Tim Holtz Layered Leaf Die and Embossing Folder

The Tim Holtz “Layered Leaf” die and embossing folder (#660039), which is now discontinued but does make an appearance on Ebay once in a while, makes a stunning leaf die cut. It’s sized for an A2 card so its size alone makes it a showstopper!

Tim Holtz Layered Leaf die and Embossing folder 660039.

For this card, I used black embossing powder and a stamp from the Tim Holtz “Ledger Script” stamp set (CMS 241) to create a shiny script background by heat embossing on black cardstock. I then used Winsor & Newton gold ink to spatter the background with, as I thought gold would look beautiful with the fall colours of a leaf.

I cut a leaf out of the black paper and positioned a piece of green cardstock behind it. I cut three leaves out of watercolour paper, sprayed them with some water, and then sprayed some Distress Spray Stain (Crackling Campfire, Lumberjack Plaid) and some Mica Stain (Crooked Broomstick) onto them. After they had dried, I chose the one I liked the best and used it as the top leaf, layering the other two leaves below it for some dimension.

I added some foam tape to the three leaves to prop them up a bit so that the green layer underneath could peek through. I added this to an A2 panel cut out of gold cardstock and then added that to an A2 card base.

For the sentiment, I used a phrase from the Tim Holtz “Noteworthy” stamp set (CMS 446) and embossed it onto black cardstock using Ranger gold embossing powder. I used an embossing pen to write the word “LEAF” onto black cardstock and embossed that with embossing powder as well. I used the same embossing pen to cross out the word “LIFE” and embossed that too. Then I used a label die from a Tim Holtz set called “Labels” (Sizzix #660060) to cut out the longer sentiment. For the shorter sentiment, I used the same die, but I used it twice, moving it the second time so that one end of it was placed just after the “F” in the word leaf, therefore creating a smaller label.

I love the way the fall colours pop on the black background! Why don’t you have a go at this combination?

Hero Arts My Monthly Hero Kit - August 2023

The Hero Arts’ Kit for the month of August was very easy to use and I found myself making 10 cards this month instead of 5. (See my YouTube video linked at the bottom of the post)

For the first card, I used a Tim Holtz Sizzix die set (Stacked Tiles, Hexagons) to first cut out three blue shapes. The same dies were used to cut out small parts of the kit’s images. Then the two layers were glued together. The sentiment was embossed with the embossing powder that came with the kit. So easy and clean!

For this card, I again simply cut out parts of the kit’s die cut images, this time using a dotted circle die and then glued them down to a blue cardstock background. The mountain tops were coloured white using a Pebeo paint pen. Again, the greeting was embossed and cut out using my scissors to create a slanted edge

For this card, I cut the trees out of black foam to give some dimension to the card. The background is comprised of various colours of cardstock cut on an angle (I tried to roughly cut a triangular shape) and glued down. Did I mention how easy these were to make?

For this one, I cut some more trees out of foam and then cut the foam vertically to include only a few trees. I spattered white paint on the black cardstock background and then cut out a black cardstock circle to resemble the moon. I doused the top of the circle with glue and then added the glitter that was included with the kit. I also added some shading to some parts of the butte die cut using a pencil crayon.

For this card I used the Hero Arts heart shaped nesting dies to cut out a green heart and coloured one of the stamped floral images with my Derwent coloursoft pencil crayons. The sentiment was cut out with a die I bought too long ago to remember where I got it. (lol) The sentiment is popped up with some foam tape for dimension and the edges were brushed with a little black ink to create a border.

For this card I drew lines with a ruler and a micron pen (see my video linked below for a quick demonstration). I coloured the sections with a pencil crayon before I added the sentiment, which I stamped in black Versafine ink. The floral arrangement was again coloured with the pencils, die cut, and then placed upon an oval stitched die cut. For the border, I used a leftover frame from a die cut “double stitched” rectangle card front that I cut out for another project.

For these next two cards, I used some old backgrounds that I created years ago by playing around with some Distress Oxide inks and the “smoosh” technique. (Pressed the Oxide inks onto a craft mat, then sprayed with water and then tapped a piece of watercolour paper (which had also been sprayed with water) into the watery ink. The cacti are rub ons that were included with the kit. I stamped the greeting on top using some Versafine ink.

This card was simply made by adding the rub ons to a small square of black cardstock which had been spattered with some white ink and left to dry for about 10 minutes.

The last card was made by using the same ink spattered cardstock as a background, adding the butte die cut (cut out of white paper) and then adding two die cuts from last December’s (2022) My Monthly Hero kit. The astronaut was coloured with pencil crayons and the moon was stamped onto hot pink cardstock for something different.

