Stick Pin Holders

Just a quick post to show the holders I made for my stick pins for the stick pin swap I hosted over on the Card Swaps forum of CardMakers site. I was in two groups. For my first group I made a matchbook style pictured above. For the second group I did a card candy style. My stick pins are in a origami butterfly which is mounted on an embossed piece of cardstock. I then inserted them into a cello bag and added a topper.

I had a blast making these!


Hope everyone is having a great week!

Stick Pin Shoe Holder

I wanted to share the surprise I found in my mailbox a couple of days ago! A crafting friend of mine in AZ made this adorable shoe stick pin holder....and yes she made the stick pins. Isn't this just too stinkin cute? The creator of this adorable shoe is Judy G who goes by "craft nut" over on the Card Swaps forum at the CardMakers site. She is so talented and makes the cutest things. I was tickled pink when I received this and was doing the happy dance.

Thank you Judy for thinking of me and making this for me. Also a big thank you to my son for taking the awesome picture of this adorable shoe for me!

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Stick Pins

I love stick pins! Although they have been popular for awhile with the card makers and scrapbookers, I just recently discovered them. I am currently hosting a swap for stick pins over at the Card Swaps forum on the CardMaker's site. I am having so much fun with this swap and because of it I have learned a lot about making stick pins. So I thought I would share what I have learned.

First let me apologize for the really lousy pictures. No matter what I did I couldn't get a good picture. My son thinks it is my camera and he is trying to fix it for me. Hopefully he will find the problem and then maybe I can get some better pictures to replace these. If you click on the pictures it will enlarge the picture to give you a bigger and better detail view of the stick pins.

Pictured below is all you need to start making your stick pins. The top row of pins show the different ones I found on the market. There are the head pins which come in silver, gold, bronze and other colors. They can be found in the jewelry section of Hobby Lobby or Michaels and most hobby stores. The advantage of these pins are they don't have a pearl on the end like the corsage pins letting you start the pin with whatever you want. They also don't have a sharp point. This can make it harder for pushing the pin through a bow but it can be done with a bit of effort. You also don't have to worry about the recipient of your card getting stuck with the stick pin.

The other type of pin that can be used is the corsage pin. They come with a round pearl, teardrop shape pearl or a clear diamond shape head. Corsage pins can be found in either the floral section or wedding section of most hobby stores including Walmart. Corsage pins have a sharp tip for those who are looking to stick their pins in bows and want to be able to glide it easily. The sharp tip can be snipped off after it is inserted for safety if you like. Also in jewelry making sections of most hobby stores you can purchase rubber tips to slide on to the tip if so desired. Most of your corsage pins that have the pearl head come in white. I did find some in Walmart with a platinum and champagne color pearl. If you would like the pearl to be another color other than white, you do have some options. You ca color the pearls with alcohol inks, Copic markers, Bic markers, Sharpies or Lumiere paints. In the second row of pins in the picture below I show three that I colored. The first one in black using a Sharpie. The second in red using alcohol inks and the last one in lavender using Lumiere paints.

Once you pick what type of pin you want to work with you will need some beads. You can purchase beads in the jewelry section of any hobby store. Even Walmart carries beads. Another option is to use beads from old necklaces or bracelets that you no longer wear or have broken. Shopping at Goodwill and discount places can also bring some great inexpensive and fun finds of beads. I took some old necklaces from family members and used the beads to create some of my pins. I also purchased some.

Now that you have some beads picked out you will need some adhesive. You want to use a glue that dries clear and has a great hold. I researched the internet to see what everyone was using to glue theirs. I found that the majority like Glossy Accents, Diamond Glaze, Bead All, E6000 or Beacon's 3 in 1 glue. I experimented with them all and found the E6000 and Beacon 3 in 1 to be my two favorites. Both are fast grabbing and not runny. The E6000 I use a toothpick to apply and the Beacon's glue I applied directly with the tip. I do not recommend using Super Glue as it can cause your clear beads to become cloudy. I also found the beads did not hold well with Super Glue. I usually make my pin and make sure it is what I want. Then holding the pin with all the beads on I start adding glue and slide each bead up as I apply glue. You want to make sure you add enough to hold the bead but not too much that you have big globs of glue sticking out between each bead. I apply a little dab...slide a bead up...apply a little dab....slide the next bead up etc. till I have glued the last bead. In the first picture the pin on the bottom left has the last bead not glued yet. Wanted to show you what I mean. I will add a bit of glue then slide it up and the pin will be done.I then stick the pin in some styrofoam to dry overnight. If your not using a fast grabbing glue then you will want to have your pin hanging upside down to dry so the beads do not slide down before the glue is dried.



