Mar 16, 2009 | family, Punch Art |
Hi Everyone!
Today wasn’t quite the day I was planning on. Kyle was sick this morning and didn’t go to school. I took him to the doctor and he has some viral infection that has given him all these painful sores in his mouth. And Greg ended up at home all day – not because he was sick but because he had to go in for a conversion at work last night and didn’t get home until 3 am. So he slept in and then worked from home. He also decided today was the day he would switch out my computer. So this afternoon and evening he has been trying to get it all set back up for me with all the software and my email and stuff. And I realized only a little while ago that I wasn’t getting all my Stampin’ Up! emails – so now I got that fixed and I think I’m all back up and running. So far this computer is faster that the old one. I did realize my photo catalog is missing so none of my pictures were in my photoshop organizer when I went to look for them tonight. I’ll have to fix that tomorrow. And I’ll work on more tomorrow to make sure I’m not missing anything else. Right now my old computer is still connected too; so if I need something from it I just switch my screen over to that one. It’s kind of wierd – two computers running on one monitor. Right now I have 2 keyboards and 2 mice on my desk so I can work with the one I need.
Anyhow the picture above is one that I took at the Stampin’ Up! Leadership conference. I thought this would be the perfect project to share with you today since tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day. I’m sorry that I don’t know who created him but she was at the Leadership conference in Orlando and was nice enough to let me get a quick picture. He is made out of punches – tag punch, word window, scallop circle, 1-3/8″ circle, looks like the 1/2″ and 1/4″ circle too. The belt is either the square punches or they might just be cut. There is a candy bar on the inside. A cute treat to share with your kids tomorrow if you have the time!
This reminds me of the year when Tyler was in 2nd grade and at school the sneaky leprechaun’s would come into the classrooms while the kids were out. This particular year I think happen to also be some other activity going on in the school so all of the kids desks were pushed together on one side of the room. While the kids were out of the room to lunch or somewhere I snuck in and moved all the desks so that I could stick a Leprechaun treat inside and then pushed them all back in place before the kids got back. Later in the day when they all moved their desks back to where they should be they were so surprised to find treats inside – they were convinced that little leprechauns snuck in and hid them because only someone small could have gotten to the desks since they were pushed together. They were so funny! Anyway – that is always what I think of on St. Patrick’s Day. Now Tyler is in 10th grade so that was quite some time ago.
I hope you have a great St. Patty’s Day – wear green and find some GOLD at the end of your rainbow!
Speaking of rainbows – here is a card from Leadership – this was one of the demonstrations from the Stam
pin’ Up! employees showing us new product from the catalog – this one uses the Sticky Cuts Sweet and the new fine glitter.
Have a Happy Day!
Monika
[email protected]
www.monika.stampinup.net
Mar 2, 2009 | Big Shot, Punch Art, Scrapbook Pages, Wildlife |
Here is the project that I worked on last night:
Mr. Turtle
Aren’t the little punch turtles the cutest thing?
Many of you know how much I love my punches and I love to do punch art like this. I found a demonstrator in Canada, Heather Summers, that apparently is like me and loves to do this to – so much so that she created an online class of punch projects and the little turtle was the first one. As soon as I saw this little turtle yesterday I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. Her turtle was on a card but mine needed to be on a scrapbook page. Remember me telling you about how much I love to have animals in my backyard…well last summer we had a turtle that lived in the backyard for awhile – he spent much of his time under my hostas – and when he would come out the dogs would find him. I think initially they expected it to run away like the chipmunks and squirrels do – but he just walked right along. So one day I got out my camera to take pictures (actually I took pictures on more than one day) and these are some of them. So this scrapbook page is for us to remember Mr. Turtle who eventually moved on out of our yard and out into the big world beyond our fence.
Colors are: Chocolate Chip, Pacific Point, Kiwi Kiss, Whisper White
I also used the Big Shot to create the title and the leaf accents.
I hope you like it!
Have a great day!
And yes we did have school today – while other parts of Georgia all around us seemed to have some snow stick to the ground – we did not. And the wind blew so strong that it dried up most of the moisture from the rain so there really wasn’t much ice here either. So if you had a snow day today – enjoy it! My boys were very disappointed – maybe next time.
