For the past few years, my friend Lisa and I have been meeting for coffee every Sunday morning at exactly 10am. Part of our meeting involves a challenge in which each of us has to bring a hand made card or other hand crafted item to exchange. This challenge was initiated way back when to keep us both motivated as, heaven knows, I’ve lost my mojo more than a few times and even went so far as to sell every stamping item I owned (big, big mistake!). Anyway, Lisa and I just signed up to be SU demos and, in her kit, Lisa received the set called ‘Big Flowers’. She immediately passed it on to me and challenged me to make something with it. Now, I have to be completely honest here; I looked at the stamps sitting on my kitchen counter for five days before I even opened the lid. I was at a loss as to what to do with them. I knew in my mind that I wanted to make a bouquet of some sort but I only had two ink colors to work with – Tangerine Tango and Kiwi Kiss – so how on earth was I going to make something look good with only two colors? In my personal opinion, a minimum of three colors are needed in order to make something really pop.
So, last night as I was gorging on a feed of homemade chicken wings (hey, I was starving myself on a sulfite free diet all week and was HUNGRY) I had an epiphany. I could use versamark and clear embossing powder on Baja Blue cardstock to obtain my third color! I wiped the grease from my fingers (and my chin) and tore to my craft room to create my bouquet.
Once I began embossing, I was unstoppable! I embossed every flower in the set on to Blue Baja, Kiwi Kiss, and Tangerine Tango cardstock. And, then I had another epiphany! Throw in a little white to make the colors pop even more! Whoohoo, I was on a roll. After all was said and done, I was extremely pleased with the way my flowers turned out. But still, something was missing. It needed a vase. So, off to my computer I went to draw one up. Once I had it cut out, I embossed flowers onto that too, haha.
Oh yes, I also forgot to mention that I only had one circle punch in my possession – a 1 3/8 inch. So, I drew up a series of 1.5 inch circles and 1.75 inch scallop circles and cut them out using my silhouette machine. You’d never ever know that they weren’t punched.
Our design team member, Nicole, created this sweet little purse project for us using a template that I made a few months ago. I love how she opted for soft colors and how she stamped, colored, and adheared those adorable shoppers to the front of the purse – something I never would have thought of doing. Dang, ya’ll, I need to start thinking outside of the box! Thanks for the lovely project, Nicole!
Unfortunately, I want to make a few small changes to the template before I upload it to our free template section. Please give me a day or two as I seem to have quite a few things on my plate this weekend.
It seems as though I have an obsession with bats this year. I can’t get enough of them on my Halloween projects!
This little nugget box was actually inspired by a Chinese purse that I saw recently somewhere on the internet. What is with my fascination with Chinese inspired projects lately?? Anyway, I designed my version to hold 4 Hershey’s nuggets just perfectly. I didn’t have any Halloween themed patterned paper in my stash (I rarely use patterned paper at all) so I was forced to draw my own but I think it turned out pretty cute!
How did I do it? My box was cut out and then had bats heat embossed all over it using clear embossing powder. I drew the large bat myself and layered it onto orange cardstock. It was then applied to the front of my box using pop dots.
For anyone wishing to purchase this template, it’s available for purchase in my Paper Templates Webstore. I have included my nugget wrappers and the bats along with the box.
First of all, thank you for being so patient while I transferred my website from one host to another. What a complete nightmare! I actually had to do it two times because the first host I chose ended up being completely unreliable. My site was offline seven times in two days and the site wasn’t even live – it was in testing mode! I decided to cancel my account with them and move on to a new host. So far, this one seems pretty good. No down time at all (yet!). I think everything is up and running as it should be but if you do find something behaving oddly, please do let me know so I can get it corrected.
Secondly, did you notice that I have changed the name of my blog? Well, I did! We are now PaperShapez.com! I have been wanting to change it for awhile now and I think the name is more fitting since my blog now focuses more on my templates than it does on my stamping. Please be sure to update your links and bookmarks! Also, please note that all templates that have been uploaded to my blog prior to today will still have The Stampin’ Spot copyright written on them. I just don’t have the time to go back and update that info on each and every template.
Speaking of templates, it is time for our first ever Template Tuesday!! For this week, I chose a template that I created roughly two years ago and I bring it out each and every fall. My trusty, dusty (okay, it’s not dusty but it just sounded good, haha) pumpkin card.
Remember, you will only be able to download the template TODAY! After today, it is gone.
Enjoy!
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Oops! Template is no longer available.
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How I did it: I printed/cut two templates onto ‘Only Orange’ cardstock. One template was used as the card base. With the other, I cut out the three sections (as shown above), stamped them with SU’s Filagree Background stamp using ‘Only Orange’ ink, outlined them with a Krylon Gold Leaf pen and applied them (with pop up dots) onto the card base. I did roughly the same thing with the stem only it was adhered directly to the card base using double sided tape instead of pop dots.
Gracious me, where on earth did the summer go? It sure did fly by, huh? Now that the kiddies are back in school and I have the days to myself once again, I will be able to concentrate on drawing more templates for all you wonderful crafters. And, since Halloween is just around the corner, I thought I’d start there.
I drew up this hinged coffin box this morning and couldn’t wait to decorate it! I made the coffin base with black bazzill cardstock and, using a stipple brush, applied ‘Whisper White’ craft ink to one side to give it the dusty, cob-webbed look. Unfortunately, it is very hard to see in my photograph because my camera and I have issues when we work together. It looks awesome in real life though! The bats and the ‘Happy Halloween’ sentiment were free GSD files that I found somewhere on the internet while the the spider/spider web I drew myself (and cut out using my Silhouette machine).
You’ll notice that my first attempt at the coffin liner (left hand image) didn’t go so well. The liner ended up being much smaller than the base. I have since corrected my error and the liner fits into the coffin just nicely. I hope to have the template ready for upload sometime today. And, there will be a few more Halloween themed templates to come!