Yo Yo Yellow Gets Its Fifteen Minutes of Fame

What's up with all the Yo Yo Yellow in the gallery, I was thinking to myself the other day. Eeeeewwww, turns out it's part of this week's color challenge: Yo Yo Yellow, Going Gray, Basic Gray. I was definitely sitting this one out ... until I browsed the gallery and the combo actually began to grow on me. Take a look, there's some really pretty stuff!

I liked bunches's stamp set choice, A Little Birdie Told Me, and how she added in some Basic Black, so that's where I also started. The layout comes from Julee Tilman's Mojo Monday 21 sketch (last week's sketch). I kinda like how it turned out!

When I first started stamping, I ordered the assortments of all the color families (where you get 3 sheets of all 12 colors), and would you believe Yo Yo Yellow was the color I ran out of FIRST?! I was making birthday invitations for my son, and even had to go with postcards to get enough out of my three sheets. I don't think there was a layer on them. I'm telling you they were HIDEOUS.

One last thing, be sure to head over to Julee Tilman's blog, Poetic Artistry. I just saw that she's having a Verve Visual honored guest contest. You could be a guest designer for her march stamp release. Fun stuff!

Stamps: A Little Birdie Told Me, Crosshatch
Paper: Going Gray, Yo Yo Yellow, Basic Gray, Basic Black, watercolor paper
Ink: Palette Noir, Yo Yo Yellow, Going Gray, VersaMark
Accessories: Yellow grosgrain (retired), plain and scallop circle nestabilities, white gel pen, aqua painter, large oval punch, large black brad (by Close to My Heart), clear embossing powder, crystal effects

Great Tip Award

Marilyn nominated me for the Great Tip award. Wasn't that sweet? Thanks Marilyn! Before you run off and check the three people I tagged, check out Marilyn's blog. She's got some great projects in there AND she's figured out how to stop hoarding rub-ons!

I'm tagging these three:

1. Chris, aka cdjkssss on SCS, has some awesome info on her blog, Colorful Om, about using EZ Mount for unmounted rubber stamps. She even "unmounts" her Stampin' Up sets. Think of the space you could save. I just ordered a sheet of EZ Mount for some unmounted rubber stamps I've had for quite a few years and have never used, so her info and pictures were JUST what I needed.

2. Have you seen the alternate way you can use the scallop punch, where you punch, turn slightly and re-punch? My awesome upline, Sue, posted some pictures showing how to do this.

3. I love Angel's fact-a-day project. For 100 days, she is posting a random fact about herself, and at the end, she'll make a scrapbook page with those facts. Great way to get ourselves IN our scrapbooks instead of just creating them!

Have You Seen Today's SCS Sketch Challenge?

Late, late last night (or was it early, early this morning), I got two "comment notification" emails from Splitcoast on a card I had uploaded back in mid-November. I thought it was strange, since the card is so old, but didn't give it further thought. This morning, with bunches more new comments, I finally put two and two together and realized something was up. It turns out that my card was the basis for today's sketch challenge on SCS! What a nice surprise :)

I was planning to take today off from a new post (to give that many more people time to oooh and aaah over that sweet baby in yesterday's post ;) [just kidding!]), but of course, I had to play along with the challenge, right?

While making this card, I made a WONDERFUL discovery. The rest of you may have already figured this out, but for me it was very exciting. Whenever I want to edge my card stock in white, I always end up with a big mess. The white craft pad ink NEVER dries, it seems, and the heat tool will often cause ripples and bending and such in the paper. The white Staz-On, too, is messy, but worse is getting the pad ready to use in the first place (re-inking, waiting for the ink to settle, etc.)

Today, my ruby red dp and the ruby red card stock needed a little differentiation, and I was groaning at the thought of the white ink. I was just about to try the white chalk in the pastels (which I would have to dig to China to find) and then thought to try a white watercolor crayon. It worked like a charm. NO mess, no fuss at all :) Maybe a white colored pencil or even a regular white Crayola crayon would work, too. I'm also very curious to see if it might, maybe, could possibly (oh please, oh please) work to color the edges of photographs, cuz you know I'm just NOT goin' near my photos with a heat tool, kwim?

On a different note, remember my plea for help with black ink for acrylic stamps? Well, my Palette Noir ink pad arrived this week. I inked up a My Favorite Things acrylic stamp, stamped on watercolor paper, held my breath, picked up the stamp, opened my eyes, and .... ta da ... it was da bomb. Crisp, sharp, very black, and **did not bleed** when I colored it in with an aqua painter. Thanks again for all your suggestions. I've got a few other brands to try as well. One can never have too many black ink pads, right?