Easy Peasey...isn't it? But don't limit yourself to just beads. As you can see with my stick pins, I added charms, chain and even bows that I had from my sewing days. I'm working on some butterfly stick pins that I am making using the Martha Stewart monarch butterfly punch. I have seen some with flowers on them too. Wouldn't a stick pin with bows or flowers look cute on a Tilda / Magnolia card? Stick pins look great stuck in a bow or coming out of a flower on cards and scrapbook pages. Below I show an example of one that I posted last month using the stick pin coming out from the flower. You can see the whole card in my post for the Sunny Days Card Crop Rainbow Blog Hop.

For the swap I am hosting I also required the participants to make holders for their stick pins. I will post my holders soon to share with you all and hopefully my camera will be fixed by then and I can post some better pictures of my stick pins. It's hard to see the correct color and details in my pictures now so I hope that can be improved. I should have my butterfly ones done by then too to share with you.

I hope my post encourages you to try making your own stick pins. I will warn you though....they are addictive! I've become a stick pin maniac!

Thanks for stopping by!

Using WORD Text Boxes to create your sentiments

As promised this post shows how to use WORD text boxes to create your sentiments for your cards. I do have a more in depth version that includes pictures but Blogger limits the amount of pictures I can upload per post and I had too many for the tutorial. Also the pictures weren't loading properly....they were looking mighty tiny. So below is a short version. If anyone would like the longer more in depth with pictures....just leave me a comment with your email address and I will be happy to email it to you. Just let me know if you would like it as a WORD document or a PDF file.

Here is the short version. Please note that basic knowledge of how to use WORD is required.

How to use WORD 2007 to create your sentiments

1. Click on the "Insert" tab to your top left

2. Click on the "Text Box" tab to your top right and insert the amount of simple text boxes you want for your sentiment.

3. Now divide your sentiment into the separate components and type into the text boxes.

4. Change your words into the fonts and size of fonts that you want. I almost always use at least more than one font on this part. I also will put an emphasis on some words by making them much larger than the other words.

5. Once you have your sentiment the way you want with fonts and size you will then click on the text boxes highlighting them. While highlighted right click...click on "Format Text Box". In the window that pops up you will see a "Transparency" toggle. Slide that all the way to your right for 100% and then click OK. Do this to all your text boxes. This will make all your text boxes transparent so that we can now move them around and overlap with no problems. At this point we will leave the black lines around the boxes for easy movement.

6. Now move the text boxes around to the positions that you would like them. You can move the boxes by highlighting them. I love this part and sometimes spend a lot of time playing around with this stage to get the sentiment the way I want it. Sometimes after getting it into position I might even decide I want to change the font or size. Once I'm done with this stage I sometimes will print a test run to make sure it is going to look the way I want. Now that your done with this stage move on to the next step.

7. Press and hold down your shift key. While holding down your shift key, highlight each and every text box. Once you have highlighted each text box (keep that shift key down) right click and then click on "Format Text Box". A window will pop up showing the line color (below where you toggled the transparency toggle) and a down arrow next to line color. Click on that arrow which will pop open another window showing you all the colors available. Click on "No Color" below the color choices then click OK. This step just made all your text box lines go away. Don't let go of that shift key just yet though! Holding that shift key move on to the next step.

8. Right click again and click on "Grouping" then click on "Group". Now you can take your finger off that shift key. By grouping the text boxes you are now able to move the sentiment around your page to wherever you want it as one unit. Pretty cool huh?

Hope this quick tutorial helped you with using text boxes and I hope you have as much fun as I have been having with creating sentiments for my cards using Word text boxes!

I will be posting my stick pin results in my next post...soon!

My Cards for the Card Crop Challenges

Whew! That was a fun week of challenges and a fun blog hop as well over at Card Swaps on the CardMakers Magazine site. If you have never participated in one...you should! The next one will be in August. There are challenges, games and prizes too! This time around there were 12 challenges in total. I was only able to find time to complete 5 of them. My first card (above), the challenge was to create a card with an ice cream image. My image is by Tina Wenke / Stampavie. I colored it with Prismacolor color pencils.

My second card is a joint effort of mine and my son's. The challenge was to use a frog image and some depth on your card. I only had one frog image that I wasn't too crazy about and almost didn't do the challenge. My son offered to come to the rescue and draw and cut out a frog for me. Isn't he cute? I went with an Asian theme and heat embossed Japanese handwriting on the background. Both the leaf and the frog are pop dotted for the depth part of the challenge.

This next card was for a challenge to create cards using images of something you would see at the beach. I chose to use this seagull image by PSX. I stamped it on Kraft color paper and colored only certain parts with white Prismacolor color pencil. It's a simple card but I think it is my favorite of the 5.

For this challenge we were to create a kite for our card. I drew and cut out the kite shape on a thin piece of cardboard then covered it with designer paper by Basic Grey. Pop dotted it and added a tail with tied ribbons and I had my kite!

