Just Me and Them

Titanic 100th Anniversary

Today is the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster and as an act of respect for this sad disaster I decided to create a card in its honour.  

I have been ever so fascinated by this tragic story for a very long time now so it seemed apt to create somethng in its memory.

If you would like to read how I created this card, check out a full article at the Frantic Stamper blog here.

Sharon

Vintage Card tutorial

I first began card making because of my obsessive love of vintage papers.  My problem was, I couldn’t bear to throw my scraps out – particularly if they were a vintage type of paper.  To combat the growing pile of scraps, I began making cards with them and moved on from there. 

Now-days I tend to use bright colourful papers but every so often I find a piece of vintage type paper that I just have to play with and go with it.  I was like this with this particular piece of paper and my card that I created.

 

The range of papers I used are from Bo Bunny and are called Et Cetera.  I used a piece called Cutouts  and literally cut sections out to create the base of my card.  The first piece was the main shield section which I adhered to the front of a Kraft card base.

 

Next I cut out the circle-ish shape with the zig-zagged edges.  I also cut out the centre for dimension and adhered it all to the centre of my card using foam tape.

 

I then put this aside and cut the thank you tag from the remaining patterned paper.  Once it was cut out, I curled the bottom of it around a pen so that it curled under then adhered the curled edged to my card and tied the other end around the circle section with twine.

 

Next, I added a satin bow just above the tag.

Finally I adhered a prima flower to the centre of my card, some glitter to the stems and couple of Petaloo strands.

 

Sharon

frantic Stamper Card

So, before I begin ... I have a secret confession to make!!  I have this amusing quirk where I will pick up anything on the ground that looks interesting.  I mean not anything thats gross or unhealthy but if it looks interesting and unique and no one wants it then chances are I'm going to pocket it for my crafting.

With that said, I went with Matt earlier this week to get his car washed at one of the Car Wash Bars and there were these peices of ripped up nylon netting in the drains.  I loved the way they looked against the concrete  and so they came home with me.  Why am I sharing this?  Well the card I'm about to share features a piece of this very same netting.

Here it is..

This card starts off as a long strip of card that is folded and trimmed until it becomes this overhanging diamond card.  Here is a close up of the front ...

Along with that awesome piece of 'found' net, I also used one of the beautiful Frantic Stamper stamps to complete my card.

If you like the idea of this design, it can easily be created by following this template with a piece of 5 inch by 12 inch card.

Along the width, measure 3 inches and 6 inches in from the left and score.  Mark the top and bottom at the 9 inch marks.

Finally, diagonal lines as shown in the template and cut away the waste (shown in black).  fold along all the scored lines with the diagonal lines towards you and the vertical lines away from you.

I used the following supplies from the Frantic Stamper website to finish off my card ...

Prima Flowers (Chocolate Cottage Blossoms)

Maya Road Bobble trim (red)

Hero Arts Texture Stamp (Out of Print)

Kaleidacolor Rainbow Inkpad (Autumn Leaves)

Kaisercraft papers (Sweet Nothings)

Nellie Snellen Leaf Punch

Frantic Stamper Stamp (155-08-K Swing Pear [plate 155])

Sharon

Facebook Personalities

I found this and couldnt resist sharing it - it certainly gives pause for thought...

Facebook brings out the worst in people

By ussoccerthoughts

 Hello Facebook users of the world. I’d like to welcome you to my hub today where I’m going to speak my mind about everyone’s favorite little social networking site. First off, I am not a member of the Facebook community. I just don’t see the need for it, personally. This hub is not going to be an indictment on all Facebook users as I can see value in the site. My wife loves it and checks it everyday so if I generalize everybody on there she’ll most likely make me sleep on the couch for a few days. It is because of her that I have read plenty of status updates and she’s always willing to notify me of the most ridiculous of all status’. Because of that experience, I am using this space to hopefully make the type of users I’m describing do a much needed self assessment. You’ll thank me afterwards.

Let’s begin with the most annoying Facebook personality, the attention seeker. You have a ton of these friends and you know exactly who they are. These are the types who always leave status’ that are just begging for a reaction whether its praise, agreement, well wishes, concern or any other type of communication. Basically, they have a need to be loved and they’ll stop at nothing to get it. These are the types who go on vacation and brag about how great everything they are doing is, ex “Sitting by the pool in Las Vegas drinking a margarita. My life is so good.” Or the people who get injured and feel the need to weave it into every status update. “I’m going to the grocery store today. Not gonna be easy with my sore ribs.” And the worst of all are the people who will ask for a response without even attempting to dance around it. “Going through a rough patch at home lately. Sure could use some good friends right now.” Frankly, if you had good friends you’d be talking to them or texting them and not pleading for attention from a mixture of friends, acquaintances and co-workers.

The attention seekers are a group of users that run rampant on Facebook and they are one of the main reasons that social networking has become so popular. They are also one of the reasons why I am not a part of this social network. I know plenty of people who would fall into the attention seeker category and being able to avoid their mindless endeavors to attract attention is a motivating factor in my refusal to join. So for those of you who fall into this category please, please, try to take it down a notch. Most of your “friends” don’t care and are probably laughing at you right now.

