A fitting thank you card

If you missed yesterday's post about Abby's first stitching experience, please check it out here.  I'm really impressed!

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A few weeks ago we were talking to Steve's mother.  She said, "We've sent you something we're really excited about.  It'll be there on Thursday."  She refused to tell us any more, so we had to wait.

Four days later, I ran some errands.  After I parked in the garage, I opened the little door to go in the house, but my way was blocked by two really big boxes.

They were way too heavy for me to move.  Fortunately I could get out of the garage through the big door and close it using the keypad.  I really liked that the box marked "Fragile" was underneath the big, heavy one.  Luckily nothing was crushed.

Once Steve came home, he lugged the boxes inside and opened the first one.  Right away we saw very old track.  He knew instantly that it was from a Lionel set and a very old one at that.  He unpacked more and found that along with a lot of rusted track there were a number of train cars, a few engines, and a few other items.

A call to Steve's parents cleared up the mystery.  They belonged to their friend and had since the mid-1940's.  He no longer wanted them and thought Steve might have a use for them.  If not, he was perfectly fine if Steve did whatever he wanted with them.  Steve took a bunch of things into work to talk with the Classic Toy Trains folks.  They said that if there were any pictures of the original owner playing with the trains as a child, they could make an article out of it.  Unfortunately, no pictures were found, so there won't be an article.  That's too bad.

Here are a few pictures of the cars and other equipment:

Steve set up a little "museum piece" for his window ledge at work:

None of the track can be used - it's too old and rusted.  Instead of trashing it, I would like to make some sort of art piece with it that we could hang outside.  There are a bunch of curved pieces, so I should be able to design something interesting.  Steve will have to help with assembly, of course, because I'm pretty scared of the soldering iron.

A gift like this deserves an appropriate thank you card, don't you think?

As the wife of a train buff, I have acquired some train stamps.  They're useful for scrapbook pages and birthday cards for Steve, and they were perfect for this project.

Steve ripped a piece of paper and started stamping the train:

At this point I left him alone to work without camera flashes.

Here's the finished card:

I always find it interesting when Steve makes a card.  I would have only stamped the train in a straight line, but he stamped it as if it was going around a track.  It's so cute!  The "Thanks" was from a stamp with a bunch of "stuff" around the word.  He used a pen to ink the "Thanks" only.  He got the idea to put it in the smoke from the frilly bits of the stamp he didn't use.


On the inside of the card, he used a stamp I bought him a few months ago that I found on Etsy:

The recipient loves cats, so this stamp is perfect for him, too.

First Communion card

One of Steve's relatives (a daughter of a cousin) is about to have her first Communion.  We wanted to send her a card, but neither of us is Catholic or knows much about the first Communion traditions or rituals.

Fortunately I had a cross in one of my Cricut cartridges, so I cut a layered cross and put it on a lacy-punched background:

(Steve assures me that the right side is punched straight and that it looks slanted because of perspective.)

For the inside, I wanted to use a stamp from the Stampin' Up! Elegant Greetings set on a white background that we could also write on.  However, when I put the rubber on the wooden block years ago, I put it on crooked.  Argh.  After a number of attempts at stamping it straight, I stamped it on a smaller piece of paper and ripped the edges.  Steve had suggested trimming after stamping, but I couldn't figure out how to do that.  He then suggested ripping the edges, and I thought that was a marvelous idea.

I also wanted to give her a little cross pendant I got from somewhere at some point in time.  I don't know its origins.  I thought this little girl would give it a good home.  I attached it with a bit of wire, and she can easily take it off and put it on a pendant.

I swirled her name to protect her privacy.  :)

It's going in the mail on Monday, and I hope she likes it!

Stamped domino class at the retreat

Today's post will be quick - I'm wiped out from the class I just finished teaching! If you've read my blog at all in the last week, you know the class is stamping dominoes for the Loose Bead Society. I had nine students, and Kate was my helper. (Thanks, Kate!)

Here are a few highlights:

That's it for me today. It was fun, but I'm chomping at the bit to get back to beading!

Oh - if you might be interested in hosting a stamped domino class just like this for you and your friends, e-mail me at traci@creative-pursuits.biz and for more information!

Alcohol ink card

Yesterday I showed you an alcohol ink sampler and some bigger swatches I made with some of the color samples.  I said that today I'd show you a card with one way to use the inked up swatches.

