about the shape of the V but also about the timing of the flapping. When you take some time to observe them flying it really is quite an orchestration of the flapping and flow of their flight paths. Beautiful and amazing really. As I struggled a bit to pass someone in my swim lane this morning, I realized that it is amazing how they keep up their formation for such long periods of time. Apparently they use their honking to maintain flock cohesion, coordinate shifting of positions and encourage each others during long flights. It’s also interesting to learn that a group of geese isn’t called a gaggle when they are flying but rather a skein, a team, a flock or a wedge and when they are flying close together they’re referred to as a plump. It seems high time that I’ve learned a bit more about Canadian Geese. So glad they were part of the symphony that greeted me as I set out for my walk this morning.
Don’t forget that it’s also a Thankful Thursday and a Thinking of You Thursday so you can always take a few minutes (at 3:00?) to jot down a few things for which you’re thankful, or send a thank you card or send a thinking of you message to someone. Happy Mail and messages are always nice surprises for the recipient.
Throwback Thursday:
I have 2 sorts of Throwback Thursdays today. First a copy of my blog post from 20 March 2010 (15 years ago – yikes) and then some photos that Roland has been scanning in from old negatives.
2010 03 20 – Provincials: Day 3
Saturday: Lots of uncertainty about whether our 2-2 record so far combined with our upcoming 2 games today would lead us to mini-game tie-breakers for the final spot in the semi-finals tomorrow. Things become more clear after our 2-6 loss in our 9:00 game against Burlington. We’d need to win our 6th game plus two other teams would need to lose their 6th games for us to advance. Luckily (?) we opted to check out between games since we ended up losing 3-6 to Forest in our 2:00 game. It was a well-played game, but things just weren’t going that well for us. Turns out those 2 other teams won their games, so even a 3-3 rather than 4-2 record wouldn’t have had us advancing. We had a quick stop at the McEwan’s gas station about 15 minutes out of North Bay to fill up on gas and stock up on junk food; unfortunately the ice cream cone that I’d been looking forward to all weekend wasn’t to be: turns out the store only has ice cream cones in the summer (which we always get on our way to Castle Oma (Roland’s parents’ cottage on the Pickerel River)). The drive home was uneventful; we got home about 7:00. Roland and the children watched some hockey and other sports on TV while I caught up on my blog. While it’s too bad the girls didn’t advance, we were thrilled with their 2 (unexpected) wins (pretty good for team ranked 9th among the 10 teams). And, now that we’re home, it will be great to have a full day here tomorrow before heading back to school and work. Sadly, except for a year-end party (and hopefully having the girls over to scrapbook), that’s it for ringette for this year. Heidi’s lucky, her ringette season was a month longer than Stefan’s hockey season which ended on February 19th, the night before we left for Mexico. Now we’re all looking forward to spring and summer – soccer, paddling, cottaging and that ice cream cone on our way to Castle Oma!
Some things are the same and some are different since 2010: Heidi is still playing ringette. She plays in the National Ringette League now so her team will be going to Nationals (rather than Provincials) the first week of April which will be held here in Ottawa this year. Her team isn’t ranked particularly high this year either so (not to jinx them) I don’t expect they’ll be advancing to the finals in the year end tournament this year either. Stef isn’t playing much hockey anymore; just a few fundraiser games on a TD team against some other financial instituation teams. We still look forward to icecream on our way to and from the Pickerel River just at a different ice cream store. I still refer to Roland’s parents’ cottage as Castle Oma. I haven’t been doing much scrapbooking for years because I’ve been focused on cardmaking, but I do hope to get back into it. There are so many other ways to keep memories these days such as our social media feeds and blogs. That was our one and only trip to Mexico, definitely no family traditions of trips south.
And now for a few of the photos from the negatives that Roland’s been scanning:
Camping with cousins Peter and Blair likely at Bon Echo.Roland’s dad was a great photographer. This is Roland and his mom.And Roland with his dad.And Roland on the ice. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen one of those mouth guards!
