Crunch Time

(Click on any photo to view a larger image.)

Thanksgiving has come and gone and my head is still reeling from the speed with which the holiday season arrived. You would think that by now I would get the hang of this seasonal timing but I seem to be slipping backwards each year. I can almost feel Christmas sitting in my lap already and I haven't done a thing about it yet.


As my To Do list gets longer and longer, it's becoming more difficult to carve out time to make cards but I was able to eke out two simple ones in the last week. When my time gets crunched, I have to do away with frou-frous and work simply and quickly.

First, there is a birthday card for my purple-loving daughter in the Coast Guard who loves all things aquatic. The color choice and theme were obvious and it gave me the opportunity to play with a die set I had not used before, Spellbinders Shapeabilities Nautical Frame and Accents. It features a frame sized for an ATC (Artist Trading Card: 2.5" x 3.5") with a cute little sand castle in one corner, as well as other dies related to the nautical theme such as the wave pattern along the bottom of the card. I embossed the background with Spellbinders M-Bossabilities Sea Beauty embossing folder, then stamped and embossed the sentiment. Simple.

The other card was created for a swap with Oriental Stamp Art (OSA) Yahoo group, of which I am a member. This was part of the monthly Black and One Color swap. Participants make a card using only black and shades of a second color. This month is was red. Again I had the opportunity to play with a stamp set that I had actually forgotten about and never used before, Floral Vine (CS220G) by Forever in Time. I had a small piece of the black and red dragonfly washi paper and layered it onto red cardstock. Stamped the dragonfly from the Floral Vine set onto the red circle with VersaFine Onyx Black ink, then stamped a portion of a swirl from the same stamp set in VersaMark watermark ink and dusted it with PearlEx pigment powder (one of my favorite techniques). I lightly sponged VersaFine Smokey Grey ink around the edges of the circle, layered it onto the card then stuck on some red rhinestone bling in one corner. Again, very simple yet effective.

I'm still hoping to find time to make some Christmas cards to send out. Oh well, one more thing for my To So list.

Ballo ergo sum .
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

OSA Swaps and Challenges

(Click on any photo to view a larger image.)

OSA Crane Swap 2014

OSA Layout Challenge #263

One of the challenges of working from home is the lack of interaction with other like-minded individuals from whom you can learn and draw inspiration as well as share ideas, news and techniques. Years ago, in an effort to combat this artistic isolation, I became a member of Oriental Stamp Arts Yahoo Group, a wonderful group of people who share a love of rubberstamping, card making and Oriental motifs. These people are wonderfully supportive and welcoming to everyone, no matter what their level of expertise, something I sorely needed when I was a newbie to the world of rubber stamping techniques. 

One of the great things about the group is the card swaps and layout challenges that are held on a weekly and monthly basis. This gives those of us who wish to participate the opportunity to practice our craft and share our work with others of our ilk. Recently I have tried to participate as much as I can in order to get my idle hands back into the rhythm of papercrafting and you can see those efforts in my previous posts here and here. Above are photos of my most recent cards. The green crane card was made for a swap in which I had to make four identical cards with a crane motif and send them to the swap hostess. In return I will receive crane cards from four other artists participating in the swap. In this manner we are able to physically exchange,or swap, our work. It's a great way to compare your work against that of others and see what techniques others use to create their cards.

The butterfly card was made for a weekly challenge in which we had to create a card that conformed to a layout selected by the challenge hostess. These challenges involve photographing our work and posting them on the OSA Yahoo group site for all to see and comment. No physical swapping of cards occurs. It never ceases to amaze me how many different interpretations people can come up with, some of which would never occur to me. It's a great way to learn new things.

I hope to participate in more swaps and challenges as time permits and I will post those images here. If you have any questions about the materials or techniques I used to create a card, please feel free to send me a message and I'll be happy to answer your questions. 

Until then, happy crafting. 

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

OSA Crane Swap – 2014

(Click on any photo to see a larger image.)

As I said in one of my recent posts, I'm making an effort to create more cards through the OSA weekly layout challenge. (Click here to read that post.) Each week a winner is randomly chosen from the participants in that week's challenge to win a small prize. My card at right featuring the Asian fans was chosen as a winner and my prize was a set of acrylic stamps from Mark's Finest Papers and Stamps (Birds of the Orient 2014) that featured cranes and Asian kanji symbols. Inasmuch as I only had one crane stamp that had already gotten quite a bit of use, I was thrilled to receive some more cranes. In order to put some mileage on my new stamps, I was invited to join OSA's Crane Swap 2014 by its hostess, Margo Seegrist.  Below is the card I created for this swap. This card also gave me the opportunity to work with a wonderful new cutting die I recently purchased. The details on all the materials used in this card are below. 

Please feel free to comment below if you have any questions on how either of these cards was created. I love getting feedback. 

OSA Crane Swap – 2014

Stamps:

  Crane, kanji: Birds of the Orient 2014, Mark’s Finest Papers & Stamps

  Bamboo:  Asian Influences, Inkadinkado #97616

Ink:

  Versafine Onyx Black

  Whispers Apple Green

  Versamark Dazzle Champagne

Flourish die cut: Viney Swirl, Hot Off The Press #5319

Polka Dot Background: Michael Miller Memories Fabric Paper (discontinued)

Base Card: Die Cuts With A View Street Lace Box of Cards

Self Adhesive rhinestones in various sizes

Ballo ergo sum

- Gitana, the Creative Diva

It's Been an Exciting Month!

