A Week (or two) in review

 

Hello strangers! It’s been a busy few weeks in the A Paper Buffet workshop.

Two weeks ago I sent off the Turkey Thanksgiving cards to California where they were very well received!

Here’s a few photos of the finished cards:

Individual cards: Base is SU Kraft, with Pumpkin Pie and chocolate chip. The sentiment as well as the Turkey is from Wildflower Kids  Stamps and were printed on SU Very Vanillan and coloured with prisma pencils

all 3o cards stacked!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wrapped up and ready to go!

 

 

 

 

 

I also finished the other big Thanksgiving order for 100 Pilgrim place cards.  These place cards also use Wildflower Kids Stamps, Violet and Rye.

   My little pilgrim army!

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some close-up shots:

 

These were a lot of work, each pilgrim was hand coloured, then cut and adhered to hand cut cards.  The cards were distressed with red and orange ink, then a maple leaf was stamped on the corner.

I’m so pleased with how these turned out; they were shipped out to New York State last week and should be arriving soon.  These will be used for a company holiday party, and I can’t wait to see how they look on the tables!

I had a productive weekend and will be adding new Christmas items this week.  I’ve also signed up for a few holiday Craft show, so I’m in full production mode.

 

Happy Monday!

Ciao for now,

Technorati Tags: A Paper Buffet,Wild Flower Kids Stamps,pilgrims,Thanksgiving,turkey,handmade,greeting cards,holiday,table place cards

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Gobble Gobble: Colouring 60 Turkeys with Prismas and OMS

I used to avoid stamped images that required a lot of colouring.  Although my kindergarten skills were sharp and I could colour within the lines, I could never get the shading and smoothness I had seen on, (or what felt like), everyone else’s cards.    I certainly felt there was no way I could colour with Copic markers, even though the effect is incredible.

Through several blog hops and tutorial posts, I discovered the  problems: I wasn’t using Prisma pencils (artists pencil crayons) and I wasn’t using Odourless Mineral Spirits (Gamsol).

When used with a colouring stub, nib, or whatever they’re called, the OMS blends the colour producing shading and a very smooth appearance.

To start, I outline the image, that way I can pull the colour in and have more shading around the edges.  It’s also great because this step doesn’t have to be exact- which is good when you’re colouring 60 turkeys!

 

I know there’s not going to be enough colour just from the edges, so I lightly colour in the body and each feather.  As you can see, the colouring isn’t even from the pencil crayon.  I remember in grade school, we shaved the pencil crayon with the edge of a scissor, then used a tissue to make the colour even and blended.  The OMS does the same thing, but is much easier, and more precise then shaving the pencil crayon with a scissor edge.

 

Now the colour is evenly blended and I have some depth of colour. 

 

 

 

 

Makes a huge difference, doesn’t it!?

I did the same thing with the “Thankful”; outlining the edges, then pulled the colour in with OMS

 

 

 

 

 

While I’m still no where near anything that Jen or Donna colours, or will be graduating to Copic markers any time soon, this has helped tremendously!

Try it out!

Happy Friday,

Ciao for now,

Technorati Tags: Thanksgiving,Turkey,colouring,prisma pencils,odorless mineral spirits,Gamsol,A Paper Buffet

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Paper Cuts

Switching gears from Christmas, I received a custom order request for a customer in California for some Thanksgiving cards.   My customer told me she sends a Turkey Thanksgiving card out every year, and she thought my card was too cute to pass up.

 

How fun would it be to receive a turkey card every year!

Now that the baby boxes are finished (and of course I forgot to take a picture before I packed them up and delivered them), I can start this Thanksgiving order.

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve cut all the paper for the cards.  I don’t know what it is, but I love the stacks of paper.  Maybe because it’s the only thing that’s organized on my dining room work table!

The turkey image is from Wild Flower Kids Stamp Autumn release from last year when I was lucky enough to be on their design team.  I love Jen’s images, they are super cute and lots of fun to colour.

Next will be the assembly and the colouring of the turkeys.  For 30 cards, I’ll colour 60 turkeys…as you can see from the picture of the finished turkey, the head and body have been cut out and popped up for dimension.  It’s a lot of work, but the effect is worth it.

Stay tuned for more progress reports and another! big Thanksgiving order featuring another one of Jen’s Wild Flower Kids digital stamps.

