FREEEEEEEEEEDOM!!!!!!!

Yippee!!!!  Time for stamping, blogging, commenting, silhouetting, sewing, and photographing!  In fact, I'm starting the summer by taking a Chimpsy DSLR field trip today (thanks, Groupon!) so I can get out of auto mode.  I'll let you know how it goes (and maybe share some classwork) tomorrow. 

As for today's card, it was an A Card A Day reject.  I hope that they had an even more awesome card for the last day of school, not that they don't think the end of school is card-worthy (especially for teachers!).  The stamp is Eat Cake Graphics Kati Ann has something to say, colored, cut out, and popdotted.  The banner is from A Muse's Happy Everything, embossed and cut out.  The chalkboard sentiment was printed using Love Ya Like a Sister font in light grey onto PTI's Ocean Tides, then I went over it with a white pencil for a chalk look.  Crate Paper School Spirit and Emma's Shoppe finished off the classroom. 

Silhouette update: I'm still loving it, although arg! I ruined half of my carrier sheet by cutting out really intricate silhouettes from PTI True Black paper (which is heavier than they recommend, so my fault).  All the little bits that got left behind on the carrier sheet, instead of being able to be picked off,  just sort of disintegrate into black fuzz (I think I remember reading that SU and PTI paper is more fibrous than other papers because they dye it all the way through, and maybe the black is even more fibrous than others because of its deep color?  I didn't have any trouble with PTI red).  Also, you want to make sure you cut down patterned paper to just the size you'll be cutting, because the rest of it curls when you pull it off. 

Also, remember how I said it can cut SVG files?  Yeah, um, well, it's more like kinda-sorta.  You can't open an SVG file using the silhouette software, but you can use a free program to convert an SVG into a file it can read.  I haven't fully investigated it yet, so more on that to come.

I did try cutting vinyl and after finding the right cut settings, I was able to make an awesome "keep calm and teach on" decal for the back of my calculator.  I've also cut out a few doilies (bought from the silhouette store) that are just beautiful, plus the silhouettes that I mentioned earlier are really impressive.

CAS DT news: I made it to the final round!  I have to make one more card, then I'll find out Thursday.  Fingers crossed!

Willpower!

Yup, total spending freeze for the month of May!  No buying anything!  Not even paper or tape--you can use the tape glider you have from before you got your ATG when you happen to run out of the last roll.   And then somehow you end up with one of these on your doorstep:

I don't know how it happened (although I think Amazon Prime is partially to blame), but I do know I'm already IN LOVE.  My first project:

Did you just pee your pants?  I'm not ashamed to admit I did a little after I peeled this baby off the cutting mat.  I cut this out of PTI red (slowest speed, double cut) then popped it on foam tape, which, yes, means all those little crown pieces and the inside of the "A"s and "R"s had to be foam taped too.  Here's a close up so you can see the gorgeousness of the cuts:

I will fill some more details about the Silhouette soon, but I still have a bit more crafting I want to try out tonight!  Keep calm and craft on, my friends!

CAS DT Search

Around this time last year, I tried out for the SCS CAS design team for the first time, which led to making lots of new friends and the start of this blog.  I had a few guest designer weeks, but I haven't officially tried out again since school keeps me so busy.  Now it is summer again and I decided at the last minute to throw my hat into the ring with this card.

I've had Scooter's Day at the Pool from Eat Cake Graphics for quite some time now, but this is the first time I've inked it up.  I stamped him on A Muse Ocean paper, then stamped him again on white paper, colored him with copics, cut him out, then added some Glossy Effects to his fins and snorkel mask.  The sentiment is from The Cat's Pajamas, white embossed.  Then I used nestabilities and a good ol' hole punch to cut out the bubbles.  I popped Scooter and the sentiment up on foam tape, then the other larger circles are popped up on two layers of foam tape.  Hope Scooter's feeling lucky today!

As promised, here are the books I've been reading recently:
Book #11:The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian Like most of his books (he also wrote Midwives), there was a twist that I didn't see coming, but I'm not sure it was worth reading the entire book just for that twist.
Book #12: The Internet is a Playground by David Thorne.  Do not pass Go, do not collect $200, just go immediate to Amazon and buy this book.  It is laugh-out-loud, "wait, wait, you gotta hear this part" read-out-loud hilarious by the author of Missing Missy (which, if you haven't read that yet, click that link now, man!)
Book #12.25: Moby-Duck by Donovan Thorne. I say .25 because I read about 100 pages and could not see myself being interested in another 400.  It's called EDITING.  Yes, you can talk about a lot of different topics and get sidetracked, but if you want to learn how to do it right, read Mary Roach.
Book #13: Remember the Sweet Things by Ellen Greene.  A sweet memoir about a wife who keeps a list of all the small little nice things her husband does.  It started as a magazine article, and that was probably the length it needed to be.
Book #14: The Devil and Sherlock Holmes by David Grann.  A collection of articles, some of them fascinating, some a bit too "underworldy" for my taste.  Would recommend for a library rental.
Book #15: Attachments by Rainbow Rowell. This book just made me so darn happy.  Lincoln, who is hired to read emails that are flagged by security software, starts to fall in love with one of the flagged email authors.  You will probably have to buy multiple copies, because once you loan it to one of your friends, she will end up loaning it to one of her friends, etc, and then you will never get it back, which is OK because that means more people are enjoying the happiness that is this book.