I looked through some of my stamps and found the Stampin' Up! "Botantical Garden" set.  The background is all "black" (or whatever ink color you choose), so I thought that would be perfect to let the alcohol inks show through.  I chose the one with leaves, inked it up with StazOn (because the paper is a little glossy), and stamped:

Large stamps or stamps with a lot of "black space" are a little tricky.  I didn't press down enough, and the image wasn't very good.  I cut this color swatch out and tried again, this time bringing the paper to the stamp (instead of the stamp to the paper):

While I'm on this picture, here's a stamp organizational tip:  label your wooden stamps.  I found this essential for my many Stampin' Up! stamps.  If I pull a bunch of them out for a project, it's easy to find which box each stamp goes in.  I also put my initials on them in case I loan them out.  The "2/3" in the above picture means that this is stamp #2 out of 3 in the set.  I don't know if I need that, but I like being thorough.

Unfortunately, I didn't press down enough this time, either.  The result is better, but not by much.

The first impression is on the right (stamp-to-paper), and the second impression is on the left (paper-to-stamp).

Le sigh.  Stamping is always an adventure, I tell ya.

I tried with a different stamp on the purple/pink swatch, bringing paper to stamp and gently rubbing all over.  This time it worked a lot better:

There are a couple areas where the ink didn't transfer, but it looks great to me!  The one thing I don't like about these stamps is that even with a good impression, there are some blotchy areas in the background.  I don't know if that would get better the more I use the stamps or if I used something particular to clean them.  If anyone knows, please comment on this post and let me know.  I'd love to use these stamps more, but the blotchiness makes me not want to.

On a separate piece of paper I stamped "Hello":

That was one of the best impressions I've ever had!  I cut it out and adhered it on the left side of the color swatch:

The above picture is a scan - I couldn't get a good picture using the camera.

One thing to remember is that the alcohol inks have to come first.  It would be nice to stamp first then color it (so the leaves could be a different color than the flower), but the alcohol inks have a tendency to make other inks run.

If you've made anything with alcohol inks, I'd love to see it!  E-mail a picture to traci@creative-pursuits.biz, and I'll post it here!

Valentine's Day cards

Happy Valentine's day!

As I mentioned yesterday, today I'm going to show you the cards that Steve and I made for each other.  Years ago I bought a LOT of paper, stamps, and embellishments for scrapbooking and card making, and it all has come in handy.  I don't think I've purchased a card in almost 10 years.  I highly recommend making your own cards - it doesn't have to be fancy to be heartfelt.

Case in point - my card to Steve:

I wanted to make it a little fancier, but I liked the simplicity of this one.  The "i love you" is a stamp.  I wish my handwriting was that neat.  The paper is more of the Japanese paper I mentioned in the romantic watch part necklace post from a few days ago.

Steve's card for me was a lot fancier:

He used a corner punch on all the corners, some ribbon, a stamp, and a folding heart punch.  He even embellished the inside of the card:

You can see how sappy we are with each other.  :)  The heart in the lower right is a chipboard embellishment that I had forgotten I had.  I need to go looking through my stash more often!

Steve brought home flowers for me last night, and I'd like to share them with you:

They're so pretty and smell so good!  Only one leaf has been cat-chewed so far, which I see as a good sign.

I know I usually do reviews on Friday.  I did a mini-review yesterday about Christi Friesen.  Since it's Valentine's Day, it would be logical to review my husband, but I did that in October.  Next week I'll have more time to review something.

I hope you have a good day today, whether you're with someone or not.  Thanks for sharing part of your day with me!

Double Duty Decoration

The contest for the Owl and The Pussy Cat Hat pattern giveaway is now over, and Abby is the winner!  I'm working out with the pattern's author on who will send the pattern.  Congratulations, Abby!

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What do you do when you see this:

after all of the Christmas decorations have been put into their bins and all of the bins have been put in the attic?  I was ready to stash it in a closet somewhere, but Steve said, "The other side is blank.  Decorate that for the rest of the year!"  I'm paraphrasing because I don't remember the exact conversation.

So I looked through my papers and found a few that were texture-painted with a peach paint back when I worked at Archiver's (let's have a moment of silence for our fallen comrade - after 14 years, they're going out of business).  On it I stamped "LOVE" and the love quote I used on our wedding invitations, then I ripped the edges.  I covered the sign's back with solid cardstock and adhered my stamped paper to it with foam adhesive.  I know I complained about tall embellishments earlier in the week, but this isn't going into an album, so it's okay.

