Suzanne's Stamping Garden

When was the last time you took inventory of your craft stuff? Are you like me and enjoy more than one craft?  We recently moved and downsized. This past month I've come to realize that if you name a craft--I've probably tried it and bet there is something I can contribute to your stash. One find was a stash of hardanger embroidery items that haven't been touched in a long time! Along with cross-stitch, quilting, beading, diamond painting, items for my 19-year-old's baby scrapbook (that hasn't been started), and of course, my first love, cardmaking. Visualize stuffing a bratwurst into a straw. That is what it is like consolidating it into my new craft room. It is coming along, but not as quickly as I had hoped. I LOVE that I am on the first floor with a couple of windows for natural light. I need to be creative on how this all gets stored. The beauty of this move is that it allows me to be brutal on what to save, what to store for a future project and what I can do...

  Happy New Year my friends! I hope you are enjoying your long weekend, and for those of us in the Midwest, our unseasonably warm temperatures. Masking Technique The pictured card I made recently uses two different masking techniques. The first one is simply taking painter's tape horizontally on my card and then sponging a rainbow of colors in between the two pieces of painter's tape. After removing the painter's tape you can ink a sentiment into the stripe or add decorations using markers. If you'd like to take that a step further, to complete a piece like mine on the left, before you sponge on the rainbow of colors for the background in the stripe, stamp some floral images in the white stripe you created between the painter's tape.  Before putting those stamps away, stamp one of each floral image onto some Stampin' Up! masking paper or you can use sticky/post-it notes, making sure that a portion of the stamped design is on the opposite side of the sticky part....