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In the next two weeks I will be teaching A Muse Valentines classes at Right At Home Scrapbooking, Abeille, and The Scrapbooker's Dream. I will be teaching the same five cards at all of these stores (see my complete schedule in the right sidebar), and just wanted to a) let you all know that; and b) share the designs right here on my blog! And there they are! :) Hope to see some of you in Attleboro, Brookline, and Tewksbury!
I must admit that I had been so swept away by A Muse's adorable recent Sweet Shop release that I had been neglecting some of my older images. I took a peek at my huge stash of A Muse and fell in love all over again with these images (below). I was also reminded of how much I *heart* A Muse's mod dot square notecards -- they can make such an awesome and fast single-layer card! But, because I didn't want my Copic markers to soak through to the other side (sometimes I don't care but yesterday I did care), I stamped the berries on white cardstock and punched them out with a 3/4" circle punch -- solved the soak-through problem without compromising the adorable mod dots one bit. Some Crystal Stickles made the berries sparkle.
I have a couple of Valentines workshops coming up this and next Thursday evening in my home, and I finally got around to designing the four cards. I was especially loving the red fun flock on the sock monkey's heart. It was, indeed, a flocking good time in my craft room yesterday! :)
... to start teaching my A Muse Valentine's Day classes (first one's next week)!! The new A Muse images are adorable -- and of course, so are the older ones, too!! Just wanted to share a couple of my recent designs. I've posted these, and a few more, to my "Other Designs" photo album. Apologies for the poor quality of some of my pics... I'm workin' on it. :)
Here is my third and final A Muse *sneak peek* before the new Sweet Shop release tomorrow! For some inexplicable reason, I found the inspiration for this card from those cheesy 80s summer camp movies (like Meatballs), where there is mischief and romance between a boys' camp and a girls' camp that are separated by a lake or something. I imagined that these little birdies were sneaking a way to see one another across the grass that separates their birdbaths. It sounds ridiculous, but seriously, that was my idea... and I'm quite pleased with the result, though I wish I'd stamped the grass a little straighter. Ah well, should've used the Stamp-A-Ma-Jig for that image, too! :)
You can't really tell in the photo, but I used Spica markers to add some shimmery detail (turquoise on his wing, pink on her wing, and clear in the birdbaths' water).
I just wanted to make a quick plug for a product that has recently knocked my socks off (clear off!) AND that has allowed me to finally achieve the super-glittery snowflakes that until now had existed only in my dreams!
It's hard to really capture a good photo of a glittery image, and this image is the best that I (ever the amateur photographer) could do. I bought this huge snowflake image (made by Savvy) a few years ago and have always envisioned using it to make a simple card featuring a sole glittery flake. Ah yes. But how to do? I've experimented with various adhesives, which worked to varying degrees but ALWAYS resulted in a glittery mess -- a mess I did not wish to inflict on the card's intended recipient (KWIM)?
Enter A Muse's Simple Stick, a white product (in a little jar that looks just like embossing powder) that I had never checked out... until I took a class with Julie and Linda this past fall. To make this card, I stamped my snowflake with Versamark (good and inked up), then immediately covered the image with Simple Stick powder. Tapped off the excess powder and zapped the powdered image with my embossing heat tool *just* long enough to melt the powder (which BTW smells kinda funky when it melts) -- then ran like a maniac to dunk the melted image into my vat of ultrafine glitter. Tapped off the excess glitter and gave the glittered image another quick zap with the heat tool (for good measure), and... there it is. A perfect, crisp, incredibly glittery image that does NOT shed glitter in its wake. I kept rubbing my fingers over the image (yes, a little compulsively) to see if the glitter would get all over my hands... and it stayed put. NICE!
If you haven't checked out Simple Stick yet... you just might want to do so. :) It just might change your life.
P.S. I do have one more A Muse sneak peek coming soon, so stay tuned! And be sure to keep checking out the blogs of the other members of the A Muse Creative Team -- amazing stuff is going on out there!!
And here is another sneak peek using images (and new cardstock) from A Muse's upcoming Valentine's release. I just loved these images, for a number of reasons... the biggest being that since I am a huge (HUGE) Beatles fan, I loved that the sentiment reminded me of my favorite fab 4. I also loved these images because 1) who doesn't love chocolate?; and 2) it's always great to have Valentine's images that are not explicitly lovey-dovey... because as we card-making maniacs know, a lot of the peeps we make cards for aren't people we are romantic with, but rather are just our good friends. :)
Enjoy this sneak peek, once again peppered with twinkle stickers!
It's that time of year again... time for A Muse Sneak Peeks!
Here's my first one. Yeah, ok, I went a little overboard with the heart twinkle stickers... but I just could not resist. At first I only blinged out the two hearts in the sentiment... but then when I looked at the pooches, beaming with such doggie love at one another... I had to bling out their little heart too. :)
Love the new cardstock colors and the Pink Tutu sheer ribbon!!!!
Be sure to check out the blogs of all of the members of A Muse's creative team... there will be sneak peeks galore!
