Sunday, June 13, 2010

My Challenge

As I was sitting at my desk yesterday, finishing off some cards for a card swap, it occurred to me that, since I had bought so many new stamps while I was away, I needed to make sure that I used them - at  least once!!
So I issued myself a little challenge - to use every stamp at least once during the next month. Given that some of the stamp sets I bought had at least 8 stamps, and I got quite a few sets... that is a lot of stamps to use.

So, here is the result for the first day of my challenge:
The Tanda Teaser for this week is a Man card.
This is one of Tanda's stamps from the Retro Men Set 1. I stamped it using the black Memento pad, cut it with the largest nestabilities oval, then used the same die to cut the backing, which is a leather-look paper from some scraps that I had. I also embossed the die cut to provide an edge to the piece.

Layered on a cuttlebug embossed card outlined with a gold marker, then again onto a brown card. I cut the corner pieces from the same scrap of leather-look paper with a Martha Stewart photo corner punch. The whole was then attached to the beige card.

The sentiment is from a Dark Room Studio set that I bought in Australia last year.

The second piece is an ATC book that I made for my alphabet ATCs.
For the Card Making World New Zealand Crafters Group, we are currently running an alphabet ATC swap. I was thinking about how to store the ones I have made but not sent and I found the instructions for making a little folder that contains 4 ATCs. Carol from Hamilton sent the instructions to me and I found that you could join several together to make a book.

The cover detail includes a stamp from the Les Petite Whimsies collection by Stampington and Company which I stamped on card that I had already coloured with Tattered Rose, Victorian Velvet and Weathered Wood Distress Inks. I masked the image, then stamped swirls with WWDI and little cogs with VVDI. The little cogs stamps was from my friend Zoe, who designed a set of stamps especially for our meet at Wantage.
I coloured some swirls that I had cut with the Cricut to attached to the front with brads, along with a label.
I made 7 little folders and sewed them together through the spines, then attached to the spine of the cover, along with a ribbon to add some more colour and texture.

I attached pink ribbons to the cover, then added the two cards I had made for the decorations.

Quite pleased with the result, but always room for improvement.

I will do a tutorial on this and share it with the other NZ Crafters for them to store their ATC collections.

I also made some other cards, which I have coloured using my Copics, but will share these next week as they are for the card swap and I don't want to let the cat out of the bag, so to speak!!!
Total new stamps used yesterday: 5
Enjoy!

3 comments:

sam21ski said...

WOW Janet, you've been busy and you've set yourself a challenge there!!!

Lovely stuff xxxx

sue law said...

Hi Janet, I love your atc holder it's really pretty! Look forward to seeing the tutorial!

Your fathers day card is great too....he reminds me of my Great Uncle when he was younger.

Good luck with your personal challenge!
sue
x

Zoechaos said...

Rather you than me! have quite a few stamps waiting to see ink or a pair of scissors come to that! Great work your Man card is such a great card for an OH while you atc book is fab and bless you using the cogs on it. xx Zoe