Here it is close up:

The stamps are from "Love is a Great Thing" by Stampin' Up! (2000).

Here it is in in relation to everything else around it:

Steve requested I flip the hourglass over.

I took a $1 Christmas sign and a bit of scrap paper and ingenuity and turned it into a year-round decoration.

Have you done something like that?  E-mail pictures to traci@creative-pursuits.biz, and I'll post them here!

Quick baby card

I'm up to 5 responses on my survey now!  I'm positively giddy!  Thank you all so much for your input and support.  If anyone else would like to weigh in, you can take the survey here.

Today will be very quick.  Again, if you're the mother of a baby girl who couldn't read yesterday's blog post, please don't read this post yet, either.  :)

Tomorrow and Tuesday I'm going to show you some pages of the scrapbook Steve made for the baby.  The scrapbook was 8"x8", and the papers he used started out as 12"x12", so we have plenty of scraps left over.  I used a few of them along with a stamped saying, and a leftover embellishment for a quick but cute card:

Since the baby is already a few months old, I chose a stamp addressing her instead of a general "Yay!  Baby is here!" stamp.  I carried that theme through to the inside of the card and wrote to her instead of to her parents.  I hope they think it's cute.

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I hope you're warm wherever you are.  Here in Milwaukee the low tonight will be -19 (real temperature, not wind chill), and tomorrow's HIGH will be -13.  According to Yahoo! weather for tonight, "Dangerous wind chills may approach -50 °F".  Ack.  I'm glad I can stay home, and I hope Steve won't have to go to work tomorrow.

Purple Weekend and stamped curtains

Hi, all!  Those of you who have gotten my newsletter and/or are my local friends on Facebook have heard plenty about my Purple Weekend open house (first blogged about here).  If you've missed it and are in the Milwaukee area, feel free to take a look at my newsletter for information on this show and the other two I'll be at this holiday season.

Steve and I are cleaning like mad people, and I'm even getting to that shelf above my desk that has been a mess for a very long time.

Frisco has been helping create more of a mess ever since he started going up in my window sill.  He likes to sit up here:

And flick things off of that little ledge when he isn't kicking them off trying to get up and down.  All the things on the left side came down, then he stretched over to the right side and started flicking things off there.  Then he decided to use my curtain as a hammock and take a nap:

There were little things all along this ledge.  Flick, flick!

Look at this adorable little face:

He's lucky he's cute.

Wait.  This is a craft blog, isn't it?  Not a craft (cat) blog?  Okay, then I'll tell you about the curtains Frisco is shown napping in.

They're regular off-white/natural curtains, and for some reason "cafe-style" sticks out in my head.  I bought them when I lived in Waukegan for my craft room/office there.  I took foam stamps and acrylic paint and stamped them.  Yup, I stamp everything I can get away with.

Here's a better picture of one of the curtains when it was in my last house:

I stamped two curtains, and they both look about the same.  You see the little splotches all over the place?  If I remember correctly, I accidentally made a splotch and decided to "dot up" the rest of the curtain.

The words are "Inspire", "Laugh", "Create", "Love" (behind the bin in the above picture), and "Dream".  The shapes are corners, moons, stars, flowers, swirls, cats (of course), and other miscellaneous things.

I had a really good time making them and am glad that I could hang them in my new home.  Even though I can't see everything, they fit in with the style I want for my studio.

Now that I think about it, I can draw the curtains when the sun shines through in the late afternoon.  Huh.  I never considered that.  I usually squint or leave the room.

Ahem.  Anyway.  I think this would be a good project you can do with your kids if you need to change their curtains.  Don't need new curtains?  How about a tote bag?  Don't have kids?  Well, that didn't stop me.  I had a grand ol' time stamping away.  It doesn't take too long, and if you're thrifty you can find the foam stamps at a good price.  The paints aren't expensive, either.  Just make sure you get washable paints if you're using them on fabric. 

I gotta run.  That shelf isn't going to clean itself (or it would have done so by now)!  Happy Thanksgiving, and I'll see you local folks on Friday and/or Saturday!

Have dominoes (and stamps), will travel!