I hope you liked these! Check out the video here:

Mother's Day 2022 card using Tim Holtz markers and stamps.

I was reorganizing my craft room and trying to decide what to keep and what to purge when I came across my Tim Holtz Distress markers. I haven’t used them in a while and was wondering if I really needed to keep them so I decided to make a point of using them. I pulled out this “Floral Outlines” (CMS 430) Tim Holtz stamp by Stampers Anonymous and coloured it in with a few of the markers. I then spritzed very lightly (2-3 spritzes) some water on the stamp and stamped it on some Neenah Solar White 110 lb paper. In fact I was able to stamp it 5 times before the impression was too faint to be of interest. I liked the result so much that I decided to keep my markers. I might even buy some more if I can still find them as they’ve been discontinued!

The background text stamp is from Hero Arts - it’s called “Novel Prose” and is a 6” x 6” square. The letters were die cut using Stampin Up!’s “Playful Alphabet” dies. I die cut some pink fun foam twice using the letters so that they would stand out and then cut the letters from the original stamped card and glued them to the top of the stacked fun foam letters.

The photo corners are from an older Tim Holtz Bigz die called “ATC and Corners”. I added a few Pinkfresh “Glacier” jewels to the background. The card is 5” x 7”.

How to make a DIY Stendig Calendar

A Stendig calendar has been on my wish list for a long time and I probably would have finally just bought the original this year if I weren't on a spending freeze in order to pay off my mortgage in a contracted time period. When you are impatiently waiting years for something to end (ie. my mortgage) you find yourself gazing at the calendar a lot. I really wanted a huge wall calendar to look at, one that wouldn't require wearing glasses to read it and one whose only purpose was for counting down, not planning, because hey, I already have (two) planners for planning - that area's covered. ;). 

While pining after the beautifully stark (and large!) Stendig calendar for about a year, I realized that I had everything I needed to just make it myself:

Materials: 

-A bunch of large paper which I found at Value Village for $5. (The paper measures 22" wide and 17" high (56 cm x 43 cm) , which is not as large as the original Stendig but this isn't the orginal Stendig! 

-Letraset rub ons (more on that, below)

-Black bristol board

-2 Binder Clips

-Number stamps in a Helvetica font

-StazOn ink (black)

-Bone Folder

-Ruler

-Rotary Cutter

STEP ONE-DRAW THE VERTICAL LINES:  I divided the width of the paper by 7 (the number of days in the week) and drew lines vertically, the height of the paper. On the original Stendig, the days of the week are left-justified to these lines. Also I should point out that one of the signature design details of the Stendig is that there are NO HORIZONTAL lines. My version has horizontal lines because I needed them as a guide for stamping the numbers and then forgot to erase them, and instead drew over them with marker DOH!

One day while at Value Village, my friend said "Hey, do you want these?"

STEP TWO-USE RUB-ONS TO CREATE THE DAYS OF THE WEEK:  I came upon the mother lode of Letraset Rub-ons  a couple of years ago while at a thrift store. Letraset was the industry standard for rub ons back in the 70's. They were used by architects for mock ups, businesses for sign making and by kids like me who liked to use them for making, um, kid stuff. (The only thing I remember actually using them for, as a kid, was calendars, coincidentally). 

I've thought about organizing these, but I think it would ruin the fun of sifting through them, which brings me pleasure-they are made of a certain form of plastic that brings back fond memories of my childhood.

I have 5 boxes full (which I am never parting with, unless it is for creative purposes), and there is a wide selection of font sizes, although the font style is mainly Helvetica (yay!) or Helvetica-like.

I thought about making a red Stendig calendar, (maybe just the month of December to match holiday decor?) but sadly I did not have the correct size in Red.

I used the largest font size that I had (192 pt. HELVETICA MEDIUM - HAAS #707C) for the days of the week and set about cutting out the letters M, T, W, T, F, S (x2). I then used a plastic rubbing tool (essentially a pencil made of plastic) to rub the seven letters onto the paper. Knowing that these rub-ons were very old, I was worried that my project would fall apart at this stage, but they performed quite well overall. I did have to go back with a micron pen and fill in some cracks and missed spots but they were small.

STEP THREE-FIND A PROFESSIONAL PRINTER TO REPRODUCE THE ORIGINAL COPY:  Ok, this is the one step that is not exactly DIY in nature, but I didn't see the point in using up my precious rub-on stash to make 12 copies of the same thing so I set about finding a printer to print out a bunch of copies. I went to a professional printer and had 24 copies made which came to $37 CDN.  I made extras because I envisioned myself making stamping errrors in the next stage of the process and I didn't want to have a meltdown if I ruined a paper or two.

