Florence Turnour's Blog

I joined another swap, this time for Twinchies, which are (did you guess it?) 2x2 inches. I'm in an ocean group. This one is for a gal who simply chose "fishes." It is a pull out card with a similar design to my gift tags. I love my cutter.

I like smudging the stamping ink onto the paper, but it takes some practice to get the smudges where you want them. I practiced a little (and made a real mess on my desk and hands). I made a few nice backgrounds. I thought I'd use this one to make an ATC for the hostess of the PAT swap (who does all the mailing hither and thither). Here is the card: It says, "In summer, the song sings itself- William Carlos Williams." I used the Majestic tree stamp from Penny Black, and the Orchard Tree stamp from Memory Box. The beads are stitched on, of course.

I joined an Artist's Trading Card swap on www.splitcoaststampers.com . It is called PAT (Pick-A-Topic) am in a group of 5 people. Each person selects a topic; in my group, they were birds, cardinals, owls, blue footed boobies, and emus (that was mine). The other people will make Emu cards for me. I made one of each of the other four topics for the other participants. Here are my finished cards: The gal who selected the blue footed booby originally selected the topic "parkour," but on realizing that the rest of the group selected birds, she changed it to the blue footed booby. I couldn't resist combining the two, so this booby can really move. I found the many photographs of boobies kicking up their legs to display their beautiful blue feet very convenient. I was also excited to use the flat bed train car from the original set of freight train themed rubber stamps, which I had made some years back. I'm still enjoying those trains, and considering making other desi...

In this card, I suspended the focal design on acetate, making it appear to float. I added a beaded string to attach the card to a gift. Once again, this card features the Quilt Notes cutter file set from Just Laury ( http://www.paperthreads.com/store/in...ducts_id=6213) . I really love those little glass roundels (right before the large round bead in the button). I'm thinking these paper crafts may just give me a use for them!

Is a kinetic card is one that requires you to move something? Well, I found other references to kinetic cards, and this one seems to fall into that category. I made this kinetic card for a challenge on paperthreads.com . I enjoy doing the challenges and swaps, since it makes me focus on a project, rather than mess around with my supplies all day (or stare into space), but for the paperthreads challenges, one must use a cutter file purchased from one of the paperthreads designers. I'm not even enthusiastic about using patterned paper that someone else designed, so it is very hard for me to use someone else's cut files. I like to do-it-myself, and Illustrator makes it pretty easy to create cut files. Anyway, I decided to do it this time, but I don't think I'll do any more. I think it's just that I would like to retain ownership over the work I produce. The file I picked was very nice. It is Quilt Notes from Just Laury . I it included the quilt squares like light ...

I've decided to add a bunch of my paper work to my blog. I am just catching up, so I wont elaborate on all the things I learned doing these. I've joined an ATC swap at splitcoaststampers , so I've got a project I want to work on, instead of blog. This is an Artist's Trading Card that I entered in a contest at the Original Rubber Stamp Convention. I won an honorable mention and they gave me $10 to spend at the show. :) This is part of a bigger project that I've taken a break from. It is the front of a 5 paneled popup card. The unfolded card will sport the whole alphabet! I enjoyed the architecture in this one very much. I'm thinking about making a hillside full of houses for the next one.

I drew the frame and vine in Adobe Illustrator and cut it out using my Silhouette digital cutter.  It took me a few tries to draw flowers that I like for this climatis vine. The climatis flowers have such wonderfully detailed centers, but I really wanted to draw them small. I'm happy with the look of the result, but I could do without the 2 micron dot in the centers that for some reason I couldn't leave off.