I finally used my foiling machine. I started with the easiest way: using a polyglaze sheet that already had a pattern on it. I ran two of those through and they worked out well, particularly the one that I used heat setting 4 rather than 3 for. I then tried to create some full cardfront panels covered with DecoFoil Due transfer gel. Once it dried I ran it through with the remaining foil to create the opposite pattern. I also created a few card fronts with polka dots stenciled with the transfer gel. Those came out very well. I’m going to create some more card front panels fully covered with the transfer gel tomorrow – ideally once I find my brayers – because I found that it was difficult to get a smooth layer of transfer gel when using a palette knife to spread the transfer gel. The resulting ridges show up because the foil didn’t always transfer quite correctly along the ridges, and even where it did, you can notice the ridges when you angle the card front in a certain way. I did some ink blending on the 2 swirled card fronts which turned out well. I meant to try to ink blend on a full card front before applying the transfer gel but forgot until after I had already cleaned off my tools and worksurface so I’ll try that tomorrow when a few friends are coming over for lunch and a crafternoon. I will also try ink blending on the dotted cardfronts. And will also try to run the opposite patterned ones through with another colour of foil – because that looked like an interesting technique when I watched a foiling video several months ago.
Heat setting 4 worked better than heat setting 3
I also tried using a few different types of embossing powder (Ranger clear as well as two types of sticky embossing powder – one Stampin’ Up! and the other Ranger) with a few different types of sentiments. I’m not thrilled with the results so far but will do some more experimenting tomorrow. My first attempt with the clear embossing powder didn’t work, perhaps because I double stamped the versamark which perhaps resulted in too much adhesive so too much foil stuck. Maybe I used too hot of a heat setting? The sticky embossing powder didn’t seem to get adequate coverage and too little foil transferred. I can’t remember if I used put down 2 layers of versamark first or not. Maybe the heat wasn’t hot enough? I do want to try stamping with the transfer gel as well – I think having an even coat of transfer gel using a brayer will lead to a better impression of the stamped image. So hopefully I can find those wayward brayers.
I got some transfer gel onto the back of my card fronts which ended up sticking onto my carrier sheet.You can see the how the foil didn’t transfer as well where the ridges in the transfer gel formed when I tried to spread it over the full surface of the card front using a palette knife. I think using a brayer may give more even coverage.In this photo you can see how the ridges show up when the light hits the foil in a certain way.The two cardfront will definitely be usable even if there are a few spots where the foil didn’t transfer. Some ridges it still transferred fine (but you can see the ridges at certain angles of light) and some others the foil didn’t transfer.The polka dots transferred the foil very well. I’m looking foward to seeing how it looks once I’ve ink blended.
Clearly I need to do some more experimenting. And recording what works so that I will remember it when I come back to these techniques in the future.
You can see how some of the cardstock stuck to my carrier sheet because I got some of the transfer gel onto the back of the card stock when I was stenciling the gel onto the card front. Perhaps I should have put a bit of parchment paper behind. I’ll try to see if I can clean off the carrier sheet with some soap and water. I’ll definitely have to buy some extra carrier sheets to have on hand when I wreck some other carrier sheets with wayward transfer gel.
There was definitely some wayward foil in my foiling experimentation today. And some wayward transfer gel. And I expect there will be some more in my continued experimentation tomorrow.
Card 17 (partial)
I ink blended onto the cardfronts after foiling the swirls. I also created a ink blended card front which I haven’t yet put transfer gel onto but I will try that tomorrow. And I will try to turn at least one of these foiled card fronts into an actual card!
But I won’t experiment too much because I want to move onto getting at least one card finished tomorrow for my Card 17 for The Foiling Metallic Details class which is lesson 3 of the Clean and Simple Boutique Cards course.
Some of my samples of trying foiling using clear embossing powder as well as some sticky embossing powder. Tomorrow I will label them and make some notes about what worked and what didn’t to keep for future reference and future experimentation. I also made a few samples which turned out fine just using clear and gold embossing powder (not foiling on top of it) so that you can see the sentiments more clearly for comparison purposes.
Wayward Wednesday
Just when we were almost back home my theme for today came to me: wayward. This was because the Canada Geese overhead (a sure sign of spring) seemed to be heading more east than north so not exactly the direction that I was expecting. But I was happy to hear their honking regardless of their somewhat sloppy formation and wayward direction.
