Top of the Morning to YOU!

Today is St. Patrick's Day. I love the story of St. Patrick. He was such a courageous man. Some of the myth and legends are silly compared to his bravery...But, one of the legends that I like involves the shamrock and how he used it to share his faith with the people of Ireland. He must have been a creative man.

I love reading about people's creativity. How they use everyday materials to inspire and create lovely things. Lately,I have been reading about how you can save the everyday paper in your life and make beautiful papers and cards. I have been saving mail, old magazines, the paper that holds your teabags, cereal boxes, on and on. For these cute little flowers and/or shamrocks, I punched 4 hearts, glued them together and inked the edges. For each, I added a button and voila...a lovely Spring or St. Paddy's Day addition.

That little "teabag" shamrock was just the addition I needed to add to a calendar page I created for the month of March. I found a cute little calendar stamp at Michaels...inked and glued it to a cereal box I had been saving...then cut it out and glued that on pretty scrapbook paper. Next I added a "kiss me I'm Irish" stamp for fun.

A little calendar to celebrate the month of March. What a fun month. All the green of St. Patrick's Day really gets me ready to celebrate SPRING! Whew! What a wild winter it has been. I can say I am ready to celebrate this next season.

Add a small stack of little cut papers for notes under your calendar and you're done. Hope you all enjoy your day. Don't forget to wear a little green.

Making Festive Paper Using a Few Stamps

While browsing at Michael's a few weeks ago, I came across these lovely snowflake stamps. Especially at this time of year, I cannot resist beautiful snowflakes so I bought them. Feeling the need to try them out immediately, I decided to make a collage on navy cardstock out of the various snowflakes.

First I used a watermark inkpad and white embossing powder to randomly stamp and emboss two snowflake designs. This gave a raised very white crisp image.

Next, I used a silver ink pad to randomly stamp more snowflake images.

Finally, I used a light blue inkpad to randomly stamp even more designs -sometimes overlapping the embossed snowflakes. Just keep stamping until you like what you are creating. The nice thing about clear stamps is you can see where you are putting your image in relation to the other images already stamped.

Now the fun part: deciding where and how to cut your paper to get the best looking overall design.

Voila! Now you can make copies by scanning the cut into your computer. Print out any size you desire. You can print out 8 by 10 copies and use as scrapbook paper in photo albums. You can print large and then cut out smaller designs. I printed out 3 by 5 copies to use as little thankyou cards. I am also using this design to put in the background for my Christmas cards this year. Use any kind of stamp and have fun creating!

How I Made Our Christmas Postcards for 2008

I started with this photo from a church in West Virginia.



I downloaded the photo into my computer and with the help of photo editing, I changed the image into a black and white pen and ink drawing. Then I tinted the image with various colors of blues and pinks. I printed the photo onto cardstock. Finally I cut out the window panes of the printed image with scissors.




Next, I scanned into my computer, a photo I had taken of the sky. I edited it some to enhance the colors. Then I printed the photo the same size as the window. I cut a transparency sheet the same dimensions as the photo and the black and white tinted window. I put the transparency sheet behind theblack and white tinted window to see where to place a stamped image of the nativity. I stamped the image on the transparency using an embossing stamp pad. Next, I put on black embossing powder, shook off the excess, and heated with a heat gun.



Behind the transparency, I placed the sky photo and voila.



After painting and stamping texture into the black and white tinted photo, I placed it over the stamped transparency, and photo image.