Podcast-Inspired Gifts

Posted on December 23, 2009 by rycrafty

Last night I had to clean up my craft desk (and my ‘unofficial storage space’, the futon beside my desk) because my parents are coming for Christmas. I thought I’d stick a podcast on in the background to keep me amused while sorting everything out. I noticed that I had a new episode of Scraptime in iTunes so I turned that on. And then I got out the papers and made more mess!

The episode I watched was #446 – Holiday Packaging.

I had just decided earlier in the day to give a couple of my co-workers some homemade jam for Christmas. I was just going to bring in the jars, but when I saw this project, I knew it would fit my 125mL jam jars!

I used up some Christmas paper, which is good – it’s just going to hang around until next year if I don’t!

I modified the boxes a little, not by size, although I thought about it. When putting the top piece on, I used Scor-Tape to adhere the back side of that piece to the back of the box. Then I punched holes in the front flap, then the front of the box, using the first set of holes as a guide (PS: I really want a Crop-a-dile. I got to use one at my last cardmaking class, and I love it!)

I made that modification because the jam jars are just a little too big for the box, so they made the sides bow out, and I felt this way would put less pressure on the box. The picture above shows how I threaded the ribbon through the holes. I also made that top piece a little bigger than recommended. I think the red/green box was 3″ wide, and the swirly one was 4″. I like the 4″ width best.

I pulled the two Kitchen Tildas out of my bowl of stamped, coloured, and cut out Magnolia stamps. They don’t particularly match, but they don’t clash like crazy either, I think. Especially since I used blue ribbon on the box with the blue Tilda.

I think I am going to use this box pattern A LOT. I can’t wait to try re-sizing it too!

Creepy Head!

Posted on December 23, 2009 by rycrafty

A couple weeks ago, my boyfriend mentioned he needed a $10-$15 gift to bring to his work’s Christmas party. It was the day after my giant box of stamps arrived, so I jumped on the chance and told him I’d make him something to bring.

I immediately knew which stamp I wanted to use: the creepy head. Yes, I know it is a phrenology head, but you have to admit it is pretty creepy, in an interesting way.

I stamped 10 of those in black ink on creamy flat notecards, then decided I wanted to use a different stamp. I picked out the pear with handwriting, and a handwriting background. I stamped 10 pears with green ink on white flat cards, then made a mask of the pear and stamped the handwriting background over the pears:

I think it is neat how the writing almost seems to match up.

To package, I picked out a Copic marker that was very close to the pear’s ink colour, and coloured some white ribbon. Then, I made a little label out of both stamps:

He said they went over well at the party, and he must be right, because one of his coworkers wanted to buy some! She needed them for a friend she was doing a $10 gift exchange with, and she told me the friend likes oranges, yellows, and browns. I asked her how she felt about Creepy Head, or if I should switch to flowers or something else. She liked him, so I stamped him up a few more times in brown ink on the same cards:

Then I decided to spice it up and use one of the weird astronomical instrument thingys for the other half of the set, in orange ink on white.

I’m really liking the simplicity of the flat note cards. They can be more postcard-like, like the pears, in that most of the room to write is on the back; or you can have a lot of the front and all the back free, like with the smaller stamps.

Cowboy Christmas

Posted on December 22, 2009 by rycrafty

I am very happy that December 21st has come and gone – not only was it just a bad day, it means that from now on the days are going to get longer! I can’t wait until I see daylight again.

I got this cute little sheriff snowman stamp from Local King Rubber Stamps. Very appropriate for Calgary, I think, even though I tend to despise the Stampede. Not because I hate cowboys, mind you, it’s the rowdy drunks outside my house at 2am that bother me. And the hay bales make me sneeze.

The colour is much better in the first photo, but this shows you the whole card. The green stripe is SEI, the ribbon was on sale at Michaels, and the silver/white snowflake paper was some handmade stuff I bought at my LSS.

Christmas Spoon?

Posted on December 19, 2009 by rycrafty

I really love my ‘Kitchen Tilda’ stamp, and I love that I can use her on many different types of cards.

Here is the card that I think will be my parents’ Christmas card. It was inspired by the gate-fold card I made in my last card-making class. I stamped and coloured Tilda, then stamped the music background for the sentiment. I used one of my favourite Christmas papers (from SEI) and stick it all together. Tilda is on foam tape so she stands out.

I’ve had this card in my head for a while, so it is nice to see it all put together. It also fits in perfectly with Magnolia Down Under’s Stamp With Another Use challenge – take any stamp, and use it to make a card for any season/occasion EXCEPT the one it was designed for. Although to be honest, I don’t really know that this stamp has a season.

