I’m back with a video tutorial this month after taking last month off. This video is very short and sweet, but I think you are going to like what you see. This month we are using the Sailing Home stamp set and we are making coasters for you to use while you are sitting out on your patio or deck, whatever you may call it, or as you lounge along side your backyard pool. Back yard pools are not a thing here in Colorado. We are more of a hot tub state, so in my case I would sit under the awning on my patio, next to the hot tub having a cool drink while I look up at the stars on a warm summer night and dream about being near the beach.
Being near the beach again is not going to be in the near future since my daughter moved back to Colorado at the end of February. I do have a trip planned for a visit back to Virginia Beach for the beginning of August, but I don’t think we are going to make it this year. I believe the resorts in Virginia are still closed and even if they weren’t I’m not sure I want to take that risk with the virus still around. But I have a pretty good imagination and with a glass of wine after dinner, I’ll sit by my hot tub this summer and dream about the beach as I use my summer beach coasters.
Some of the things you will need are sandstone coasters with cork backing, painter’s tape and permanent waterproof ink. The remainder of the items are listed at the bottom of this post. I hope you enjoy the video.
I’m back after another short break, but it is my goal this year to provide you with a video tutorial each month. It’s one of the things I’ve set out to do. And, if there isn’t one each month, then by the end of this year, by golly, there will be 12. Some months just might have two, especially if I skip a month. Sometimes time just gets away from me.
My original intent was to start the year with a tutorial using different stamp sets, but I decided since it is so late in the month, I might as well start by celebrating Valentine’s Day. I’m presenting to you a video that I have done in which I create a Valentine Pop-Up card I’ve designed. So I’ll show you two cards in the video and I will provide you with a list a supplies for both cards at the end of this post; however, I will only decorate the Valentine card in the video. The second card is self explanatory as far as decorating is concerned. So is the Valentine card, but I know that beginning stampers like to see things done, and that is completely understandable. If I chose to decorate both cards in the video it would just be way too long. I don’t want to put anyone to sleep. You can use the basic pop-up card for any occasion. Have fun decorating it any way you want.
I apologize in advance for some of the bloopers in the video. I am way out of practice, which is another sign that I need to do this more often. Also, if anything could go wrong while making this video, IT. DID.! From running out of disk space on my camera, to a camera battery dying in the middle of filming, to my phone ringing…to sloppy stamping…you name it and it happened. 🙂 I also had to drag out my old, slow laptop to edit the film, because I didn’t realize windows no longer provides downloads for Movie Maker for Windows 10. So in the process, I thought I’d learn a new movie maker software, but realized very late last night that wasn’t going to happen!
Here are photos of the Valentine Pop-Up!
And this one I call Painted Poppies Honey Bee Pop-Up!
So here you go with the video. Let me know if you have questions. Also, the link for the printed tutorial on how to make the pop-up mechanism for the inside of the card can be found here.
I know… I know! …it has been far too long since my last blog entry or since making a video or stamping! I don’t know what I’ve been doing since May, the date of my last REAL post. I do know that during the months of September and October we did a great deal of traveling. My husband and I spent the month of September in Florence, Italy. We talked about going to Italy for an extended stay for quite few years and finally decided to make this year be the year we did it. My 88-year-old mother made the trip with us during the first week of September. She was born in Italy in Villa S’ Angelo, L’Aquila well…88 years ago. (DUH! 🙂 She immigrated to the United States when she was 15.