(Click on an image for a larger view.)

This month has been an unexpected whirlwind for me. In September I wrote about a card I created for a challenge swap being voted first place by my peers in the Oriental Stamp Art Yahoo group I belong to. (You can read that post here for some background info.) Well, this month I had the unrivaled thrill of being notified by the editor of Vamp Stamp News (www.vampstampnews.com) that this card was also chosen for publication in their December 2009 issue! I was over the moon. First time one of my cards was submitted for publication, it was chosen. As if that wasn't unbelievable enough, it got even better. It wasn't just chosen for publication, it was chosen for the front cover! AMAZING! The owner/moderator of the OSA group who submitted the cards on behalf of the members told me that no one EVER gets published on their first time out, much less on the cover. What a rush!

But wait...there's more. Lightning struck twice. Within days of this news, another of my cards that was submitted for publication was chosen by yet another magazine, Rubber Stamp Madness (www.rsmadness.com)! That's two cards chosen for publication by two different magazines. I'm still reeling from all this.

I'm including images of the two cards chosen for publication. The Holiday Tri-Shutter card appears in the December 2009 issue of Vamp Stamp News. The other card, featuring two figures walking together, will appear in Rubber Stamp Madness' Spring issue scheduled for release in January.

Hmmm, I just noticed something. Both cards are green. I guess that must be my lucky color.




Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

First Prize winner!!

As you may already know I am a member of Oriental Stamp Art (OSA), a Yahoo stamping group that regularly holds card swaps. Some of the swaps are voted on by group members and prizes awarded to the winners. In a recent "Holiday Card" swap, my card was voted as the first prize winner. It's always a thrill to win a prize but even moreso when the recognition comes from your peers. Unfortunately I can't show you the winning entry at this time because it is being submitted to a magazine for possible publication. Until the decision to publish or not has been made, I can't show the card on this blog because that would constitute "publishing" on the web. Magazines won't use previously published works so until I have heard otherwise I can not show the card. At some point in the future I will make the card public, hopefully with the news that it is being published in print. Stay tuned for further developments. For right now, I'm just going to hold my breath, cross my fingers and wait for my OSA prize to arrive in the mail. Wheeee!

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

Tri-Shutter card - Take 2 with an Asian Flavor

(Note: Click on an image for a larger view)


As I mentioned in my last post, I was going to create a tri-shutter card with an Asian motif for a layout challenge promoted by Oriental Stamp Art, the stamp and swap group I belong to. Here is what I came up with. This is a full card front version, just slightly different from the card on the previous post which has a T-front.

As with my first tri-shutter card, I really had little problem creating the card base itself. It was the actual embellishing that brought me to a halt. After creating the card front, I just stared at the pretty red paper for the longest time wondering to myself, "Now what?". After a few false starts things began to come together. I particularly like the gold microbead "ribbon" behind the row of coins under the main image on the front of the card. Super sticky redline tape made this easy as pie to accomplish. The beads and the coins are all adhered to the tape and won't come off. It's great stuff.

In spite of becoming "brain-dead" at the point of decorating the card, I really like this pattern and will definitely make some more in the future. Now I'm interested in other cards with intricate and interesting cuts and folds. Hmmm, maybe this is another direction to explore. Yeah, right... as if I need something else to do.

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

The Joys of Card Swapping and RTU's

(Note: Click on an image for a larger view)


When I was first introduced to the world of online craft groups, I was interested in the practice of swap challenges. This is when participants create an item according to certain guidelines such as specified color(s), theme, layout, technique, etc. It was an opportunity for us crafters to try something new, share it with others of our own ilk and get some feedback on our work. The group I was member of for nearly two years recently shut down and its moderator suggested we join Paper Craft Planet if we were interested in continuing to swap, a suggestion which I took. In the past two weeks I have participated in two challenges and the results are pictured here. These are all examples of challenges where you have to create a card based on a specified layout or "sketch". The first two cards were created for the same challenge. You can see how the placement of the elements in both cards is the same but the colors and themes are totally different. The third card is for a different sketch challenge that required that the central element be a heart in addition to using the specified layout.

This last card is an excellent example of how you can use little things you may have laying around in your craft stash to create a beautiful card. I like to experiment with different techniques and new materials in order to get a feel for them. Some of my efforts end up in the trash but some of them I like so much that I can't bear to toss them even though they were meant only for practice. I call those pieces RTU which means Ready-To-Use. That is the case with the inked and embossed chipboard heart on this card. It was a successful experiment that was lying around in my stash and perfectly fit in with the requirements of this particular sketch challenge. The polka dot ribbon came from last year's box of Valentine's chocolates and the velveteen stripes were created with redline tape and Fun Flock over striped wallpaper.

Are you a crafter? Do you have a stash of RTU's waiting to be "discovered", or perhaps you have already created works of beauty using little bits of this and that? If you have a photo gallery with pictures of your work, please share them with me through your commnents. I'd love to see them. Thanks.

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva