I bought a new stamp set yesterday, this lemon set from Flourishes. I’ve been eyeing all their sets online, and find a few at a scrapbook store in town (Scrapbook Pantry). I think I want all their stamps now! The designs are beautiful, I especially love all the botanicals. I coloured up the lemons on the branch immediately after getting home, and made up a little birthday card for Paper Garden Projects.

I also made another card using the same stamp set, but only taking 15 minutes to make it. I’m selling cards at a craft fair on Saturday, so I need to make a batch or two of quick cards!

Nice and simple, just a piece of cardstock, and 4 different stamps from the set. I went very lemon-y with my purchases yesterday, I bought the lemon stamp set, then decided I needed a yellow inkpad, a yellow inkpad, a yellow glitter pen, and two more yellow Copic markers!

The green in the leaves also makes my main card eligible for Copic Creations’ Green challenge!

I bought a new computer, and have just gotten to the point where I think I have everything I need transferred over. I now have a beautiful 21.7″ iMac sitting on my desk, instead of my 6-year old, 14″ iBook laptop. I have so much more crafting space now!

I found a few references to knitting in a couple different places recently, and took screenshots so I could share.

This is an Etsy error message. I love how the skein of yarn has an unhappy face too!

Now, you can expect knitting-related things on Etsy. But can you expect them in silly little games?

This is a screen shot from one of my favourite games, Peggle. The various characters help you through the levels, and they have these random words of wisdom sometimes that have nothing to do with the game. I thought this one very apt.

Later that night, off to a friend’s house for dinner. When we’re leaving, we were on our way to look after P’s mum who had just had cataract surgery. P’s stepdad couldn’t, because his mother just passed away the day before, and he was on a plane to Nova Scotia. So, leaving the friend’s house at 10:30pm, and there’s a funny noise. Another, different tire was flat. Like, dead flat. Like had to change out to the spare type of flat.

Drove home on the donut, P got his car, we drove to the tire place and stuck the key to my car in the drop box. Then we drove up to P’s parent’s house.

At much to early in the morning this morning, we were all in the car to take P’s mum to her follow-up appointment. My cell phone rings, and it’s the tire place. The key I left them (the one I use all the time) is apparently cracked, and they don’t want to try to unlock the car, in case it breaks off in the lock. Could I get them another one, and then they can work on the car?

Not impressed.

The deckle-edged card base is one of the very oldest crafty things I have in the house – I went through all my craft supplies a while ago, seeing what I could steal for cardmaking, and I remember making cards with these bases in the house I grew up in. We moved from there in 1999! The matching envelopes had sealed themselves just, they probably got damp in some storage space sometime between then and now.

I’m in the rehearsal phase right now, which means I usually have about one project in me when I get home from work. Between knitting, stamping, baking, and reading I have lots to choose from, and not enough time to do everything I wanted. Tonight, I managed two tasks – baking banana bread and rearranging our books and bookcases. It doesn’t help that today is day #8 of 9 straight work days. Our schedule got messed up because of the holidays.

So, no projects, but there is an announcement! The Daily Marker has some great blog candy up for grabs. Go over and have a look – it is all stuff from Hero Arts’ new release, and looks wonderful.

I think it is cute.

One of the things I love about paper crafting and rubber stamps is that you can alter things so easily. You can cut hair shorter, add a Santa hat with another stamp, layer stamps, mask stamps, and get all sorts of effects. And as in this example, you can add to stamps.

Now if we want to stray from the paper talk, and talk fashion for a bit: I love fishnets. I love patterned tights. I don’t get much chance to wear them (most days I lift and carry and crawl on the ground too much to want to wear skirts) but I do like them. And I do think there are rules too: I don’t wear them with giant heels. I generally keep the rest of me well-covered to keep the look classy (I hope!). Those shoes of Tilda’s are very sensible heels, and she’s wearing a long-sleeved dress. A perfect chance to add some spice with tights!

I think as crafters, creators, we should explore more – move outside our comfort zones to create new, great things. I think this card is going to sit on my desk to remind me of that.

I think the card looks great, I don’t think Tilda looks inappropriate – maybe this is because in my head, she doesn’t have an age. I see many bloggers refer to her as a ‘little girl’, but I suppose in my head, she’s categorized more as ‘ageless female’. As I said, it’s very interesting to see how different people perceive her.

After the break, I explain how I added the tights!

I have to admit that one of the reasons Tilda’s kicky leg is popped up is that I messed up on the original leg.

Runs in your fishnets = a look I don’t think anyone should try to pull off.

I inked up just the leg part of the stamp, and stamped it a couple times on my usual paper. Then I sat and really thought about what wearing patterned tights means. The leg she’s standing on is straight, so that was straightforward. I took my 0.05 Copic multiliner and added a diamond pattern to that leg. I used a ruler to keep the lines straight, but I didn’t plan anything like ‘lets make lines 2mm apart!’. I just shifted the ruler after each line, eyeballing distance. The great thing about this is that it looks more real – tights distort around your legs, so the pattern isn’t even. really, the holes are bigger on bigger parts of your leg (thighs) and smaller on smaller parts (ankles) but I didn’t get that detailed.

You could do the leg that is bent the same way, but then it would look very flat. I switched from my 12″ ruler to a theatre ticket. I couldn’t find my 6″ ruler, but this worked just as well. The 12″ ruler was getting a bit unwieldy to work with in such a small area.

Now, back to thinking about tights. I realised that when you bend your leg like that, it stretches out on the front of your knee, and gathers at the back. The lines that go around your leg would radiate out from one point at the back of the knee, and the ones that go up and down your leg would bend at that point.

The first line I drew went from the crook of the back of her knee to the centre of the kneecap. I then drew lines to the left of it, starting the line at the same point in the crook and radiating slowly outwards until I had gotten to the point where the knee would no longer distort the fabric. Then I made lots of lines parallel to that line up to the skirt. I did the same on the other side of that centre line and on down to the ankle.

For the second set of lines, I started at the thigh, and drew lines that ended on centre crook – to – kneecap line. To do the calf, I drew lines at a different angle from the crook-to-kneecap line down to the shoe. Ideally, these two sets of crosshatches would meet at that centre line: this is where the pattern bends, so they are the same lines. To get that to work correctly though takes a little more planning and less eyeballing, so I just connected most of them.

It took a couple tries to get right, but I think it is a great effect! (I ended up using the top leg in the picture above).

For the card, the cardstock is Core’dinations, and I sponged Pearlescent Lavender Brilliance Ink onto a Crafters Workshop template. I used the same Copic Multiliner to trace every other dot of the outside circle, then took the template off and added Frosted Lace stickles to those dots. I used the following Copics to colour:

Candy Cane Stickles on her wings. I used one with wings! The banner is a Magnolia Stamp (also from the Winter kit), and ‘Explore’ is a K&Company rub-on.

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!

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!

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.

It’s a stamp by Impression Obsession, and I bought it from Paper Garden Projects. There’s another gorgeous one I wanted (a snowman mug full of hot chocolate) but it was sold out. I had so much fun colouring this image! I have another pair of mittens in green, and another purple with grey cuffs just waiting to be made into something.

You can also see I’ve used one of my newest tools on this card – the Cuttlebug. This card was sitting on my desk, already inked blue, while I was colouring mittens. I didn’t realise it matched the blue mittens until later.

This was a test to see what would happen if I put the front of a card in an embossing folder, and left the back outside it, under the folder. It worked! Only the front embossed, which is what I wanted.

This coloured, stamped image makes this card perfect for Caardvarks’ Color It! Challenge.