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Home and Crafting again – Masking Technique

Well, I made it back from leaving the kid’s at my Mom’s house.  Her root canal got postponed a day, but I’m sure everyone will be just fine.  The kids loved going to VBS today, and were already looking forward to going tomorrow.

As the house is quiet, I decided to continue the assembly of the card sets from my May weekend.  (I’m getting closer to being caught up with my UFOs, unfinished objects.)

So, here it is.bearswithmasking

I used a retired stamp set, one of my favorites, called raccoon and friends. To get the bears to be in front of the mountains, I used a technique called masking.  I will try and explain what I did.  First I stamped the bears on a scrap piece of paper and trimmed closely around the image.   After I trimmed the image I used the two way glue and applied it to the back of the cut out piece.  I then stamp the bears in Chocolate ink on my project.  Making sure the two way glue had dried and was not repositionable, I covered the stamped image of the bears on my project.  This allowed me to ink up the mountains in outdoor denim and stamp them on my project.  Using the same masking technique as the bears, I masked the first (darker) mountain range and without re-inking the stamp stamped the mountains again.  This made them lighter in color (2nd generation stamping) and once again pushed them behind the first mountains.  I removed the masks from the mountains and the bears and proceeded to stamp the grass.  I used sponges to create the colorful sky.

sunsetsponging

Here is another example using the same sized pieces, but arranged vertically.  I used masking in a different way on this card.  I punched a 1/2″ circle out of CS and after swirling some honey ink, I placed the circle on the honey ink then used sponges to create the sky background.  After I was done and removed the circle mask,  I got a sun behind my silhouetted flowers.

I am squeezing in my crafting time right now, but soon I will start taking photos of the process (and use stamps that are available to order, sorry).

Have a crafty day.

 

 

Fun Day with Mom and the kids.

Started the day at my Mom’s. (Grandma’s fun house according to the kids.)  Eggs, toast, and peaches made up breakfast.  We then spend 3 hours at a family fun carnival in the park.  The kids played LOTS of little games and we all got our faces painted.  This was a first for Grandma!  She got a pink and purple butterfly, I got a blue butterfly, the girl choose a cupcake and the boy wanted to be a pirate!  I will post a photo after Grandma emails them to me.

I was supposed to be driving home tonight to get on a tractor tomorrow morning, but the forecast is calling for rain, so I will stay and help out with the kids a little longer.  Oh, darn!

After the carnival games and a quick snack we went the tents with the petting zoo and the pony rides.  Only $1 a ride and the kids LOVED it.  As I was thinking my trip was going to be much shorter, I didn’t come prepared with a camera, so I used the girls I-pod, and have to wait for her to email those photos too!

I should have some great scrapbooking pages just from our morning activites.

We returned to Grandma’s and took a water play break.  The kids had each picked a water “gun” as part of their prizes so they changed into swim gear and sprayed each other.  I decided since we had the water out, I would put my suit on and scrubbed my Mom’s outdoor table and chairs.  They cleaned up really well.  Still have another small table, but was pleased with my progress.

Once the table was done it was time to head to the zip line for the girl, then to the water park for all of us.  Now that we’re back, Grandma is getting ready for Bingo and the kids and I are going to do some grocery shopping and take advantage of having a KFC only 10 minutes away from us.  Grandma is one of the callers for Bingo, if she didn’t have a job I think she would prefer to join us for dinner.  We’ll bring her some back for later.

I will get some photos up soon.

Happy crafting.

On the Road Again

I’ll have to owe you a photo of the club night project.  We had a Life Expressions Décor representative come and do a make and take party for us.  It was a lot of fun. Some ladies did one sign, but several did two and a few even made four and five signs to give as gifts.  It was cool watching everyone go from tentative to confident with each brush of the paint brush.

Today I need to make sure my kids will have what they need to be at Grandma’s for a week.  Her community puts on a great VBS program and also has lots of fun activities to do around the park, so they should have a great time.  It’s a 6 hour drive when you include stops, so I better get a move on so I can have most things ready to go before the kids wake up.

Have a great day!

Third Thursday = All day crop and club night

Well it’s the third Thursday of the month, so today is a crafting with my friends day.  Yay!

I was trying to update my cricut gypsy last night so I could add the new artbooking cartridge, but it didn’t want to cooperate.  This morning when the storms woke me, I do love a good lighting show, I got up to try again. Still no luck.  I think I’ll need to reboot my computer and give it one more try!

While the computer and gypsy were not communicating well last night I started gathering my goodies that I need to take today.  As I am not providing the project for tonight, a first, I should be able to travel rather light!  I still have several cards to put together from the May weekend and I might grab one of the new paper packs and start my workshop on the go sample pages.

First some coffee, then I am going to have a chat with my computer and gypsy and see if I can mediate their problem!

Have a great day.

Update:  So far the reboot of the computer and gypsy have allowed them to start talking once again.  It’s uploaded all the support updates (12) and now is on to the image content.  I guess I can finish packing up my projects and make some breakfast.  I’ll post a photo of what I got accomplished later today or tomorrow.

lemonsignHers it is.  This was our project for the evening.  First time ever we did a non Close to my Heart project.  It was a lot of fun.  Shelly let us pre-order our vinyl sayings then she brought the boards, paints and sayings so we could create our boards.  It was so much fun many of us made more than one board.  I made four!  We go through a lot of homemade lemonade in our house, and I thought this would be a great addition to one of our kitchen walls.

I didn’t get a photo of the fourth sign as I took it to my Mom’s the next morning when LiveSimpsignI took the kids to her house, but here are the other two signs I made.  The green one is for my office/studio space and the other might be a gift so don’t tell anyone.  <grin> Todaysmemsign

 

Finding my table top and a little Rock ‘n’ Roll

Well,  I didn’t get any crafting done yesterday, but I did uncover most of my crafting table.  I still have the supplies I took to CTMH convention to put away along with some odds and ends, but cleaning up a space on my craft table is much nicer than on the tractor in the sun baling dirty hay!   I think we are done baling for the day, so need to make some dinner, do some clean up, and then MAYBE I’ll get some creative time.    I think being able to craft would definitely go a long way into rediscovering happy!0613-rediscover-CTMH-FB-coverpic

 

 

 

11_08_MyAcrylixBeautyShot_300

I added a link on my home page for the Rock and Roll technique and realized that when I change  that page, it will be gone, so I’m adding the link in my blog so it can be searched for later.    (Trying to become more blog savvy!)  The name on the video is Rock ‘n’ Roll.  You can watch them all if you want!

 

http://craftingwithamanda.ctmh.com/CTMH/Content.aspx?id=/en/OBA/Ideas_and_Inspiration/CTMHTV.aspx