I skipped Pickleball today. Roland wasn’t going since his Achilles has been bothering him. I opted to stay home and tackle the huge mess that is on my desk in the family room. That desk seems to be the spot that so many of my wayward items accumulate. Which makes the desk completely unusable and means that my wayward items spread onto the kitchen table and counter and dining room table. So spending some time to try to reign in my wayward items and redirect them to more appropriate places in the house seemed like a better use of my time this morning than playing Pickleball. Here’s to hoping the desk stays clear and usuable for a long time. I shall endevour to keep it clear of wayward items so I can use it to work on my laptop, to send out cards (a habit which will be much easier to implement if I have a dedicated, clutter-free (okay, let’s be real, a tolerably-cluttered) space) and to pick back up some Spanish studying (which will also be much more likely to happen if I have a dedicated spot to work on it – although I do need to figure out how to have some time to dedicate to it as well – it might have to wait until after I’m finished my 100DayProject.
Kevin came over for lunch which was great. I also enjoyed an hour playing virtual golf at The Bunker with Louise. Definitely some wayward balls! A very fun evening out. We have another golf night with a larger group of ladies next Wednesday as well. Which reminds me that I need to send out a reminder email.
I finished Card 14 this morning at the cottage before heading to Heidi’s ringette game. And then I did some more card making at home in the late afternoon and evening around taking Luna out for a walk and having some dinner. Card 14 was the last project for the All About Layering 4 class. So I’m moving onto making the cards for the 6 lessons in the Clean and Simple Boutique Cards class. Like the lessons for All About Layering 3 and All About Layering 4, I had watched the videos quite a while ago. But I rewatched Lesson 1 of this new class and will also rewatch the other videos as well.
Card 14
I am quite pleased with how the card came out. I didn’t have any diagonal striped patterned paper like the sample card from class had but I did find a diagonal stripe on the packaging of a pack of patterned paper. I quite like the bit of extra contrast that it adds.As usual, I like to have the image from the cardfront featured on the envelope, on the inside of the card as well as on the back of the card. It’s definitely a lot more work, but makes for a very nice look for the finished card.Having a coordinating die makes it so much easier than fussy cutting out the floral spray.I inkblended the light aqua colour to help ‘ground’ the floral image that I was adding to the card.I often like to use old cardboard (rather than foam squares or craft foam) for dimension behind elements of the card.The card before the sentiment was added.All ABout Layering 4 Lesson 6b – This was the design inspiration for today’s card
Card 15a
This card is actually not at all like the card sample from Altenew Clean and Simple Boutique Cards Lesson 1 (Simple Styling), but I was trying to get the effect of a mix of colour and black outline that was in the sample card. I do like how my set came out. I later got started on making Card 15b which is using the technique from Lesson. I’m not totally loving my card 15b so may restart that card tomorrow.
I created 6 cards. 2 with this purple wine colour as well as one each of turquoise, crimson, sunkissed. The first card I created was a mix of purple wine and crimson which I didn’t really like, so I changed it to just crimson.I also decorated the back of the card, the inside of the card and the envelope.
Card 15b
This technique involves somewhat random stamping of mostly solid image flowers (a few with an extra layer) and leaves, then going in with a black marker around the leaf images. The class sample is very nice. I’m hoping I can achieve a bit of a better design when I have a few more tries tomorrow. Once I add a sentiment it will likely look a bit better. I think it makes a big difference if you have a nice variety of flower and leaf images; I may dig into some of my non-Altenew stamps to give me just a bit more variety of images. And I may do some masking.
The black stetch lines definitely help the look of the the card. Adding in a sentiment tomorrow will also help. But I think that I will try a new one using a few more flower and leaf stamps as well as some masking.
Soggy Sunday
As forecast, a lot of rain arrived today. Which meant no walk for Luna. A lot of other potential themes for the day arose starting with sleepy and slumber. It was definitely a tough morning to get going. I was feeling quite sloth-like. There were lots of splashes as the rain hit the deck and the roof and as we drove to the Slush Puppie Centre in Gatineau for Heidi’s final regular season game. The first week of April will be Nationals which are here in Ottawa this year. There were definitely some slippery spots on the sidewalks where the ice hadn’t yet melted. My boots that need repair have squeakysoles which let in water leading to stinky socks. I’m going to throw them in the washing machine then bring them in for repair. Because it was a feature weekend, there were some young ringette players out on the ice with Heidi’s teammates for the singing of the national anthem as well as lots of players in the stands. I love it when there are young players around. Of course there was lots of skating, shooting and scoring by Heidi’s Gatineau team. It’s nice that their goalie, Stephanie, got a shut out against Nepean. I hope you’ve enjoyed all the S words I tried to include. I just had a snack even though it’s 9:50 p.m. Not a good idea from a sleep-perspective but the left-over cake that Chris brought for dinner last night called out to me when I peeked in the fridge.