There is a story there. She was 15 when she first met her father face to face. My grandfather came to the United States years before the rest of his family, around 1916 at the age of 16 to work. On one trip back to Italy, he married my grandmother, turned right around, and came back to the U. S. to continue working. He sent money back to my grandmother and on occasion went back to Italy for a visit. Nine months after returning to the states from a visit, another one of his children was born! My mom is the youngest of three. During World War II, my mother, grandmother, and uncles were stuck in Italy. Many Italian Americans were treated as poorly as Japanese-Americans were during the war. Some were even sent to camps here in the states; even some who were naturalized citizens. Italians, even though they served in our military and fought in World War II for the United States were viewed as a threat to national security during the war; especially if they spoke Italian. I’ve heard many stories from my mother about how poor they were while in Italy during the war; how they went without food because the Nazi’s took everything everyone had, and how often the money my grandfather sent back to them never made it through. After the war, my grandfather was finally able to send for his family and they immigrated to the United States. Therefore, at the age of 15, she finally met her father face-to-face for the first time on U. S. soil.
However, I digress! We took my mother back to Italy with us in September. She had been back several times before and on many of those occasions, I was fortunate enough to be able to go with her. Her first time back was in 1976 thirty-five years after arriving here. However, this last time we went she says will be her last time since she is 88. I told her to never say never, because we do not know what the future holds.
My mother, husband, and I spent our first week in Rome with a friend. The friend is from the same village as my mother, but she is only a few years older than I am. Her parents purchased the home that belonged to my grandparents after everyone had finally made it to the states. She and her late parents and her brother and sisters have always treated us as if we are members of their family. After the first week, my husband and I traveled by high-speed train to Florence and left my mother with her friends in hometown.
We rented an apartment on the website vrbo.com in the center of the city. There was a farmer’s market just around the corner from where it was situated. We visited it on almost a daily basis as we usually had breakfast and dinner in our apartment. We saw and did pretty much everything you can see and do in Florence. And there is a lot to see and do! We also took a one-day tour by bus to Pisa, Sienna, and San Gimingnano. Another day we took a bus tour of Cinque Terre. During our second week in Florence, we took another high-speed train to Milan so we could tour Lake Como. We spent two nights there after which we returned to Florence. During our last week, we did a wine tasting tour in Tuscany and we took a cooking class and learned how to make homemade pasta. I grew up watching my grandmother and mother make pasta, but I never learned how to do it. It was truly the trip of a lifetime! At the end of our fourth week in Florence (our fifth week in Italy) we took another high-speed train back to Rome and the next day flew back to the United States. We dropped my mother off in Ohio and spent two more days there, finally getting back to our home here in Colorado exactly six weeks after leaving it. It was good to be home!
So today I am sharing my version of the framed “Gather Together” piece that you will find on page 46 of the current holiday catalog. I used most everything in the Come To Gather Suite. The one item I did not use are the Tags & Feathers Elements because I usually buy those kinds of things and never end up using the. What I did do instead is stamp a few leaves in Crushed Curry using the retired Vintage Leaves stamp set and I cut them out using the Leaflets Framelits.
The frame I used measures 5-1/4″ x 9-1/2″. It is about 1/2″ wide. It isn’t a shadow box frame. It was originally intended to frame three 2.5″ x 3.5″ photos. I removed the mat that came with the frame and threw it away. I’ll probably regret that one day, but I just can’t hold on to everything. Something I realized once the project was finished is that a smaller frame, perhaps a 4″ x 6″, might be better because there would be less blank space on the background. Or I could possibly stamp a few pumpkins in the background .
All of the colors I used are the recommended colors that coordinate with the Come To Gather Designer Series Paper except for the Crushed Curry. It is not a recommended coordinating color but it does fall into the same color palate.
Hope you enjoyed reading about and seeing some of what I’ve been up to lately. I don’t know where the summer went, but it sure did go by quickly and here I am getting ready to get my house ready for Christmas!
If you have any questions about this project, feel free to message me! Until next time…
I’ve been gone for a while and there is no excuse! I’m not really sure what has been keeping me so busy lately, but I have been.