Happy Friday!

Ciao for now,

Technorati Tags: Thanksgiving,turkey,handmade greeting cards,Wild Flower Kids Stamps,A Paper Buffet

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Gobble Gobble!

 

Perhaps this is terrible timing, with the recent  H1N1 outbreak in turkeys…but what can you do?

I had a day off today to attend some appointments, and was looking forward to a day of stamping.  However, Fate had another plan for me today. 

I went to (finally!) reinstall my printer today, and as I plugged the USB cable in, my mouse and keyboard ceased to function. This happened last week, for 3 days, but I plugged in my work keyboard and a spare mouse.  A few days rest for the entire computer and they were back up and running.  Not the case today.  After muttering a few choice words in Italian,  I hopped in the car and bought a new keyboard and mouse.  I went wireless again, which goes against a lot of market research, but I’m hopelessly addicted to my Microsoft keyboard functions built into the keyboard…programmable favourite buttons, media player controls, one touch email… and a corded keyboard is hard to find these days!

So needless to say, the time I wanted to spend stamping, was spent finding, purchasing, and installing my new keyboard.   It’s a split keyboard, so the jury is still out on if I’ll be able to adapt or not.

I did manage to get some stamping done and catch up on using the Wild Flower Kids Stamps Autumn Splendour digital release.

I just loved this little turkey so much, I printed him in two sizes on SU Very Vanilla Cardstock and coloured him with my prisma pencils and some Gamsol I got from Tonya at Stamp Happens (I love! that applicator bottle!)

I’m on the Kraft cardstock bandwagon again, and kept this card really simple.  I used my Score-Pal to make the frame, and then added my cut out image to the centre, some SU Chocolate Chip Taffeta ribbon,…eh voila!

I actually printed two turkey’s the same size and cut out the body, and popped it up on dimensionals, here’s a close up:

 

 

 

 

For my second card, I used a favourite layout…I think it may have come from the Clean and Simple blog, but I’m really not sure.  I will be using this layout again and again!

This little turkey is printed out a bit smaller than my card #1, but I used the same colours and the same effect; cutting out the body on a second image and popping up on dimensionals.  The sentiment is also from the Autumn Splendour set, and perfect for Thanksgiving, but can be used for every day life too!

I apologize if the pictures are a bit dark…I’ve misplaced all the registration info for PS Elements and can’t find the Serial Number…so I’m stuck using Picassa until I figure out a backup plan.

Happy Tuesday!

Ciao for now,

 

Technorati Tags: thanksgiving,turkey,stamping,digital stamps,Wild Flower Kids Rubber Stamps,Stamp Happens,A Paper Buffet,Stampin Up,thankful

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We now return to our reguarly scheduled programming

Hi folks!
Well, it's been pretty quiet around here for a few reasons 1) main computer had a corrupt registry and I had to wait for the manufacturer to send me the backup disks so I could reformat it. Big thanks to C (Ethan's dad) for walking me through the process! and 2) a very busy work week with quite a bit of travel and overnight trips.

With the home/main computer up and running,...almost; I'm still one-by-one reloading the printer, and specific programs I had on there I should be back to regular posting next week.

I had planned to fool you and resume posting this past Thursday, but it's Canadian Thanksgiving and as I was on the train about to start up the laptop to write my post...I realized my jump drive with all my project pictures was safely sitting on my desk in London.

I'm at my parents' house now; yesterday my sister and I made the typically 4 hour drive up...and it became a 7 hour drive. We lamented over the odometer which told us in a measly 4 hours we had traveled an even more measly 160 km. That's an average of 40 km/hr. A permanent school zone.

A combination of sheer volume of traffic, and an unsightly accident (it appeared no one was seriously hurt, but my theory is a trailer with 2 kayaks and 2 canoes unhooked from the RV that was towing it and rolled into a Mazda 3, which was then subsequently rear ended. Canoes and kayaks all over a 4 lane highway) created the delays.

Onto the update: I've got some projects to share with you next week when I get back to London and my supplies for my Christmas cards have arrived, so I'll be designing this weekend, and starting production next weekend!

To my Canadian bloggers- Happy Thanksgiving!
To all my bloggers Happy Saturday!

ps- Good luck in your first race tomorrow Mau!

Ciao for now,

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