More Trendy Trees

I am so in love with the Trendy Trees set. Stampin' Up! makes such versatile sets! I read about this technique on Split Coast Stampers and just had to try it. Candles make a great addition to any present. Coordinating candles are the best. For today's prject you need some white tissue paper, some wax tissue paper, and a heat embossing gun. First stamp your images onto the white tissue paper just as if it were your usual paper. Craft or pigment ink works so much better for this project. As you can see in the picture to the right the green ink is smooth whereas the brown trunk shows the grain of the tissue paper. The pigment ink tends to fade through the paper so be sure to watch out for smudges. Next you will cut around your image with scissors. Try to get pretty close to the image. I stamped my tree with Stampin' Up! Gable Green craft ink and Chocoalte Chip dye ink. Next you will take a strip of wax paper larger than your image. Place your tissue paper cut out on the candle where you want it. Wrap the wax paper around the tissue paper. Heat with your embossing gun until the wax paper becomes pretty see through. It transfers the wax from the paper on top of your tissue paper and the wax of the candle softens a bit too. Next I stamped other Trendy Trees in Glorious Green craft ink, Real Red craft ink, and more Chocolate Chip dye ink. I repeated the same process of cutting out the image and then wrapping it with wax paper and heating it for each tree. This is a great quick and easy gift. I purchase these candles at Hobby Lobby. Candles were 50% off that week so I got a pack of 10 for $2.50. The tissue paper came from Dollar Tree. I havent even used a whole sheet yet. I also purchased wax paper from Dollar Tree. I went with the brand name because I believe that it has more wax on it and works better. I have not tried an off brand. This uses so little wax paper because you can reuse the sheet that I just keep a roll in my craft room. I save the cheap stuff for the kitchen! If you try out this technique feel free to leave a comment with either your project or a link to it. I hope you enjoy this technique as much as I do.

Covered Spiral Notebook

I am starting a Medical Terminology class for work today. It will help me to become a Certified Professional Coder. To encourage me I decided to make my notebook pretty. I will definitely need this incentive to go to class after work! I am usually not a big fan of orange but I needed another accent color and my background paper already had orange. First I cut a piece of 12x12 paper to fit a spiral notebook. This step would up not being important because when I adhered it (with TONS of adhesive so that it became unpeelable) it got a bit off kilter. I then used my Big Shot to cut out "medical terminology" in baby blue card stock with my Quickutz 2x2 alphabet dies in Moxie. This made the process so much faster because I could put multiple letters in at once. I cut some Stampin' Up! card stock in orange into 1 inch wide strips. I am not sure what the specific shade of orange is because the paper was from some scraps that were genrously given to me. This shade of orange coordinates perfectly with my non-Stampin' Up! paper. I used my Xyron machine to put adhesive on the back of all of those letters. I save the lines under the O's and the I's dots for later. I adhered all the letters to the strips and left a one inch margin on either side of each word. I then used my two way glue pen to adhere the I's dots and O's lines. I knew that my notebook needed something else to be special and I have really been on an owl kick for the past couple of months so I dug out a cute owl from my Hero Arts Sparkle Clear Set called Yoo Hoo. I stamped him with StaZon Jet Black ink so that he would not smudge. I colored him in with colored pencils and used Gamsol to blend him I decided that he wasn't brown enough for me and used a Marvy marker to accentuate him with more brown. I colored the edges of his eyes blue to match the background paper. I then stamped the whole paper with the owl with Versamark ink. I poured clear embossing powder on it and heat embossed it. I only added one layer because I wasn't really going for a full on faux glass technique just an even layer of shine without the curling effect that liquid glue has. I then cut out the owl. It is important to cut out the shape afterwards so that you get an even coat of embossing and have something to hold onto while embossing. I then adhered the strips to my notebook after laying them out and deciding where I wanted the owl. For the final step I adhered the owl. I was not too happy with the amount of black notebook showing around the edges and the background paper overlapping so I decided to take an Exacto knife and trim the edges. This wound up cutting into the notebook cover some and making it uneven. I would recommend using scissors next time.

Maya Road Post-It Note Holder

I went on a major shopping spree this weekend and picked up this cute Maya Road clear stamp set. It is called Build A Tree Singleton Stamp Set and was (obviously) $4.99. I just couldn't pass it up! Scrapbooks from the Heart had a $5 off any $10 purchase so I had to get them... along with a little something for Janna's upcoming birthday. I love how the leaves were designed. Each leaf can be attached to the tree on either side. Having both a bird and an owl give you many options so that you're not digging through your other stamp sets to find something that coordinates. I did not even notice the little heart in the tree until I got the stamp set home. I am thinking about making an engagement card with this set. Wouldn't this tree look cute with shiny silver rings instead of leaves?

I decided that this stamp set would be perfect for a project that I have been thinking about for a while: Post-It Note holders. I saw them on another blog and have been obsessing over them ever since.

I used Stampin' Up! Chocolate Chip dye ink to stamp the tree trunk. I then used Colorbox pigment ink to stamp the leaves. The bird was stamped in blue Colorbox pigment ink. I used my Marvy marker to color the little heart in the tree trunk red. I used my Aqua Painter (a water color brush that is prefilled with water) to paint the leaves with a lighter green Colorbox pigment ink. I used my Stampin' Up! Blender pen and my Colorbox pigment ink to color in the bird. His wing was colored with another Marvy marker. I stamped the pear on a piece of baby blue card stock with the Colorbox pigment ink. It was darker than the Versamark ink and helped my project coordinate with the post it notes. After stamping the pears for the background I stamped a pear onto every Post-It note with Colorbox pigment ink. Thank goodness I didn't get real Post-It notes-those have more pages! I matted my tree image on bright green cardstock and adhered it to my pear background. I slid it into an acryllic picture fram from the Dollar Tree. To complete my project I used The Paper Studio's Double sided Mounting Tape from Hobby Lobby. It is essential that you use some type of heavy-duty adhesive for the Post-It notes otherwise they will eventually fall or peel off. Thanks for looking!