Stamps: Embrace Life
Paper: Ginger Blossom dp, Ruby Red card stock
Ink: Palette Noir, Groovy Guava, Ruby Red, Close to Cocoa
Accessories: Groovy Guava double-stitched ribbon, metal-rim tag, dimensionals, aqua painter, plain and scallop circle nestabilities (by Spellbinders), white watercolor crayon, sanding block

To the World You May Be ...

"To the world, you may be just one person,
but to one person, you may be the world."
-Josephine Billings

I've always loved this quote that's in the new Out on a Limb set by Papertrey Ink. Add these beautiful "build-a-limb" images, and you're looking at a set I could not resist.

How's this one for clean and simple? The images themselves are just so serene all by themselves, you really don't need to add much of anything.

First I stamped the leaves in celery. On a second piece of white I stamped the branch in chocolate, then added the buds using blush blossom craft ink and clear embossing powder. The branch is trimmed and then popped up on dimensionals.

Stamps: Out on a Limb by Papertrey Ink
Paper: Stamper's Select White (Papertrey Ink),
Chocolate Chip, River Rock
Ink: Chocolate Chip and Blush Blossom craft inks,
Certainly Celery classic ink
Accessories: clear embossing powder, dimensionals,
velvet ribbon (May Arts), paper piercer, key tag punch

Edited to Add: Whoopsie ... Evidently, I was keeping my eye on the wrong thing (computer screen), and turned to see that my darling little 9-month-old had gotten a hold of this card ... take a look at it now ...



A little extra dimension and some good ol' distressing never hurt anything, right? Sigh. But really, could YOU be provoked by a face like this? (And yes, I'm indulging in a little proud mama moment!)

Choir Practice

Doesn't it sort of look like that's what these birds are doing?

I think I'll use this for teacher appreciation week in May. My oldest has both a male and a female teacher this year. For once, I have something that will work nicely for both!

Not feeling real chatty this morning, so I'll keep this short and sweet.

Birds were all stamped on watercolor paper, then colored and cut out. I positioned them on the card, most of them with dimensionals, then hand-drew their legs back on.

Hope everyone had a fantastic weekend!
~Amy

Stamps: A Little Birdie Told Me
Paper: Soft Sky, Whisper White, Enchante dp (celery and close to cocoa designer prints would work well, too), watercolor paper
Ink: Jet Black Staz-On, Chocolate Chip, Barely Banana
Accessories: small oval punch, saffron brads, paper piercer, dimensionals, aqua painter, pumpkin pie marker, wide chocolate grosgrain ribbon
Size: 4" square

Gator Love

Here's a fun little non-traditional Valentine card inspired by a placemat I found at Target this year. I like getting these little seasonal placemats for my kids -- inexpensive, easy-to-clean, and a little bit special since they only come out for the given holiday.

I mostly used SCS sketch challenge #160, which was also a recent Jen del Muro "Sketch for You to Try." For the trio of glittered panels, I just smooshed the card stock into a VersaMark pad, sprinkled with heat-and-stick powder, heated, then sprinkled with dazzling diamonds glitter. Instead, you could also emboss the panel with iridescent ice embossing powder for pretty much the same look. One, or maybe both?, of these techniques is called Dazzling Diamond Dust.

Stamps: Wild things
Paper: Soft Sky, Tempting Turquoise, Real Red, Whisper White
Ink: Certainly Celery, VersaMark
Accessories: red crystals (Card Candy by A Muse), ticket corner punch, dimensionals, heat-and-stick powder, dazzling diamonds glitter, heart sticker (Target $1 spot [last year]), silver brad, vinyl flowers (American Crafts)

Answering Questions

I just wanted to take a minute and tell you that I love getting all of your comments. I read and appreciate each one!

There have been some questions lately, too, which is great. If you include a way for me to reach you, I will respond directly through email. If I have no way to respond to you directly, then I go back to my original blog entry and update the post to answer the question. (I usually put new information in [brackets] labeled "Edited To Add," and often with red text, so it stands out from the original post.) So if you've asked a question here recently and haven't gotten a direct response, check back on the blog entry to see if I've updated it with the information you were looking for.

Now, on the flip side, sometimes I ask questions here in my posts, so I want to thank each of you who has provided information I'm looking for. I received some great feedback on black ink to use with acrylic stamps, for example, as well as suggestions for a paper cutter/trimmer. Thanks! I appreciate all your help!