Hook me up with your recommendations in the comments--summer is quickly approaching (and I heard rumors of a Kindle approaching as well!).

Robots Have Feelings, Too!

Our principal is leaving our school, so I took on the task of making a thank you card to give from my department.  I'm not really good at making a masculine thank you, unless I know that the recipient likes dogs (or planes), so I went with a math department photo:

Tee-hee!  Doesn't that Eat Cake Graphics "The Boys" stamp go great with the retro vibe of Crate Paper's School Spirit paper pad?  The card is 5x7, with 7 one-inch strips in the background. I printed the math department sentiment using Chowderhead font (perfect match to the grade card font--thanks, whatthefont.com), then stamped the boys on there, and paper pieced 'em.  The A+ is from (old) A Muse School Time set and the "thank you" is PTI Vintage Picnic.

There is a little dog robot on the stamp that I couldn't fit on the front, but I couldn't not use him, so here he is as a little extra bonus on the inside:

I also got some happy mail recently.  Actually, this first one I got a couple weeks ago, but I had to take it to school to show it off and kept forgetting to bring it back home to photograph.  Angela of Paper Cupboard is the sweetest gal ever.  She sent this notebook to me, with a portion of the cost donated to the Red Cross Alabama Tornado Fund.

Then I won a prize from Emily's month-long blogoversary of Art from the Heart, and the happy mail arrived today:

I also got some happy email yesterday regarding the A Card A Day submission call.  It was only for one card, which means I now have quite a few to share with you this week.

Also, I took the time-suck plunge and joined Pinterest.  If you search for corgicreations (one word) I should be the only person that shows up--Meg C (with a pic of Miss Addie).  Follow me so I can follow you, or let me know in the comments if you're on it. 

I've also been doing a lot of reading, but I'll save that list for tomorrow.  Hope everyone is having a fantastic weekend!

Happy Home

Man, I can't believe it's been over two weeks since my last post.  I've been busy making cards to submit to magazines, which means I can't post them.  However, fate was calling my name this weekend.  I had to make a card for a housewarming, and, shazam!, the One Layer Wonder challenge this week was for a new home card using at least two ink colors.  After some trial and error (and smudges from inky fingers), this is what I created:

It's a standard 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 with the top cut into a roof.  The mailbox is from Unity's Hodgepodge of Happiness, the sentiment from PTI's Enjoy the Ride, and the tree from PTI's Out on a Limb.  I had the hardest time figuring out where to put those tree limbs--I should have put the first one down a little bit so I had more room for the top one, but this was the second version of the card and the party time was quickly approaching. The bricks are super easy to make-score horizontally every 1/2 inch, then go back and score 1/2 inch apart vertically, skipping every other row.

I taught my last lesson on Thursday--yippee!  Now it's just review and a couple tests.  Then I'm going to stamp, stamp, stamp like a baby ant and blog, blog, blog like a baby dog!

Mother's Day Cards

Have I mentioned my love for Echo Park paper?  No?  Well, I love it.  So when I saw that they now offer 6x6 pads (with reduced scale), well, I may have bought four of them, which may have contributed to me going way over budget last month, which means I now am on a spending freeze until the end of May. 

In order to your part in my spending freeze, I need y'all to not show any cool projects this month that involve items that I do not currently own, but upon seeing your project, I will not be able to craft until I own said items.  'Kay?  

For example, if you did not already own the Echo Park For the Record 6x6 paper pad collection, it would be very rude of me to post the following card:

because it would make you sad that you did not have such fun happy papers and then you would want to buy them, which you can't because you're on a spending freeze EVEN THOUGH it's the last month of school and don't you think you deserve something for making it through 180 days.  It would also make you sad that you did not buy the stitched alphabet from the A Muse clearance sale when it cost about $2.50, because it is a great alphabet set. The banners, from A Muse Studio's Happy Everything set, would make you happy because they're banners. Maybe the chicken wire stamp from Prisma would make you feel indifferent, but I like it, so there.  

As I was merely posting it as an example of what not to post, I was not being hypocritical.  

As a example of a "safe" card to post, see the following:

which would make you kind of want the Echo Park Springtime 6x6 pad, but not in a craft-threatening way like the previous card.  I probably should have put some sort of background pattern in the back, but I thought of that after I glued all of those down, so that wasn't going to happen (breaking my own rule:  you have to buy a Sakura Quickie Glue pen because you definitely cannot craft without it.  I think it will replace my Xyron).

Finally, do you have offspring that are in school, being taught by teachers? 

First, read this article and then this one. Then make one of these for every teacher your offspring have, even if you have two high schoolers which means at least 12.  Then make one for me.  But don't post it on your blog, because that would definitely be rude.