Before I get started, Anna Stern asked a question on my Anatomy of a Spiral post on if there's a way to join two ends of a spiral for a continuous spiral necklace.  I don't know if she'll get my reply.  I get e-mail notifications of all comments, but I don't know if it sends e-mails to people I reply to.  I have a feeling it might not.  Anyway - Anna, I've been thinking about your question, and I think I might know how to do it.  I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but I hope I'll be able to do that soon and will post about it here one way or another.  Stay tuned!  (And thank you for your lovely compliments!)

Back to our regularly scheduled blog post:

I've mentioned many times that I'm a member of the Loose Bead Society of Greater Milwaukee.  Not only do I get to learn about all different kinds of jewelry making (and other things to do with beads), but I have made quite a number of friends.  That was extremely important because when I moved to Milwaukee from Illinois I only knew one person up here who I met through a Cricut message board (Hi, Jackie!).

A few times a year we have "Bead-Ins" - we all sit around tables and bead all day long.  It's simple but a lot of fun.  During the winter Bead-In, I was sitting with my friend Kat.  She knew that I'm a stamper and scrapper, and she asked if I'd ever worked with dominoes.  She had bought an embellished domino and wanted to learn how to do that or something like it.  Well, stamping on unique objects is right up my alley, so I started listing various things we could do with them.

They're slick, so we'd have to use Staz-On.  She nodded.  To make them more durable, we'd have to seal them.  She said, "Yeah, I've thought about that."  I laughed and said, "What do you need me for, then?"

Well, she determined she did need me and organized a class at her house at the end of March.  I made up a number of samples for her to show people.  Here are a number of them:

Kat took this picture.  Isn't it nice?

You can glue a bail on them for a necklace or glue on a pin back.  You can also drill through it for a key chain or another pendant option, but the one time I tried that I got the drill bit stuck, and Steve was less than pleased.  I'm not allowed to touch the drill anymore.

I had 5 students plus Kat.  Everyone fit around the kitchen table which Kat had covered with a plastic tablecloth and newspaper.  I had written up a bunch of instructions in case they wanted to do this again after the class.  I brought a bunch of my stamps (a small subset of the whole - have you seen my OCD Stamp Index post?), and Kat brought out some of hers.  They seemed to have a good time, and they made some very pretty pieces!

Kat's the one in blue smiling.  She thinks of everything - gloves so hands won't get inky and name tags so everyone knows who everyone is!

A few people couldn't make it to this class, so Kat held another one!  This class happened this past Saturday, and we had eight people plus Kat!  I got there, and newspaper covered everything: the kitchen table as well as both levels of the counter (one side is higher with stools).  As I was setting up I teased Kat that no one sitting at the counter would get anything done - it was nothing but the funnies!  She did that on purpose so there wouldn't be anything depressing like the obits.

This class went as well as the last one - everyone had fun and made at least 4 pieces each.  Kat even had some dominoes that her husband drilled for key chains, along with key rings!

So cute and colorful!

Everyone looks so serious, don't they?  I do wish I had taken more pictures of pieces, but I was a bit busy answering questions, checking on people, cleaning stamps (multiple times for some of them!), and spraying sealant on finished items.  I was able to sneak in a little stamping with some of Kat's very cute stamps!  Kat took pictures, and hopefully I'll get them from her soon.

Thank you, Kat, for holding such wonderful classes in your home!  I truly hope everyone had a great time and will experiment with this technique more, either on dominoes or on other things!

If anyone reading this lives in the Milwaukee/SE Wisconsin/NE Illinois area and wants to have a stamped domino party class, please e-mail me at traci@creative-pursuits.biz.  I'll give you all the details.  Here's a teaser - any host who finds at least 5 people to come gets her class and kit for free!

