(The RNG at) Robyn's Fetish Challenge likes Frog Princess!

RNG stands for Random Number Generator -- the top picks at Robyn's are picked randomly, you see, not by a person or people. And in Robyn's "Book Marks" challenge, it picked one of my bookmarks.

But the RNG did not pick Rainbow Pennants or Cold Outside, which I also submitted. It liked Frog Princess, possibly the pinkest thing I've ever done.

To be quite honest, and rather to my own surprise given the pinkness, Frog Princess is my favorite of those I submitted. So I'm glad the RNG chose it instead of one of the others.

It actually had to choose at least one -- there is one winner and three top picks, and I was three out of the seven entries. Look, the challenge was "Book Marks", okay, do you expect me not to max out my entry quota?

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)

Bookmarks XXX (30): Rainbow Pennants

I've been a bit worried about this bookmark. Even when I didn't know what it would be, or when I would make it, I worried. Because this is the 30th bookmark, and I am numbering them with Roman numerals... and XXX doesn't always mean 30 in our modern world.

This bookmark is so family-safe it doesn't even have any images on it! Just triangles! I guess if you have serious issues with triangles that aren't quite isosceles it could be annoying to look at, but that's the most danger your eyes will encounter here.

This bookmark came together very simply based mainly on two challenges: Emergency Crafters' "Somewhere over the Rainbow" and Frosted Designs' "Triangles!". Apparently I wasn't feeling terribly interpretive, because I made some triangles in rainbow colors.

I don't have all the nice bright primary/secondary learned-'em-in-kindergarten colors of paper, but I do have them in embossing powder. So I made my triangles by free-hand-cutting some white cardstock, took an embossing pen to them, and used the embossing powder to create color.

I am glad I decided not to try to get perfect coverage with the embossing pen. The advantage of an embossing pen is that as long as you keep re-inking the paper and re-sprinkling the powder and hitting it with the heat gun, you can eventually achieve full coverage no matter what your level of heat embossing proficiency. But by choosing not to try for perfect, but to leave my embossing deliberately streaky, I saved a lot of time and created a bit of an interesting effect. The rest of the bookmark is so simple that solid blocks of color might not have worked as well as my imperfect ones.

I couldn't decide whether my triangles ought to go on black or on white. So I put them on a nice pearlescent grey and called it good.

I'm entering this bookmark in the following challenges:

• Emergency Crafters: Somewhere over the Rainbow
• Frosted Designs' Fabulous Friday: Triangles!
• Simon Says Stamp: Emboss It!
• Simon Says Stamp and Show: For the Love of Sparkle (pearlescent grey base)
• Robyn's Fetish Challenge #126: Book Marks (you betcha!)
• Ladybug Crafts: Anything Goes
• Anything But A Card Challenge #2: Anything Goes (it's a bookmark)

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

(Edited 9-26-12 to add supplies list.)