Last-Minute Gift

Posted on December 18, 2009 by rycrafty

We’ve all done it – either forgotten about a Christmas party, or decided to go to one at the last minute. Well, today I did the latter. I ran out to the liquor store and bought a bottle of wine, but I decided I wanted to bring a little something else. Mostly because I changed my mind so late about the party, I haven’t RSVP’d. Oops. I thought I’d be more tired than I am right now, it’s not that I didn’t want to go!

So I’ve been practicing my Copic colouring, mostly with my Magnolia stamps. This has left me with lots of little Tildas all coloured, with nowhere to go. They’re all cut out and sitting a little dish on my desk.

I decided to give a jar of homemade jam (I have plenty of that around here – I don’t know how many relatives I thought I had when I made all this stuff….) and came up with this to go on it:

The green was a scrap just lying on my desk (not tidying it gives me inspiration!), but it wasn’t long enough to go all the way around the jar, so I did this:

All I had to do was stick the two bits of ribbon to the cardstock, and use some foam adhesive for Tilda. I couldn’t stick her directly to the cardstock because the lid of the jam sticks out, and bent her head forward

The jam, if anyone is curious, is Spiced Wine Peach jam from my canning frenzy in September.

I think this fits the Little Stamp Shoppe’s December challenge of ‘create a gift tag’ – it’s not your traditional ‘tag’ shape, but it certainly fulfills the purpose of a gift tag, namely it gets tied to a gift, with the recipient’s name on.

The Kindness of (virtual) Strangers

Posted on December 12, 2009 by rycrafty

Back when I started this blog, it was almost entirely a knitting blog. The archives here got back to 2004! I haven’t always had my own domain, I transferred over here from Blogger a couple years ago; and I had a LiveJournal before I started with Blogger!

I love my crafty blog. My personal blog, the LJ, died a death, but I love posting my craft projects and projects-in-progress for people to see. It’s great to have other people who know and appreciate the craft and time and effort involved actually see it. My boyfriend tells me my socks are very nice, and gee, you’ve been working on those for a long time, but he’ll never quite ‘get it’ until he knits.

Now that this is a papercraft blog as well as a knitting blog, I’ve been ‘meeting’ some new people. What’s even more exciting is that there’s some overlap! And that brings me to my latest joy.

I received a Ravelry message the other day with the title ‘stamps’. I thought that was interesting, because Ravelry is entirely a fibrecraft site. It was a fellow knitter, and also a dyer of yarn and fibre, who had “oh, about a hundred rubber stamps that need a good home, and I was going to donate them to a charity shop, but I’d love to send them to you if you want them!” Um, yes? We agreed that’d I’d pay the cost of shipping.

Now I exaggerate a lot. Like right now, I would say it is -5 million degrees outside, so I thought ‘a hundred rubber stamps’ would be say, 40 at most. When I received the PayPal request for $43 in shipping, I started to wonder if I was underestimating.

The parcel slip arrived a couple days ago, and yesterday I got up early to get to the post office and bring the parcel back here before work. My post office is a 5 minute walk away, so naturally, I walked. I regretted that when I saw the size of the box, but I got home fine. I had 10 minutes before I had to leave for work, so naturally I opened it. I found more boxes. And in those boxes:

Needless to say, I spent all day at working just waiting until I could come home and lay them all out! And 8.5 hours later, I did!

That’s a whole lot of awesome stamps. Here’s some closer photos, click any of them for larger versions:

That skeleton was divided up between all the different boxes and bags, I kept finding different bones different places.

A very long-winded way of saying: I love the interwebs, and the connections I’ve made with people from all over through it. It’s great to know crafters, because crafters are awesome people.

Excuse me, I have 100 new stamps to go play with.

Copic Class – The Projects

Posted on December 9, 2009 by rycrafty

The scrapbook store where I’ve been taking my Copic classes, and spending waaay too much money on card-making supplies is Scrapbooker’s Paradise. They have two stores, one in the north of the city, and one in the south. I live pretty much in the middle of the city, a little south. The south store is much closer to me, but it’s always the north store running classes I can actually attend. I can only go to things on Monday nights (people think theatre is a lazy option, but we work 6 days a week!), so I’ve been braving the rush hour traffic, and this past Monday, the almost -30C temperatures, to play with markers.

But the projects are just that awesome! And it’s great to get out of the house and craft, plus you learn so much! Jeannie is a great teacher, she has such enthusiasm, plus she designed some great cards!

Sadly, I leave the house when it is dim, and come home well after dark (see above about the myth of theatre jobs being easy options) so I can’t get great photos. I took all these photos on my desk where I make everything. It’s also my computer desk, so you can see the laptop in the background.

This one shows the colours in the card much better.

My favourite project, or rather the most inspiring for me, was the gate-fold card below:

I’ve made a few more cards this shape since the class! I think it is very elegant and different, but not too confusing (I’ve made easel cards, but I’m a bit concerned about sending them…. I also don’t know where to write the message!).

