Bookmarks LV: Cinnamon Steam

I find that when my friend comes over to make bookmarks with me, I often end up making things out of her scraps. And they're things I'm really quite pleased with -- simple and not over-thought.

In this case, she was using a steam-patterned paper as a background for a dragon, and I trimmed the paper down around her stamping, leaving me with a few long skinny strips. Now, I don't have any long skinny dragon stamps (note to self: fix this), but I do have a teapot and a cup of tea with a wisp of steam coming out.

"What this scrap needs," I announced, "is tea."

So I stamped the teacup, went at the edges with ink and then with wet fingers, and when it was dry I glued the strip down on some nice pearlized paper... which was also a scrap from my friend's bookmark. Hey, if someone else is going to do the color-matching for me, I'm not going to complain!

(She also figured out what to put in the empty space... I think at least half the design credit here has to go to her!)

I'm entering this steamy bookmark into the following challenges:

• Loves Rubberstamps 29: Anything Goes (but not with a stamp carried by Loves)
• Stamp Your Life #1: Anything Goes (but not with a Stamp Your Life stamp)
• Great Impressions: Anything Goes (also not a Great Impressions stamp... I'm sensing a trend in my Anything Goes entries, are you?)
• Penny Black and More @ Allsorts: It's Your Choice (and, to keep up with the trend, it's not a Penny Black stamp either!)

Supplies:

Bookmarks LIV: Green Swirlies

This bookmark wasn't even my idea. My friend was going through my matstacks and said "This paper is so pretty! You could just cut off this side and it would be a pretty bookmark all by itself."

So I did.

Well, I couldn't resist backing the strip on something else and doing a little bit of stamping here, but the paper is really doing most of the work. It was quick and easy and it looks nice: how much more can I ask for?

I'm entering this bookmark into the following challenges:

• Live and Love Crafts #6: Anything But A Card (bookmark!)
• Papertake Weekly: Anything Goes
• Loves Rubberstamps 29: Anything Goes (not a stamp carried by Loves)
• Stamp Your Life #1: Anything Goes (no Stamp Your Life products in this one, sorry)
• Great Impressions: Anything Goes

Supplies:

Bookmarks XLVIII: Foil in the Fall

I picked up one of Repeat Impression's vertical stamps at the Southfield, MI Stamp & Scrap Art Tour show this weekend, and almost immediately inked it up and stamped it to show it in Sunday's (late) State of the Stash.

(As I link to it, I realize that maybe I should have bought it online... it's one of the vertical stamps on sale this month! Oh well, I'm sure shipping would have eaten up the savings.)

In fact, it didn't take much more than that to work up this bookmark. I took the stamped-and-emobossed leaves, a neutral strip of cardstock with a bunch of gold and bronze and copper smudged on, and some of the acorn-y paper I used on the squirrel bookmark, and bam! Simple but effective, and undeniably seasonal.

I'm entering this leafy bookmark in the following challenges:

• Simon Says Stamp: Autumn Leaves
• Great Impressions: Fall
• Wags 'n' Whiskers Challenge 91: Fall Colours
• The Artistic Stamper Creative Team: The Natural World
• Totally Stampalicious: Anything Goes

Supplies: (foiled acorn paper is from DCWV's Autumn Melody matstack)

Bookmarks XLVI: Grey, Red, and Black

I used to think there were two kinds of squirrels: grey squirrels, and red squirrels. Then I moved to Michigan, where there are also black squirrels. I'm still not totally used to it, and I've been here for more than five years. Black squirrels!

(There is also a quasi-fourth type of squirrel here, which I call "who dipped half that black squirrel in a bucket of bleach?" squirrels.)

The internet tells me that black squirrels are just melanistic (i.e. very dark) grey squirrels, and can have all sorts of weird mottling patterns, but still. Black squirrels! They're not less cool-looking for the knowledge.

So when I wanted to make a fallish bookmark with some scraps of acorny paper and my new Lawn Fawn Critters in the 'Burbs stamps, the squirrel (and the acorn) were the obvious choice, and doing squirrels in three colors was only a very small step from that. They're all stamped and embossed in gold, and then I colored them in with silver (for grey), copper (for red), and black (for black... you probably figured that out) and stamped and embossed some acorns in the same set of colors.