Monika
Feb 24, 2009 | Party Hearty, Punch Art |
At my Fun With Punches class we not only enjoyed stamping the projects I had planned but also talked about other ideas and things to try with punches. While working with the accordian flower (see earlier post) a thought occurred to me. Actually I had my accordian all folded up and my finger slipped and it popped loose – and what did I think of – a Jack-in-the Box! What if I created the accordian put it inside a box and added a punched clown face to the top. So an idea sprang out and of course I had to play with it. So I came up with a box – basically a 2-4-6-8 box that I scored and cut to create a lid. And then to create the clown face – with punches of course – and bright colors. Then to work on the accordian and the mechanics of it. Well that part took the longest because it wouldn’t pop the way I wanted – I shorten the accordian, made it wider, attached it in different places in the bottom of the box – this little clown wasn’t going to win the battle – he was going to pop. So finally I could get him to pop sort of how I wanted but I had to make it happen more than once – and I finally did – I decided it had more to do with how I put him in the box than anything. And after working a long time on this decided it would NOT be a project to do in a class but I will share it here in case you want to tackle this on your own – I was good with the creative part, but didn’t want to spend more time on the mechanics of it – but maybe someone else does. So here is the box closed:
Clown Box closed
You pull up on the little tab (punched with the Word Window Punch) to lift the top and …..
POP!
Clown Box open
Colors used are Real Red, Summer Sun, Green Galore, and white and black.
Stamp set is Party Hearty.
Punches used are Scallop Circle, 1-1/4″ Circle, 1/2″ Circle, 1/4″ circle, Heart to Heart Punch. I clipped inbetween the scallops on the clown face. Added accents with the Gel Pen for the eyes and nose. Mouth was drawn with a black marker.
The accordian strip on the inside is 1″ wide and 7-1/2″ long and scored every 1/2″ and attached in the center of the box with sticky strip and the back of the clown a dimensional.
The box is a 2-4-6-8 box. Start with card stock that is 5-1/2″ x 8-1/2″. Score at 2″, 4″, 6″, and 8″. On the other side score at 1″, 3″, and 5″. Then you have to imagine the box and where the lid would be and cut away the extra squares – leaving the two sides with a 1/2″ strip for the flaps on the lid. I cut each of the flaps onthe lid at and angle so the box would close easily. I hope that makes sense.
Have fun and let me know if you give it a try!
Monika
[email protected]
www.monika.stampinup.net
Feb 21, 2009 | Punch Art |
My last class was fun with punches – and we did have a fun time at both the morning and evening classes. I posted some of the projects we were making – the link to my original post is here.
So here is another one of the cards we made (not shown in the original class photo):
This idea started with the little accordian flower as shown in the Sale-A-Bration brochure. And modified by an idea I saw from another demonstrator that used the Scallop Edge punch on one side of her strip of paper – using the scallops as a guide for scoring meant no measuring needed. Which I thought was a brilliant idea! I played around with colors and ended up using the SummerSun paper from the Good Morning Sunshine Designer Paper and following the Retro Fresh Style Watch colors (as shown in our catalog) decided on the Pacific Point. When I had it all toghether it just didn’t pop like I wanted so I decided to try adding the scallop circle behind it in the Chocolate Chip – that made all the difference for me. I also sponged the edges of the scallops to give it some depth. I added the little chocolate flower from the Button Latte buttons. The stem is a word window punch, and the leaf is the 1″ circle punched and then stuck back in and punched again to create the leaf shape. The “Hello” was punched with the word window – then stuck back in an punched again to shorten it. If you can’t get the punched out piece to line back up inside your punch use a little dotto to hold it on your grid paper then line up the punch and punch through both. The grid paper is thin enough – or use some other thin scratch paper – card stock is too thick for most of the punches to go through two pieces at once. Since this has some depth to it – I wouldn’t mail it but instead attach it to a gift bag or box.
I hope you like it!
Monika
[email protected]
www.monika.stampinup.net