I’m back in rehearsal now, so the amazing built-in knitting time I had during the show has gone away, but I’m hoping to finish that toe sock before the New Year. I just have to tear myself away from the paper!

Copic Crazy

Posted on December 9, 2009 by rycrafty

I went to another Copic markers class on Monday night. I think it shows how dedicated I am – it was about -27C out, and I still went. Granted, I drove, but it was a 40 minute drive in rush hour; and my car has a nasty habit of steaming up then frosting over on the inside of the windows. While I’m driving.

I made it there and back safely, though, and thouroughly enjoyed myself once again. But I’m not posting those pictures just yet. I haven’t seen any daylight at home since then, so pics may have to wait. Below though, is a card I made before that class, so we can compare later to see if I’ve improved:

That’s Tilda with Tag on the front of a card. The paper was in my 12×12 SEI Christmas pack. I’m not planning on scrapbooking, so the papers that have a large scene over the whole sheet aren’t terribly interesting to me. But I realised I could just cut out the corner with the presents!

The felt thingys are from Hero Arts.

Stirring Things Up

Posted on December 7, 2009 by rycrafty

I decided that since I’ve had this blog for about two years now, and have had the one layout for all that time, that now was the time for a change.

I picked a new layout that I think is very me, it’s a little crafty, and little hand-drawn, and uses a binder clip. I love binder clips. The layout (called ‘Paper’) also came optimized for etsy or flickr users, the space on the right sidebar is perfect for an etsy or flickr badge! I, of course, am plugging my shop in that little space.

I also decided that the list of blogs I read is so long that it needed its own page, rather than taking over my sidebar, so if you want to see the blogs I read (broken down in to ‘Knitting & Other’ and ‘Papercraft’ categories), the page is here.

A non-Christmas card, just for a break from all that. This is the first time I’ve coloured Kitchen Tilda from Magnolia, and I had a lot of fun. I’m loving the 0000 series of Copics, they make blending easy, and now I have a selection of light colours too!

The paper came in an SEI Christmas pack, and the ribbon was tucked into a recent stamp order. The flecky paper is the same as on the mitten card in my previous post.

Never Tired of Mittens

Posted on December 2, 2009 by rycrafty

Here’s another card with that gorgeous Impression Obsession mitten stamp:

Simple mittens coloured with Copics, then mounted on mica-flecked handmade paper. I love the simplicity of this card. And I LOVE this stamp. I went over the snowflakes on this one with white opaque pen.

I have a pair of these mittens (in green) on the front of what I’m calling my ‘idea book’. Really, it’s where I stick my practice colouring pieces, and eventually any other inspiring things or ideas written down. I’m excited to add to the cover over time, until the entire black cardboard cover has disappeared.

I just want to say that I have a ‘thing’ about mittens. I just checked my Ravelry queue, and I have 16 mitten patterns in line.

OK, so there are two fingerless mitt patterns, and one glove pattern in that mosaic, but you get the idea! I either want to make the cupcake mittens, or the tree mittens next, I’m not certain yet. First though, I need to finish these:

The one pictured is too small. I have up to the thumb of a new, larger one.

Last night a fell asleep picturing a mitten display – a board that hangs on the wall, with clothespegs or something to hang up all my mittens – one for each day of the week! If I want to see that though, I’m going to have to get knitting!

Toe Socks

Posted on December 1, 2009 by rycrafty

Since I finished my shawl, and the baby sweater, it was time to find a new project to take to work. Can’t be without knitting at work, after all.

I decided to be a good little knitter and pick up something that has been languishing. I had a few choices (oops…) but I ended up picking my toe socks back up!

This is the one that is done. I finished it back in July. I even knit the big toe for sock #2 before Sock Summit. I brought these socks to the freakin’ SOCK. SUMMIT. and didn’t work on them. I knit the first few rows of the 4-toes section in the airport, and at some point at the Summit I needed the needles, so I put the proto-toe on to waste yarn, and stuck it back in the project bag. That was the state I found them in at work a few nights ago.

Now, sock #2 is just at the point where I’m going to switch from blue to the variegated for the bulk of the foot. Then it will be perfect work knitting: work knitting needs to be able to be done in the dark.

I still need to weave the ends in on this sock, and duplicate stitch the dimple into the top of the heart. I had so many yarn ends doing that intarsia at the top, I decided that coming back later would be much easier for those 4 stitches.

I think I’ve come to the conclusion that short-row heels are not my favourite for socks. I end up with wrinkles opposite the heel, where my foot meets my leg, and that doesn’t happen so much with other heels.

My photography will be getting better (well, at least when I’m home in daylight, which is rare) because my new light reflector has arrived. And by ‘reflector’ I mean the coating of shiny white snow on my balcony. The balcony doors provide most of the light for my photos.

Rycrafty

I knit, I stamp, I colour, I craft. I bake. I make.

Monthly Archives: December 2009