The background brown paper is a scrap I used to soak up spray from the craft mat a while ago and then set aside to dry. I love to do this, especially with bookmark-y sized scraps of plain paper; they go back into the paper box to become neat backgrounds for future projects (like this one). I'm pretty sure there's both gold and copper spray on here, although I can only swear to the copper. In the picture it looks like there's silver as well, but that's just the lighting.

I have some lovely novels starring squirrels that I should have used to photograph this bookmark on, but they're in a box -- oh, shoot, the Redwall books aren't boxed, I could have used one of them! Anyway, I ended up putting it on a page of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

I'm entering this squirrely bookmark into the following challenges:

• Penny Black and More @ Allsorts: Animal Magic (squirrels!)
• The Crafty Pad Challenge #193: Use An Animal
• Inky Impressions Challenge 82: Fall or Halloween (clearly, I've chosen Fall here)
• Great Impressions October Challenge: Fall
• Joanna Sheen Challenge: Autumn Breeze

Supplies: (the acorn paper is from DCWV's Autumn Melody matstack)

Bookmarks XXXVIII: Join the Dance

Look, I know we've seen this fairy a lot lately. She showed up in a Saturday State of the Stash post, and then again on my worktable.

Well, now she gets a post (and a bookmark) of her very own.

Now, one of the great things about this stamp is that she isn't at all seasonal. She'll look great among snowflakes, falling leaves, flowers, fruit, whatever you like. In this case, she's a autumnal fairy, joining the dance of the swirling fall leaves. (They are leaves, but not to scale, and stamped all over each other -- I was going more for the impression of a lot of leaves than a crisp image.)

She was stamped in Eggplant, which of course is quite purple, but on the orange background it seems to have lost most of the purple and become a sort of dark rust -- and it's not just the photo, it looks like that for real. I wonder if it actually changed color or it's just one of those optical illusions where your perception of color is affected by colors around it?

This bookmark is made of 100% scraps! The scrap on which I originally stamped the fairy is a remnant of Popsicles in the Park, the scrap of copper cardstock is left over from Copper & Chartreuse, and the shimmery red backing piece is the other half of the backing from To Sail Beyond the Sunset.

For the life of me I can't figure out what earlier project created the brown scraps, but you can see it on my desk yesterday: it definitely wasn't a full sheet of mat. Maybe I cut some off for a project and then decided it didn't work? So somewhere there should be another scrap, the other part of the paper...

I'm entering this bookmark into the following challenges:

• Top Tip Tuesday Challenge 87: Things With Wings
• Use It Tuesday Challenge #41: All About Fall (made with 100% scraps!)
• Visible Image: Inspired by Autumn
• Great Impressions: Fall
• Simon Says Stamp and Show: Rustification (all kinds of rusty reds and oranges here...)
• Party Time Tuesdays #87: Anything But a Card (bookmark)
• Deep Ocean Challenge #36: Anything Goes
• Tuesday Alchemy Challenge #35: Anything Goes
• Crafts & Me Challenge 105: Anything Goes
• Divas by Design Challenge 56: Anything Goes
• The Crafty Bloggers Network Challenge #4: Anything Goes
• House of Gilli: Anything Goes

Even though I haven't used any stamps from the companies kindly sponsoring all of these challenges -- well, if I've entered but not used your stamps, it means I haven't got any and would like to win some!

I'm also linking this up to DL.ART's October Linky Party.

Supplies: (the little strips of brown leafy paper are from DCWV's Autumn Melody matstack, which doesn't seem to be for sale anywhere linkable)

Bookmarks XXXIII: Cold Outside

Why is it that I can weave jillions of technique, color, and material challenges together without much of a problem, but I always hit a snag with adding a dang sentiment? It can't really be this hard!

Well, I guess it can be legitimately difficult when I am making a Christmas-y/winter-y bookmark and I have no such sentiments.

I stamped -- and paper-pieced, a first for me -- a cute set of mittens for the bookmark, so I wanted a sentiment to go with them and sort of shade the whole creation towards the Christmas-y side of winter-y. Obviously there's nothing specific to Christmas about a pair of mittens, especially for folks in the southern hemisphere!

And that is why I have been singing Christmas carols all evening, ones about the cold. In the end I had a bit of a hard time deciding between "Baby, It's Cold Outside" and "Let It Snow" (from which I was going to use the phrase "all the way home I'll be warm"). On the one hand, four words are a lot easier to squeeze in than six. On the other hand, have you ever really listened to the lyrics for "Baby, It's Cold Outside"? It's actually kinda creepy. Hey there, dude, spiking your lady's drink to get her to stay is not cool.