STEP FOUR-STAMP THE NUMBERS USING NUMBER STAMPS - I found an unmounted set of rubber stamps in a numbered Helvetica font on Ebay years ago. My boyfriend at the time, cut wood to size and we spent an evening gluing the stamps to foam and then to the wood. I love this set of stamps and even though I've switched almost exclusively to acrylic stamps now,  these clunky numbers still escape my purging efforts year after year. 

The original ink has faded after about 10 years. Should have used StazOn!

I spent a few hours one Sunday afternoon stamping out the months of the year for 2018.  I realized a bit too late, that the stamp pad I was using (StazOn Jet Black) was a bit dry. This created variations in the stamping which I actually quite like. The grainy-ness definitely adds to the handmade look.

The orginal Stendig has the calendar month printed on the top right side of the calendar. I omitted this step because I want to reuse these sheets year after year. Next year, I will just reorganize the sheets I've made into the proper order and then create the months that I don't already have, from the remaining extra blank sheets that I had printed. As long as I remember to switch the page at the end of every month, I think I should be ok.

STEP FIVE: CUT THE TOPPER FOR THE CALENDAR FROM A PIECE OF BRISTOL BOARD:  I took a black piece of bristol board that I had hanging around (I used to use it as a backdrop for one of my Etsy stores) and taped it to a piece of white foam board so that when I started cutting I wouldn't cut my desk top. 

I cut a piece that measured the same width as the calendar and sort of eyeballed how high it had to be. Then I scored two lines in the middle with a bone folder so that when I wrapped it around the paper, it would stay straight.

STEP SIX: ATTACH THE TOPPER TO THE CALENDAR WITH 2 BINDER CLIPS: I had trouble figuring out how I was going to attach the topper because I wanted to reuse the papers year after year so stapling was not a viable solution. I finally decided on binder clips because I knew they would be strong enough to hold the weight of the paper and they also have a little ring at the top which I knew would be easy to hang on a nail: 

The paper curls at the bottom, it is smaller than the original, the numbers are lighter than the days of the week, there is no month so I have to remember which month we are currently in (duh!), but I made it myself! and I saved $100+  times the number of years that I reuse it, so that makes me happy. Yay!

I hope this was helpful in case any of you want to make one of your own. You could use any set of number stamps that you want - they don't have to be Helvetica! Make it your own! Let me know if you do, ok?

Goals (and how I'm keeping myself on track with them)

Goal setting is not for the faint of heart. Personally, I'm always afraid that I won't reach my goals and that I'll feel like a failure at the end of the year. (I'm speaking from experience here).  So this year, I've decided to keep myself accountable by tracking my goals with a simple journal. This journal is only 8 pages long - one page for every goal. These goals relate to my creative endeavours.

To create my goals, I simply added up what I'd achieved in 2015 and tripled that number. For example I posted to Instagram 36 times in 2015 so in 2016 I'll be posting to Instagram 108 times. I repeated this for the other creative areas of my life and came up with numbers to strive for as far as reading books, creating scrapbook layouts etc. is concerned.

OK, so I set my goals. But from past experience, I know that the act of setting goals doesn't mean that they'll be reached. I think it's necessary to "check in" with your goals throughout the year, so I made a journal that will be part of my Traveller's Notebook, which is something that sits on my coffee table all year, right in front of me-hard to ignore!

I used some basic tools to create an 8 page notebook and then decorated the cover with these BoBunny alphabet gold foil rub ons. If you haven't tried these, they are very easy to apply even though technically they're foil which is usually quite fragile. They're a great alternative to buying a Minc if you just want to add a bit of gold foil without splurging on a machine to do so.

Before I stapled the booklet together, I stamped each page with a, um, circular graph? I'm not sure what the name of the shape is but it's a sectioned circle with 36 separate sections. It was a part of a Studio Calico stamp set:

This circular graph is where I'll be keeping track of my progress. On each page, I typed the name of my goal below the graph and coloured in my progress with a coloured marker.

Since there are 36 sections and my goal is 108 posts, I divided 108 by 36 to get the number 3.  Each section will be "worth" 3 Instagram posts. So after I've posted to Instagram 3 times, I can colour in a section. See how this keeps me in tune and on track with my goals? 

Then, I stapled the pages together with my new Swingline long arm stapler. 