Last but not least...the challenge was to create an outdoor scene using a tree. Well I didn't quite create a scene but I did use a tree! I discovered I own only this tree image except for a couple of Christmas tree images so I was pretty stuck on this too. I'm hoping I will be forgiven by the host of the challenge for not creating a scene and my tree is accepted! :) I colored the image with Prismacolor color pencils.

I have had some request to post a tutorial on how to use WORD text boxes which I hope to have posted very soon. Also coming up soon I will be posting my discoveries on making stick pins and just how I make mine. So stay tuned...

Thanks for stopping by!

Over The Rainbow Blog Hop / Sunny Days Card Crop

Welcome to the Sunny Days Card Crop "Over The Rainbow Blog Hop"! I hope you enjoy hopping through all the colors of the rainbow by visiting some very creative hostesses. You should have arrived here from Lora's blog. If not you should go back as you won't want to miss her fabulous card. She starts the hop with a card using all the colors of the rainbow with scraps from her scrap drawer! To start at the beginning with Lora go HERE.

So that means my color is the first color of the rainbow...RED! I was actually pretty excited about the color red as I like it very much and use it often in my Asian inspired cards. Then I found out we were also to make our card monochromatic. Really??? Seriously??? It was like someone slammed the brakes on when I read that. I am so not good at monochromatic. I always freak at this technique and have a tendency to run from it as you may have read in some of my past posts. Also I couldn't think of a thing for red using the monochromatic theme without it looking like Christmas or Valentines Day. So I searched my stamps and found nothing I could color that didn't involve me using other colors too. So that took yet another level of my comfort zone away as I usually love to stamp and color images for my cards. So I changed my line of thinking and decided to try using two new things that I have been playing around with lately but still try to keep a theme of sunny days. Here is what I came up with:

S


I recently discovered how to use WORD text boxes to create my sentiments for my cards and have been having loads of fun with that. So using a quote from Lady Bird Johnson I created the sentiment. Also I recently discovered stick pins and making my own. They are soooo much fun and addictive. I will be posting another post about stick pins very soon. I decided it would be fun to create one for my card using beads I had on hand and a head pin. The head pins do not have a pointy end on them like corsage pins do. Since I was sticking the pin coming out from the flower I did not need the sharp point so the head pin worked perfect for my stick pin. My cardstock is by Bazzill and I snuck the one cream piece in for matting which we were allowed to do. The top piece of cardstock has an oval cut out using a Spellbinders die creating a frame allowing me to only have to use just the one piece of cream cardstock . The flowers are by Prima and originally were white till I colored them using alcohol inks. We were told that our card should scream our color and I do believe mine screams red. Hopefully the monochromatic police won't be knocking at my door!

We aren't doing prizes on the blog hop today but I do hope you will consider leaving me a comment and let me know if my card inspired you. There are prizes though over at the Sunny Days Card Crop. There will be challenges, games and prizes for the next four days. Also there will be a spot in the forum for you to post any creations you may have made that might have been inspired from the blog hop. To find the Sunny Days Card Crop go HERE. However don't leave the hop yet. The last stop on the hop will also include a link to the card crop.

Next up is the talented and creative Golda. She recently started her blog not too long ago and I am glad she did as she has a lot to share with everyone. So hop on over to her and don't forget to leave her some love!

In case you lose your way, here is a full list of blogs on the hop:

Lora

Susan H -- You are here

Golda - next stop

Jane

Ana

Meredith

Laura

Angelina

Ashley <-- she will lead you to the pot of gold...

treasures galore... challenges, games, fun, prizes... Please join us....guaranteed to be loads of FUN!

CardSwap Sketch Challenge

Hello everyone! I'm the host of this week's sketch challenge over at CardSwaps on the CardMakers site. I usually am attracted to sketches that have lots of layers and places to put all kinds of embellies. I like simple sketches but find that I rarely use them. I am also guilty of buying those larger image stamps and then rarely using the stamp because it takes up the whole card. Sound familiar?

So I challenged myself to design a very simple sketch that would showcase a larger image. Below is the sketch. For the card I used Bazzill cardstock. The image is by Hero Arts and is colored with Prismacolor color pencils.

You can find the sketch challenge HERE. Hope you consider joining us this week for the challenge. All are welcome! While your checking out the challenge be sure to check out the info on the upcoming card crop also at CardSwaps on the CardMakers site. There will be four days of challenges, games, prizes and a blog hop! Yours truly will be one of the stops on the blog hop. I'm planning a fun card to hopefully help get your mojo juices flowing. Be sure to join in on the fun! I have a blinkie on the top right to help remind you of the dates when your visiting me. It's next week so clear your calendars!




Thanks for stopping by!