The peach tree in our back yard provided us with a bumper crop this year. Compared to last year’s 5-peach harvest, if peaches were dollars we’d have a million. After giving as many as we could away, eating many fresh ones, and making a cobbler and a pie, we’ve frozen about 23 quarts. We started making peach jam with them this week. As I write this, my husband is out back and is now picking a bumper crop of grapes from our grape vines. We again got very few last year. (He insists on planting these kinds of things.) He will be spending the day washing, bagging and freezing them until I can get to them for grape jelly at a later date. I pray to God the apple tree he planted a few years ago never produces fruit! 🙂 We start with strawberries from a small strawberry patch (it continues to grow) we have in June, cherries from our tree in July, August is peach month, then grapes…I don’t want apples, but…shhhhhhhhh! Please don’t tell him I said that. Oh, we can’t forget the tomatoes from the garden that make great pasta sauce! All kidding aside, there is nothing like the taste of a freshly picked piece of fruit or vegetable.
I’m getting ready for a very busy end of the year beginning with next week. I will be traveling without my husband to visit my daughter, her significant other, and my grand-daughter in Virginia Beach. I am looking forward to the adventure as I have never been there before. I mean, how could anyone not LIKE the beach! From there, my daughter and I will drive with the baby to Ohio to visit my mother and the rest of our family. We will celebrate Stella’s first birthday there. We will celebrate it again when we return to Virginia with her other grandmother who is set to arrive two days before I head back home.
Two weeks after returning to Colorado, my sister and brother-in-law will be visiting for three weeks as we plan a road trip to Yosemite National Park…or whatever is left of it after the devastating wildfires in Northern California this summer. I’m sure it will be fun! There are always wineries and Reno, Nevada and Lake Tahoe are only an hour away from where we will be staying.
November means…you guessed it…a week in Orlando, Florida with my bestie Carol for Stampin’ Up!’s 30 Anniversary Celebration at On Stage Live! Can’t wait! Can’t wait! I’ll get home and I will be very thankful that I DO NOT have to make Thanksgiving dinner this year as we have been invited elsewhere. So that means I’ll have a month to get ready for Christmas! Hopefully January will not be too much of a let down.
So this little project I am sharing today has been in the works for a while. I think I created it in July and decided to hold off awhile before sharing it. But then things started happening and I was almost afraid I wouldn’t get it posted at all. This is probably the best time for it, because it is well in advance of the Christmas holidays, which gives everyone time to react and actually make it. I had intended on doing a video, but when I started I just couldn’t seem to get my act together. Maybe it has been too long since my last one. So, I opted to do this the old-fashioned way by doing a written tutorial with a million and one photos to guide you.
The inspiration for this came one day while I browsing that web site that sucks your time away before you even realize it…what’s it called…Pintrist! 🙂 I saw this photo of a Christmas lantern and wondered why I couldn’t make one myself?!
So, one Sunday afternoon, I closeted myself into my tiny stamp room (my husband forgot about me until dinner time) with a pad of grid paper and a ream (there are 500 sheets in a ream) of cheep card stock on the desk in front of me. (I should have taken photos of my process, but I didn’t). And this is what I ended with.
There is no stamping in this project. Just a lot of measuring and cutting and gluing. I am very pleased with how it turned out. As I’ve mentioned before, sometimes I impress myself. It is amazing what we can do when we set our mind to it! And I think I realized in the creation of this lantern why I like paper crafting so much. When I was kid I didn’t do a lot of cutting and pasting, and making a big paper mess. We weren’t allowed because my mother always said it was wasting. “Don’t waste the tape!” or “Don’t waste the paper!” was what I heard. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming Mom. Times were different, money was tight. Paper was needed for homework or school. My mother grew up in Italy during World War II when you didn’t even think of coloring, or cutting, or pasting!
Any way…here are a few more photos and the link for the written tutorial.
If you have questions about it, please let me know. I am willing to help.
Until next time…
Happy Stamping!
P.S. I got the pine cones from a local craft store. Or if you are lucky, you can go out to your own back yard. 🙂
Some of the things you will need are sandstone coasters with cork backing, painter’s tape and permanent waterproof ink. The remainder of the items are listed at the bottom of this post. I hope you enjoy the video.
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