Then I trimmed up the edges of the booklet using a craft knife:

Then I used a bone folder (a REAL BONE folder that my grandmother gave me!) to apply the gold foil rub ons:

And voila! A new goal tracker! 

I know that my goal tracker is already working because one of my goals is to post to my blog 12 times this year and YAY!, I've already completed that goal for the month!

10 Christmas Cards Featuring Pinkfresh Studio & the Simon Says Stamp December Card Kit

It's been 6 years since I last made and mailed my own Christmas cards. Oh deer, indeed. All it took to break that dreary streak was a Christmas collection featuring a cat carrying presents and a deer with a red bow around its neck.

It just so happens that about 100 Spectrum Noir markers made their way into my house recently and were begging to be used. I felt that this was the correct time for their inauguration.

Pinkfresh Studio is responsible for this sweet set of woodland friends. Their Christmas collection includes these frames which are part of a die cut pack, as well as a paper collection which is my favourite ever.

The Simon Says Stamp December Card Kit includes matching cardstock.

As well as some sticky sequins in matching colours.

I embellished this tree stamp from the kit with some older stamps from my collection.

I think it may be hard to tell from this picture, but I even broke open my unused containers of flock to create the snow on this card. A little inspiration can crack the seals of unused supplies pretty quickly.

There are some nice puffy stickers to use too, like these stars.

I'm 100% sure that I'll be making more cards with these supplies. I'm not even close to the bottom of my card list yet!

Watercolour tags featuring a magic donkey.

I've recently fallen in love with Caran D'ache neocolour crayons. I like them because they come in some really great colours and they seem to create a very pigmented watercolour (if you so choose) rather than the usually pale watercolour effect that I was getting from my paint palette watercolours. They also seem to provide more pigment than my Gelatos do. 

I recently bought some tag dies from Studio Calico and wanted to use my watercolours and some other supplies I had on hand to make some gift tags. Here are the supplies I used (plus the Neocolors pictured above and a watercolour pen):

"Hustle" pencil was a gift from Studio Calico with my last order, gold letter stickers were found in someone's office at an estate sale, Tag dies are from Studio calico and the vellum Sticky Tag Notes are from Dollarama.

I used the largest of the dies to cut the tags first, before watercolouring, because I wanted to control where the watercolour was being placed on the tag, although I think it would also be nice to use the dies on a previously watercoloured page. You'd probably end up with some nice random designs.

I rubbed my Neocolors on paper, rubbed my watercolour pen in the pigment, and then squeezed my pen and dripped the colour onto the tags, moving it around as I saw fit.  A donkey appeared on one of the tags right before my very eyes. It was the strangest thing. I can't say I was displeased about it though. Magic donkeys are welcome in my crafting area any day!

Magic donkey pictured center!

I created a "scribbled" effect by using the crayons directly  on the tags after I dripped the watercolours on them. I just lightly scribbled a bit as you can see on this tag:

After the tags were dry, I took some vellum labels that I bought at the dollar store and stuck them onto a piece of cardstock which I then ran through my typewriter to create some greetings/sayings for the tags.

The Magic Donkey will wish someone a Happy Birthday! 

 I also used some very old gold letter stickers that I found in someone's office at an estate sale to pretty up the tags. I had to really fight with those letter stickers. Picking them off their sheet was not the highlight of my day. I think crafting supplies have come a long way in recent years.  ;)

I think I'm going to be getting a lot of use out of those tag dies!

Scrapbooking in a Moleskine

After I decided that my 2015 planner would be a Moleskine journal, I became interested in what else Moleskine had to offer as far as journals went. I was thinking about how perfect it would be if my planner was made of watercolour paper so that I could use it as an art journal as well as a planner. After a little research, I discovered that Moleskine does indeed offer a line of watercolour journals in a large range of sizes. Personally, I was hoping for something huge because I didn't want to feel limited in any way. I found that Moleskine offered an A3 size watercolour journal.  For those who don't know what A3 means, it's pretty much a synonym for huge. It measures 12 by 16 inches and opens horizontally (it's wider than it is tall.) Of course, if you wanted to use it vertically you could, but "officially" they present it as a horizontal journal.

Because I've really begun to love my Neocolour watercolour crayons and my Gelatos, I wanted somewhere to experiment with them and I wanted a book for this purpose because I didn't want watercolour papers all over the place around my house. Then, it dawned on me that I could even scrapbook in it. 