Another group who I have come to despise is the Facebook philosophers. Once again, everybody has plenty of these friends and you probably ignore most of what they say. If you don’t ignore them then you need to start immediately or risk potential damage to your medulla oblongata. What drives a person to concoct one of these hair-brained, nonsensical pseudo-philosophical rants? Most of the time these are childish over-reactions to an issue between a person and their significant other and despite the attempted generalization of the subject matter it is still obvious. Just because you use the term “people” does not do anything to hide the fact that you’re referring to your wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend.

What’s even better is when our Facebook philosopher decides to delve into something that is completely out of their league. Life advice is abundant on Facebook so use caution when reading because some of the ridiculousness may actually seep into your subconscious. Plato and Socrates and the other great philosophers in the world’s history are currently being spit on by these people. Next time you sit down at your computer and plan to write a philosophical statement for your friends on Facebook ask yourself this question, “will they really, deeply care about what I’m thinking?” Since the answer will always be no, simply type “sitting at home on Facebook” as your status and move forward.

The last type of user that we’re going to look at it is the serial poster. These are the people who are not just on Facebook all the time but they are the users that feel compelled to update their status constantly. These people also tend to refer to their friends collectively as “Facebook” or “FB.” In severe cases these people will actually say good morning and good night to “Facebook.” If you ever come to a point where you start saying good morning and good night to a website then you should drive to the nearest Psych ward and check yourself in for a weekend.

Serial posters are also responsible for flooding your updates page with useless comments and mindless observations. “Just got back from walking the dog.” Oh really? Wow, that must have been great. It’s very interesting to know what a person that I haven’t seen in over 12 years and barely had any sort of relationship with in the first place is doing on an hourly basis. It’s this type of Facebook member that may be the biggest contributing factor for me not wanting to sign up. I don’t even really care what my closest friends are doing every day let alone a random high school acquaintance.

So if you fall into any of the categories listed above then you might need to take a few minutes and reflect one what you’ve become. Maybe you’ll need to seek help from a professional or maybe you should just take a week and stay away from the site and use that time to take a walk or watch a movie. Facebook can be a drug for some members and for others it can feel like a bad trip. Use with caution and try to help your friends who have become unbearable. Good luck.

 

Seahorse Card

I found this file on my computer recently.  Forgotten and pushed to the side, feeling kind of sad and lonely!! I wrote it originally for a cardmaking class that I was holding but when I got sick a couple of months ago, I didnt end up doing the class and so the file kind of got forgotten as well.

So, to give it what it deserves, I decided to share it here -

My card was created with a range of stamps from the Kaszazz catalogue.  You can find a full downloadable instruction sheet by following the link here.

Sharon

Snowflake Pop-up Card

I have a new article/tutorial up over at the Frantic Stamper blog.  The article is all about making a simple pop up card using a snowflake image.  Here's what the mechanism inside looks like -

and here is what the finished card looks like on the outside -

 You can check it out by following this link here to the Frantic Stamper blog or if you prefer, there is a downloadable PDF version from here.

Sharon

Another Catch up

I'm meant to be doing my ESL homework right now, a course I've been doing with my work.  I kind of strayed a wee bit though.  I was going really well at first, then I had to check something out on Ebay and suddenly I found a whole heap of reasons for doing anything else.  Right now I'm kinda jonesing for painting my nails over finishing off the homework!!  Is this what our kids go through everyday??

I know I have to finish it - I will - eventually!  For now though, sit back because I want toshare some stuff I've been up to.

First, last sunday was my card class in my home.  We created two cards during this time -

 
and

 

Both cards have been created using products from the Kaszazz range.  If you'd like to have a try at the techniques we used, you can download the PDF files by clicking here for the 'Once Upon a Time' one and here for the 'Butterflies' one.

This isn't all I wanted to share though, I also have the last of my digi pages to share.  The ones I created in the last class of my Digi in Deeper course.

 

These are more of the photos that my Mum has been converting over from slides.  Its been a real kick seeing these photos, especially the ones of Mum and Dad.

Here is the very last page produced for the course -

 

Not much I can say about that one really?!?  It wasn't exactly in my comfort zone writing about myself!

Well, I guess I better get going - back to the homework?  I think ... not!  At least for a bit longer.

 

Article and More Digi Pages

Yesterday another article that I wrote was put up on the Frantic Stamper blog.  The article featured all the instructions on how I made this -

 

You can download the article from here.  If you also like the little notes that I created to put in my clipboard then please visit the blog here to download a copy of the digi file image I used.

Digi in Deeper course I have been doing.  Here are the latest pages I have created -

 

 

Finally, here is a page I created using all the skills I have learnt so far -

 

Well, back to making dinner and getting ready for another week of work!!

 

February Club Scrappit Now

The newsletter has actuqlly been out for a wee bit now but this is my first chance to catch up and share my photos.  Things are finally settling down, routines being established and  I finally feel like every job I have to do isn't generating another 1000!!

So, here are the pages that I created with this kit -

 

I love this first page, and the photo of Em and Sarge together!!  So much so that I created a tutorial on how I created the page, for the newsletter.  You can download this from here.

 
 

 

 

 

well, Im off to watch me a movie!!  Hopefully I'll be back before the weekend finishes!!

 

 

Websters Page and Sarah

Today a new article written by me was put up on the Frantic Stamper blog.  The article covers how I created a scrapbook page on Sarah using the latest range of Websters Page papers. 

Here is what it looks like ...

 

If you are interested, you can download a PDF copy of the article from here or visit the blog to read the article online.