Stamping Ground

These cute mice are part of the Patchwork Kingdom range from the lovely peeps at the Crafthouse Press. Now I know that the ribbon is waaaay out of proportion to the mice and it dominates the card, but this is to give to micro neice for her birthday, and pink and sparkly are very much a requirement, and hey, she probably won't be critiquing with quite as much energy as us!

Thanks for your comments over the last post (rant, my daughter calls it, when I express an opinion). I want to stress a point that came out of what turned into quite a 'behind the scenes' debate. I'm not condemnatory of anyone who buys craft stash from any source that suits them. TV, interweb, shops, blah. We each have a variety of reasons for having or wanting to buy from the various sources. My point (made in about 1 million too many words, I know) was - in that shop on that day, I saw the community of customers that shopkeeper gal has established and nurtured behave rather badly, and I wanted to rant. And you, dear interweb, copped it! So...let's move on and talk about me again.

How's your memory? Are you fond of recalling - is that why you scrap? Are you great at using all of your kit, even if it might be a bit old fashioned? Just like fashion, all of our craft stuff gets re-imagined and sent out again....what about the re-shaping and brilliant marketing of the humble emery board into a distressing tool?

I was lucky enough to go the the first Creative Escape in 2006 with my dear friend, Willowy Blonde. There, in 3 classes out of 6, the biggest and most used product was the corner-round punch. Yep. Doesn't matter which make or brand you use, just make sure you round the corners of everything. So I took the one I bought from a CM girl about 300 years ago. Took a while to find; it really was buried under all the other punches that the advertisers told me I had to have. (Slot this into the file marked 'NEED', to be discussed).
So this week, I've been working on one of those BoBunny word albums as a workshop sample (HOME) in time for Mother's Day - nice huh. Now generally as a cardmaker and more generally as a scrapbooker, I stamp and stick stuff on. Occasionally, I decoupage which is after all, cutting out and sticking stuff on. So..I had to dredge the old memory for this album! Dry brushing the acrylic paint to add some definition to the image edges - it's been ages, yonks.....almost probably the last time I did this was the day before I brought the first of my Fluid Chalk inkpads. It was a bit like putting on a pair of flares. I used eyelets too....thanks god for the cropadile, remember though, all the clenching and pelvic floor exercising caused by the original 'punch and set' eyelet kits? Noisy times. And remember when the Bind it All was still in the Wish List stage of product development? For this album, I used book rings, and they are just great...so damn instant! And what did we do before chipboard? I used mount board, but not in any sophisticated die cut shapes I can tell you! I really enjoyed the mixture of techniques and tools and the idea that it all came together without taxing the memory is even better. Quite often I flick through a mag or consult you, dear interweb for hints and reminders on 'how to do', so this was a good memory flexing exercise! Of course, you may like to see a piccy of it. But I can't post one...I took it to the shop for display already, having completely forgotten to photograph it!