Scrapbooking in this huge watercolour journal was sort of a revelation for me because a) I was finding that I was cramped by the 8.5 x 11 page that I usually use for scrapbooking and b) I was cutting watercolour paper down to this size because I liked that it felt sturdy and I didn't really want to go back to using regular cardstock after I got my neocolours.  I confess that I never really loved 12 x 12.   I guess I just prefer rectangles. And the fact that this rectangle was sideways was even more of a thrill. It just feels fresh and exciting. And that's what a new year should feel like, don't you think?

DIY 2015 Planner

Choosing a planner for 2015 was a difficult decision.  Although planners seem to have become a "thing" and there are many options available, I just couldn't seem to find one that met my needs. I spent hours looking online, but the more I looked, the more I felt unsatisfied with what I found. Finally, I went to Chapters (a Canadian book store similar to the USA's Barnes and Noble) hoping that I could wrap up this decision in an hour or so. And I actually did! Except that I didn't leave the store with what most people would consider a planner. 

I wandered around for a while looking for their planner section, and finally asked a sales associate where it might be, only to have him guide me to the journal section. Chapters has an extensive journal section which I often peruse but I didn't expect to find the planners there for some reason. As it turns out, they have a pretty limited selection of planners (as far as a paper, notebook, scrapbooking, office supply obsessed gal like me is concerned.) They have lovely planners made by Orla Kiely (paper was too thin for my liking), Kate Spade (nice, but I didn't find quite what I wanted) and others which just didn't fit my criteria. 

I began to think that a plain journal might be the best idea. As a paper enthusiast, I'm looking for something made with good quality paper that feels nice to manipulate and that can be stamped on, without there being "bleed through" to the other side of the page. And as a scrapbooker, lord knows that I have a ton of stamps that I can use to make the journal into a planner. Let me be specific though, by saying that this "planner" is only going to be used to plan one life - mine. I don't have a family whose appts. and dates need to be recorded, so I was just looking for something fairly simple.

One huge problem though! 95% of journals have lines in them. I think journal manufacturers must take polls of the general population as to whether people want lines in their books or not. And it certainly seems as though they do! (I was looking for a journal with blank pages) So anyway, I was standing there after 20 minutes of looking at the same huge shelf of journals, some part of me secretly hoping that a lineless journal would magically appear, and then I suddenly spotted exactly what I wanted - a large, lineless, plain papered, Moleskine journal and I was suddenly at ease with myself again.

Moleskine journals are sort of a paper extremist's dream come true. They are well made, have a sturdy cover (or not, if you so prefer, as they come with supple covers too), come with lines, without lines, with grids, and in an endless selection of sizes. I chose the 9 x 12 inch size (the "Folio" model) with regular blank paper. I found out later, that there are also watercolour paper filled Moleskines. When I found that out, I immediately bought the watercolour A3 size (12 x 18 inches) from Amazon and will be using it in a different way that I will write a separate blog post about later on this month. 

As soon as I got home, I set about looking for stamps to design/decorate my new dream-planner with. I found a Basic Grey set in my possesion (pictured below) which seems to have been designed for this exact purpose. I also pulled out what has become one of my favourite stamp sets of all time, the "Forest Stamp Set" by Life.Love.Paper for Studio Calico, and set about with a pencil and a ruler to draw the calendar for January.

Supplies, clockwise from left: "Forest Stamp Set" from Life.Love.Paper for Studio Calico, Color Theory Ink Pad (Glass Slipper) from Studio Calico, Calendar themed stamp set from Basic Grey (It says "Hello" at the top-not sure if this is the set's name or not), ruler, acrylic stamp block, hot pink velvet covered pencil that I bought at Michaels. Not pictured: "Slim 3 mm" washi tape purchased from Omer DeSerres.

When I was about 9 years old, I made my uncle a desk calendar for the year. I took his old desk calendar (one of those huge things that take up the whole of your desk and have leatherette corners to hold the pages in) and turned the huge, outdated pages over to the blank side. I spent hours designing, calculating, and then drawing a new calendar for him for the coming year. I did it because it was a project that really excited me then, and I have to say that I get just as excited doing it now, years later as I did back then. Except that now I have Big Girl tools. ;)

I'm also using a thin washi tape to highlight important calendar events and to create sections on the opposite side of the planner, where I make to-do lists,  keep track of appts. and goals for the year, and doodle.

I'd be interested to know if anyone else has decided to make their own planner from scratch, and how they went about doing it! If anyone has, or knows of anyone that has, please let me know - I'd love to see it!

First Card of 2015

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Hello 2015! And hello new blog! 

• (Card was made using Studio Calico's Park Ave. Card Kit.)