If you're going to the Milwaukee Bead Show on October 7th (admission is only $2 and parking is free!), I will have my instructions (nearly 18 pages of content and pictures!) and some domino kits available.  There will even be some pendants for sale.  I'll give 10% off your whole purchase with the code phrase "Stamps are sexy."  Yeah, I know they're not, but I sat here for at least 5 minutes trying to think of something clever and witty and can't come up with anything.  So, "Stamps are sexy" is it!  I want to reward people who read my blog all the way through.  :D

My quote book

Almost a month ago I mentioned my quote book, and I said I would post about it more soon.  Well, with everything that's been going on and with all of the things I wanted to post about, I nearly forgot!  Then as I started writing this post, I could have sworn that I have posted about it before.  I remember my cousin Dawn telling me I should make two - one for her, too.  Maybe that was on Facebook, though, because I couldn't find it.  I looked through my list of posts, skimmed through a number of them, and asked Steve.  So if this seems familiar to you... so sorry!  Hopefully this version will be more interesting.  :D

I'm always fascinated by quotes and poems.  They can be uplifting, inspiring, funny, and motivating.  And they can touch something deep inside you.  I have at least one published book of quotes (Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, I think?).  I even typed up a number of quotes, cut them out in strips, and put them in a box where I can pull one out from time to time:

Anyone who looks inside will get a nice surprise!

I was starting to amass too many quotes, though, so I decided to get a book I could put them in.  Another thing I'm very fond of is blank books.  I have a whole box of failed diaries, books for my poems, sketches, and just blank books.  I love blank books.  I don't remember when or where I found this particular book, but I loved it.  The leather was soft, and there was a flap that folded over the top with a leather strip that wrapped around and could be tucked in to keep the book closed.

I happily started writing my quotes in (with a purple pen, of course):

And then....disaster struck.

He looks so harmless, doesn't he?  Caegal, the Pomeranian I had when I was with Dave (this is over 10 years ago, I should mention), loves to get into things he's not supposed to:

We had to take him to the animal hospital once because he got into a closed pillbox of diet pills.  He chews through bags and packages to get to bread (that loaf of bread plus a Ziploc bag of dinner rolls that he had to climb to get to) and chocolate, he loves rummaging around in bathroom garbages and litter boxes, and... he loves leather.  Shoes, purses, and my poor quote book:

He's lucky he's so cute.

Well, eventually Dave moved out, taking Caegal with him, and all my leather products (and my food and my cats...) were safe.

I had this book out to take pictures of it, and Steve said, "What's this?"  I told him it was my first quote book, and he said, "It's been Caegaled?"  He knows Caegal all too well.  We watched him once, and it was quite a dance we had making sure the cats could get to their litter boxes but Caegal could not.  It was like the movie "The Others" - we had to close one door and make sure it was secure before opening the next door.  We had gates up with chairs on either side so the older (and the fat) cats could navigate through the house.  I love the pup, but it was exhausting!

It took me quite a while to find a replacement for this book.  Truth to tell, I wasn't looking all that hard.

Whenever I'm in a bookstore I like to look at the blank books.  They have come out with so many beautiful books that it's difficult for me to not get one every time I look.  This particular day in 2006, though, I was not so strong.

The picture on the left is the front, and the one on the right is the back.

Yes, it's mostly gold, but something about it spoke to me.  (I usually cringe when I see gold things.)  As I mentioned when I posted about the book a month ago, it has a quote on the spine:  "The soul would have no rainbow if the eyes had no tears."  The quote is from John Vance Cheney.  I had to look that up - it wasn't on the book at all.  I find that odd.  Anyway.  The the image is a self portrait of Laurel Burch, and I think it's stunning, especially paired with that quote.  It's a PaperBlanks book, and all of their books are beautiful and well made.  There's a magnet embedded in the book and the flap, so when it's closed it stays closed.

Instead of just writing the quotes in like I did in the first book, I decided to make the book a work of "art" on the inside like it is on the outside:

Not everything is motivational, of course.  :)  This one is one of those that speaks to my heart.  I bordered it with heart stamps to tie in with the theme of the poem.

On these pages I stamped a harlequin pattern in the middle of each page, sponged the same color around the edges, stamped some flowers in the corners, and wrote the quotes large, emphasizing a word on each.

Since I love quotes, I tend to get quote stamps, too.  These pages are simple, but possibly my favorites.  I sponged blue around the edges and stamped flowers above and below each of the quotes.

Not all of the pages have just one quote per page:

If I'm feeling ambitious I'll stamp the first letter of the quote and stamp a border in between.  This one also has borders stamped in the corners.

Even if you don't stamp, you can do something similar for your own quote or poem book.  Use different color pens for the first letters and make them large and add a doodle border in between and in various places on the page.  Do whatever makes you happy, and you can have your own book of quotes and poems that are meaningful to you.  You can start with the ones on these pages if you'd like.