Not the best photo of me trying to get the image of Heidi that is on the big sign on the side of the Slush Puppie Centre featuring Heidi and 2 other of her teammates. It is always neat to see that sign when we go to watch her games.Roland took this photo of the very soggy lake this morning.It was my turn to get my photo taken with Hieid’s sign today. I was envious of the photos that Roland and Stefan had taken with Heidi’s sign yesterday.
Card 11 | Altenew All About Layering 4 Lesson 5a. I just used a marker to make the white dots, but they aren’t really random like ink splatters.
I made Card 11 (2 versions) and Card 12 today. I’m still quite a long way from being caught up. Hopefully I’ll continue to be able to make 2 cards a day for the next week or so. While I am loving learning how to use a big variety of Altenew products and am quite liking the resulting cards that I create, I must say that I find them quite time consuming to make. All the the layering takes a lot of time. I think I will definitely consider Stefan’s suggestion of selling some of these cards. He was mentioning how expensive store bought cards are these days. It would be nice to raise a bit of money to put towards the materials that I use when making the card kits for the Dementia Society and it would be even nicer to have some extra money to buy some things to donate in Treat Boxes to Debra Dynes Family House. But that will all be a project to consider after I complete my 100DayProject. And after I have better mastered getting almost all of the work done for creating the kits by my Crafty Crew volunteers.
I think I actually prefer the white edge around the diecut images rather than the version of the card that has the white edges coloured black. I’m still havne’t figured out how to get white splashes of ink looking at all similar to the sample class card.
Card 11 | Hugs | Altenew All About Layering 4 – Lesson 5a
This is the design inspiration for Card 11 from the Altenew All About Layering 4 lesson 5a.
I have some other photos as well but will edit the post tomorrow to add them in.
I started this card yesterday but opted to abandon the idea of using a turquoise rather than black background and started afresh today with new (red) flowers as well as a black background.
Card 12 | Sending Hugs | Altenew All About Layering 4 – Lesson 5b
Card 12 | Altenew All About Layering 4 Lesson 5b. I used the Chocolate Flowers Zero Waste die for my flowers and leaves. The backgroun was created using a Concord & 9th cover plate and coordinating die which I ink blended to get a look somewhat similar to the stenciled embossing paste background of the class card.
I have some other photos to add but will edit the post tomorrow.
The inspiration from Altenew All About Layering 4 Lesson 5b. Unfortunately I didn’t have any embossing paste or a suitable stencil at the cottage today so I didn’t use that technique on my card. I also didn’t have a stamp set with vines. I do like the look of the mixture black and white images as well as some coloured ones so I will try to make a more similar card when I have the appropriate supplies on hand.
Frozen Friday
It is 9:38 p.m. and I am just starting to write some words for today. I am definitely very far from my goal of getting my blog posts done before dinner! Even skipping my afternoon nap wouldn’t have helped the cause today.
The snow was nice and frozen this morning so I was able to step off the path and go down to the river’s edge a few times. For most of the winter the snow has been deep and soft so wandering off the path hasn’t been a great idea unless you want a lot of snow to get into your boots. I always enjoy seeing the different perspective of the views along the river when I get off the path.
I expect that the freezing and thawing cycles of spring have been triggering good flows of the maple sap. A friend usually taps his maple tree and makes some syrup. While I like the idea in theory and actually bought (and subsequently misplaced) a few taps, I opt to buy maple syrup from an old work colleague whose inlaws make maple syrup. I am so glad to live in an area where maple syrup is readily available. All this talk of maple syrup has me craving some; so I expect I’ll make some pancakes or French toast tomorrow morning for breakfast.
Another benefit of the freezing and thawing cycles is the ever changing beauty of the icy falls in the small stream on my walk. Through my Headspace app and their great collection of videos I am gradually learning to embrace the mindfulness attribute of impermanence. Like so many things in nature, our thoughts, feelings and the things that are happening around us are everchanging. At this time of year in particular, I love to see how the stream looks different each day.
The cold nights have helped to make walking on the lake at the cottage possible as well. I went for a few walks with Luna and Roland. It may be too soft for the next few days since it isn’t going down to freezing over the next few nights. I really love to see how the dark colour of the leaves (and the occasional feather) causes the ice to melt in the bright sunlight and creates small watery holes into which the leaf or feather sinks.
Creative Treats 