Batter Up!

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((If you're looking for my gallery idol sofa card, you can see it in this post.  Only one more day left to vote; it closes at 2:00 Eastern on Thursday!)

My nephew had his tenth birthday this month, which, for me, seems like a hard age to make a card.  But I'm lucky in the fact that he loves baseball, so I went with that theme and made this:

I just love that shimmery paper from DCWV.  It turns every card into a party!  To make this, I got a random picture of a batter and ball (wink, wink), traced it in Silhouette Studio, and cut it out.  Then I cut out the rounded rectangle with the letters, and adhered a red strip and a blue strip behind the letters, and adhered everything to the cardbase.  Don't forget to keep the insides of your letters if you do it this way (like A's and O's).  A pretty quick and easy card from start to finish, but I think he'll still get a kick out of it!

Gallery Idol Top Twenty!

So the competition for Paper Crafts Gallery Idol starts TODAY!  You can see the top twenty and VOTE here. Our first challenge was to create a DIY embellishment.   I thought and thought and thought.  And thought.  Ate some chips.  Then thought and thought and thought.  Pinterested.   Thought.  Played fetch with the dog.  Thought.  Talked to Mr Corgi and of course Mr Corgi was talking about the last shuttle launch (sniff!) and finally it came to me!  I could make a space ship....

Out of a Coke can! I remembered seeing something about coke can flowers somewhere so I did a little google research and it seemed easy enough, since many of the crafts were recommended for elementary-aged children.

HA.  Maybe if you don't like elementary-aged children very much.  I'm not saying it was extraordinary difficult, but it was no walk in the park, either.  So I'm going to fill you in on all the ten mistakes I made so you can make your own metal embellishment with carefree ease.

1) Yes, these cans are sharp!  Especially when you first cut them (cut the two ends off with a utility knife, then you can use scissors to cut down the side and clean up the edges).  I never cut myself, but I'm pretty sure there are metal pieces floating around in me where they weren't any before.  Probably should have taken their suggestion to at least wear gardening gloves, except my gardening gloves are in the trash after a poison sumac encounter.

1A) BONUS MISTAKE!  Poison sumac does not always follow the rule of "leaves of three, let it be." Sometimes it can just look like a leafy vine.  You should probably not do any weeding in order to avoid it.

2) The embossing buddy is your buddy!  Don't forget to use it unless you would like a full embossed rectangle.

3) The can is metal. Metal gets hot when you heat it!  Adhere a strip of paper to the back (longer than your metal piece) to act as a handle.  Do this before you stamp it.

4) Even if you used your buddy, you're not going to get a perfectly clean embossing (or maybe you will and I'm just not lucky).  Use a small dry paintbrush to brush away excess specs. Use a black copic or sharpie after embossing to clean up any lines.

5) Cut it out before you color.  Depending on the size of your stamp, it may still want to curl.  I pulled it over the end of my desk and that helped a bit, then I stamped and cut out another ship from chipboard (aka cardboard from back of paper pad), then used glossy effects to adhere them and then sent them through the Cuttlebug.

6) A little glossy effects goes a long way.

7) Put some paper and blank chipboard (aka cereal box) in the Cuttlebug unless you want your rocket embossed with all the previous cuts on your B plate.

Doesn't this look like something you'd find in Dr Horrible's lair?

8) SHARPIE, not copic.  No, no, no copic.  Unless you're going for a distressed finish.

9) The flames are from ethernet wires that Mr Corgi was using to network the house.  They were different colors, though, so I used stickles to recolor them.  Curl the wires (I wrapped them around the paintbrush from mistake #4 and the sharpie from #8) before you stickle, otherwise the stickle comes off like a snakeskin.


10) Ok, not really mistakes but the rest of the stuff that I did: I accordion-folded a two-inch strip of paper and used that to attach the shuttle.  The letters I cut using the Silhouette from  DCWV metallic paper, and the background paper is October Afternoon Campfire collection.  The space ship is from The Cat's Pajamas.

11) BONUS MISTAKE:  FORGETTING TO VOTE!!  One mistake you DO NOT want to do.  :)  So go there now!

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 Birthday, Mr Corgi Creations!

It was my DH's birthday yesterday (yes, tax day!), and I always try to do a really special card for him.  He's a pilot, so when I saw that Bombshell Stamp had a downloadable pilot outfit for their Bombshell Angel stamp, I splurged and bought it to make this, a little joke based on "remove before flight" flags that pilots use.

I pulled out my copics (btw, target has put out their summer stuff, which includes red, white, or blue steel utensil bins for $10 for copic storage) and used the full-color image from the Bombshell website as a guide for coloring.  I used E53, E33, E35, and E37 for the pants, E35, E37, and E29 for the jacket, and gray sharpie markers for the boots.  I printed the "Remove Before Flight" tag on my computer.  I bet you can guess what happens when you go to remove it...

Tee-hee!!!  I used R24, R27, R29, and R59 to color her outfit, and E50, E51, and E21 for her skin. 

To make the slider, I first made a practice template, getting the window and slider slot in the right place.  After cutting those out, I cut a thin strip of acetate about 4 inches long (you could just use paper, but I had a different plan first that needed the clearness of the acetate) and also a strip of a paper about 3 inches long.  I adhered the center of the paper strip to the acetate strip to make a cross, then folded the ends around to meet in the middle, pushed them through the slot, and opened them up (kind of like the back of a brad).  Then I adhered another small strip of paper to keep the ends open and flat in the back.  Here's a picture showing the back.  The one on the left is when I first push the ends through, and the one on the right is the finished one.  You only need one slider, I just forgot to take a picture before I glued the second piece on. :)

And here is how it looks from the front:

Then I just simply adhered the end of the "Remove Before Flight" tag to the outfit, put a glue dot on the piece of cardstock on the slider, and attached the tag.  I adhered the entire piece to the card front using foam tape so the slider would have room to move back and forth. 

It definitely got high marks from Mr Corgi Creations, which made all of that engineering work worth it!