God's Little Lamb ~ Petal Cone Basket and Bleaching Technique

I saw these in a few places online. I have no idea the ingenious stamper that was the ORIGINAL designer for this. but when my girlfriend Pam was at the house on Friday, to make petal cones for her granddaughters baptism, I said "give me a minute to try something I saw online"..

If this was your original idea, can you email me and I'll change my post to give you credit! :D For my local gals, if they have a project in mind, and make a purchase to make a project, when the goodies get here we roll up our sleeves together.

I've been doing favors all week for two different parties and invitations. It's so fun and rewarding to see how special it makes people feel when they finish their artwork that is worthy of a gallery! (in my humble opinion!).

Okay ~~~ Where to start.. I guess, I'll tell you about the handle first.. I took a regular 8 1/2" x 11" piece of matching cardstock, and punched the 8 1/2" end to make the handles. After doing a few of these you'll need a break, but I'm surprised how sturdy the handles really are! I punched holes on either side of my basket and ran a brad to attach the handle.... The best part of this punch is, when you punch one 8 1/2" strip, you have a regular piece of paper and dont need to cut in order to start the next strip.. it goes really quick.. I did them while catching up on my favorite soap in front of the tv.. :D

The base of the basket is two petal cone cut outs.. From where the petal folds, I measured down two inches and scored.. **note ~ this is a little tricky, you have to turn your project and essentially score twice to make it come together.. Then you cut at 3 inches.. There is a little tab left over at the bottom, and you need to slice upward to make the base.. I hope that's clear.. maybe i'll need to "do" a tutorial for it. If you google this petal cone basket, i'm sure you'll find a bunch of posts on it. So ~ we made a little less than 40 of these on Friday morning.

This set is ANOTHER set that I'll never part with, and when my friend Pam told me what she wanted for favors for her granddaughters christening... I knew what set I wanted to pull out! The invites had a lamb on them and referred to God's Little Lamb.. Isn't that the coolest?? So I embossed this lamb, and the post yesterday explains about the process for that.. Next I took some ordinary house bleach, and put it in a glass bowl on top of some paper towels. I used an aqua painter and picked up the bleach to bleach out the "fluffy part" of the lamb.. So it's on pink paper, but the lamb is white. This was our "scratch" sample, so on this one we also bleached the little heart necklace and the face of the lamb to color it in, but pirouette is such a light color pink, we decided that we would just leave it and run a blush blossom marker for the face, not color the necklace and drop a JEWEL self adhesive bling on top..

We saved all the leftover pieces from the die cuts and shredded them to make "Easter" grass in the bottom of the basket. They are so beautiful! I originally thought I should cut the paper banner a bit shorter, but the more I looked at it, I think I like the extra long, ribbon like banner that is also cut from the same die. Pam is a kindergarten teacher and kept the "ice cream" looking pink tops for her students.. she'll be making ice cream with them as the weather gets nicer.. Best of all... when you make it with paper, there's no calories!

This Sunday, my friend Jo and her friend Chris were at the house.. Of course we made a card, and I had an idea to take this idea to the elegant side... So I made one with craft paper..

We colored the image for this one with a marker and added dazzling diamonds to the flower.. A little seam binding and this basket is ready to go.. it's a really quick project and they make GORGEOUS favors, especially this time of year!

If you are local to me and would like to see how to assemble one, pop on by this week... I'm making 72 more for a part this weekend.. :D

Happy Wednesday!

Rubbah hugs,
Selene Kempton

Stamping club card

This week is card club here at my stamping studio. Here's one of the projects we made. I just love this stamp set from the new summer mini that will be coming out this Saturday!

Hope you're having a great Thursday!

A weekend with family

This weekend, my aunt and uncle celebrated 50 years of marriage with a great party Saturday night. My brother flew in from Florida and it was wonderful to spend some time together. My little one didn't want her uncle to go home. Except for a few obligations, I put the computer down, and just enjoyed my family.

Anyway ~ 50 years is a big deal, so I wanted to make them something special. I had received the most beautiful swap from my friend Gretchen, who was inspired by someone else... :) Who made this mini album using two envelopes and I decided to give my own version a try. It was a labor of love and took me hours to make but I really wanted to share it. So the above version is how you look at the "purse" style album before opening it. It has a piece of ribbon on the back, so if my aunt wants to use it like a brag book it looks like a pocketbook. The v on the front comes from the scallop square die, and I layered bridesmaid paper over soft suede and sponged using circle motions to color the tip.

Now I think I'll start at the end. This is the box I made for it. I used gold and bridesmaid paper and made a simple box.
This view shows how nice and snug my envelope album fits in the box. Now when you open the album (it's held together with a velcro dot, I put at the top "book of memories". In the card I also gave her directions on what to do with the book. Add photos, write about the awesome party and so on... Here are two photos so you can see what it looks like opened up. this is the top and bottom of the album, and cards slide out from behind the white panels.
I embossed the medallion gold on gold. (isnt that gorgeous??) Then I used my new punches to punch out some shapes so that's why my punched shapes on the below cards, (which fit inside) look so detailed and vintage.
This shows the card sliding out of the envelope (which is stuck to the back of the gold middle piece.
And here's a photo of the other side of the slide out. Isn't that flower gorgeous with the gold on gold embossed medallion!?!
On the bottom, I embossed a handwritten signed note.
I'm not sure if you can see from my photos how it was actually put together, but I can tell you it was certainly a labor of love. Happy Tuesday!!

Selene Kempton

Anniversary Card

This past Wednesday (veterans day) was my 9th wedding anniversary. I wanted to make a special card for my sweetheart and here's what I came up with.

I used the fall paper from Stampin' Up's mini catalog. This card is very distressed. I pulled layers apart and distressed the edges on the brown layer and the layer with the clock. I used chocolate chip ribbon, and spritzed the whole card with my color spritzer.

Happy Anniversary Babe!