Regardless, aesthetics won out and that's the sentiment I ended up using, but please understand that on my bookmark it means "so put on some mittens", and not anything else.

Listening to the meaning of lyrics is awful and I recommend you never do it.

Anyway, I spent about an hour writing this silly four-word phrase out -- in pen, in embossing pen and powder, on strips of washi tape, in capitals, in lowercase, in seventy-odd combinations of the above... and finally I realized that not ten feet away was a computer with a color printer and the ability to download fonts. This one's called "Frosty", and is by Ben Balvanz of Font-a-licious. It's licensed for personal use, just like most stamp images are -- although I doubt it has any kind of angel policy.

All of the shiny metal is silver, but there was this light, and it was yellow, see, so a bunch of it looks gold. Which is kinda cool, but not an accurate representation of the project.

Christmas Challenges asks that people do not post their sketches (even to credit them, I guess?), but instead link to the relevant post. So there you are; some challenges absolutely require you post their inspiration pics, and some absolutely require that you not do so. Both approaches make a certain amount of sense.

I'm entering this bookmark in the following challenges:

• Christmas Challenges #43: Sketch (I've turned the sketch sideways and moved the sentiment -- but since half the design team moved the sentiment, I figure that's okay.)
• The Stamp Spot: Purple, Stripes, and Metal (more metallic than real metal: silver origami paper, silver embossing powder, a little silver shimmer spritz, and smeared silver ink)
• The Crafty Bloggers Network Challenge #3: Purple (just a bit)
• My Mum's Craft Shop Challenge #76: Stars (at the top and bottom)
• Paper Playtime Challenge #84: PUNCHES + a sentiment (the stars at the top and the negative-image stars at the bottom are from a starry corner punch)
• Sparkles Christmas Challenge #20: Sparkle & Bling (sparkly embossing powder, silver embossing powder, silver shimmer spritz, rubbed some silver ink around...)
• Simon Says Stamp and Show: For the Love of Sparkle (see above list)
• Great Impressions: Sentimental Journey (I'm sorry, I don't own any Great Impressions stamps!)
• Penny Black and more @ Allsorts: Early Christmas Makes (not a Penny Black image, as I'm sure you can tell)
• Fashionista Challenge #7: Anything Goes CHRISTMAS
• Robyn's Fetish Challenge #126: Book Marks
• Simon Says Stamp: Anything Goes (no October Afternoon on this one)
• Ladybug Crafts: Anything Goes

I'm also linking it up to DL.ART's 1000-post Linky Party.

Supplies:

Bookmarks XXXII: Frog Princess

The frog princess has a golden ball just like the human princess, but when it falls into the well she just goes in right after it.

Once she managed to lose the golden ball up in a tree. A human prince happened to be sitting under the tree, so she asked him to get it down for her. When he proceeded to demand to eat off her plate, and sleep on her pillow, and all that rigamarole, she simply called on the frog gardeners and had them get it down instead.

She's both independent and charming, and she knows it. That's why she looks so self-satisfied. That and the being-a-princess, which does tend to give one an over-inflated idea of one's self-importance.

I shall put this bookmark into "The Ordinary Princess" by M. M. Kaye. Princess Amy is not a frog, but she is certainly both independent and charming.

I'm entering this bookmark into these challenges:

• Annabelle Stamps: Say It In... Shades of Pink (and white)
• Dawn's Crafting: Breast Cancer Awareness and/or Think Pink (not just a little use a lot!) (no BCA here, but I think we can agree there is quite a lot of pink)
• Cupcake Craft Challenge 211: Fairytales (frog princess!)
• Sarah Hurley Challenge 72: Something Magical (frog princesses and strong women are both magical, although in different ways)
• Challenge Up Your Life #78: Fantasy (frog princess!)
• Stamptacular Sunday #182: BLING It On! (glitter on the paper, glitter in the clear embossing powder, sparkly gold embossing powder...)
• Great Impressions: Sentimental Journey
• Robyn's Fetish Challenge #126: Book Marks

I'm also linking it up to DL.ART's 1000-post Linky Party and Unique Crafters' Big Chance Giveaway.

Supplies: (white 110lb. cardstock is from Staples)