A bit about me . . .

So today's post is a little different! My dear friend Colleen Dietrich, of Dietrich Designs, called me last week to ask if she could tag me as part of a blog hop she is participating in. It seems that the goal of the hop is to learn about other blogger/artists by sharing some details about one's self, one's work, and one's creative process in a fun "interview" style blog post. The posters were encouraged to tag one or two fellow bloggers to share the fun, and I'm so honored that Colleen chose me! Colleen asked me to share some details about myself in this post today, so here goes . . .

1) How do you know Colleen?

My friend and fellow stamper, Colleen Dietrich

I first "met" Colleen on Splitcoast Stampers sometime after I first joined that online community in 2009. She always made the most beautiful cards and left the most wonderful comments. Not much has changed in either area! Before long we were sending PMs (that is, private messages) through Splitcoast, then exchanging our email addresses for more direct access, then snail-mail addresses so we could mail cards to one another, and finally phone numbers so we could chat even more easily.

It has been a wonderful journey building this friendship of ours! To have someone to chat with about our shared papercrafting interests has been a godsend--someone who understands the drool-worthiness of a new stamp set or paper collection, the thrill of finding fun paper punches or dies on clearance at Michael's or A.C. Moore, the joy of being asked to join a design team, the frustration of losing one's creative mojo, the elation of having a papercrafted project accepted for publication, or more often: the dejection of not having a project accepted for publication. Colleen was the one who encouraged me to start this blog in 2010 shortly after she had established her own. And then we had yet another interest in common: the world of blogging! Even more to chat about ;). But we aren't just papercrafting/blogging friends. Over the years, we've discovered we have so much more in common than our shared hobbies. These days we call one another to chat about our families, our jobs, our health concerns, our vacations, our daily triumphs and aggravations, our joys (and frustrations) of motherhood, and more. I am so blessed to count Colleen among my very closest friends!!! Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Colleen, for your gift of friendship!!!

2) What are you working on right now?

Well, as much as I'd like to say that I'm knee-deep in challenging, meangingful, and creative papercrafting projects right now, that would be the furthest from the truth. In fact, I just noticed that my last post on this blog o' mine was on June 26, over a month ago! I do believe that's the longest lapse in posts I've ever had on this blog. Yikes! I never intended for that to happen, but sometimes everyday life gets in the way of the best intentions, right?

So, since the end of my kids' school year the last week of June, my 11YO son went away to a week of arts camp sponsored by the Boston Symphony Orchestra; my 15YO daughter and I went away on a trip to Burlington, VT, with her Girl Scout troop; my hubby and I celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary; our family worked together to replace our disintegrating wooden deck with new Trex planks and vinyl-clad aluminum railing systems; AND our family went away for a week to celebrate my parents' 50th wedding anniversary! As our gift to them, my sister and I rented a Victorian house in Cape May, NJ, for her family, my family, and my parents to stay in while vacationing for the week. What a lovely time that was for the three generations to hang out together!

Our rental house in Cape May, NJ

That's me in the sunglasses posing in front of a shipwreck just off Sunset Beach. In the background, the cousins are folicking in the waves along this pebbly beach known for its superb beachcombing.

The Dr. Henry Hunt house in Cape May's historic district. We found it on one of our early morning walks and just had to take a photo. We found out later on a trolley tour of historic Cape May that it is one of the most-photographed examples of "drunken" Victorian architecture--known as such because it combines elements from multiple different Victorian styles all in a single "drunken" mish mash!

My hubby and I near Sunset Pavilion at the end of Cape May's Promenade just before sunset. See the Cape May Lighthouse in the distance?

My parents, the happy Golden Anniversary couple!

So I guess that's what I've been "working" on right now! I'm happy to report, though, that I'll have an all-crafting post to share with you soon as part of a guest-designing gig I'm really thrilled about! More on all that later. Stay tuned!!

3) What is your signature style?

I like to dabble in all sorts of different styles! I play around with clean and simple, shabby chic, vintage, bold and graphic, fun and cute, layered and frilly, elegant and classy, punch art, . . . you name it, I've probably done it. I generally use the projects I create for my own purposes (as gifts to give, or birthday cards to mail to friends and family, etc.), so I guess overall you might describe my signature style as "mailable!" I like to make relatively flat cards to make them as USPS-friendly (and low-postage!) as possible!

Here's an example:  the mailable golden anniversary card I made to send to my parents for their 50th wedding anniversary:

Background stamp is from Hero Arts; flower is from Unity; sentiment is from Flourishes

4) What are your favorite types of projects to make?

I enjoy making all kinds of projects! Cards are easily what I make the most of, but I think my favorite projects to make are papercrafted gifts to give. This past spring my daughter and my nephew were both confirmed at their respective churches. I enjoyed making each of them some commemorative gifts to mark the occasion.

I created a framed and personalized piece of subway art for each confirmand using a variety of electronic brushes and fonts I've collected over time and my favorite (and free!) photo editing software, The GIMP

I made each confirmand a papercrafted bookmark perfect for use in their favorite Bibles. Each bookmark was personalized on the back with the occasion and date.

And here are the confirmation cards I made for these special young people:

For my daughter: because I could hand-deliver it, I added a less than "mailable" embellishment on the cross. Stamps are from The Craft's Meow

For my nephew: an elegant, mailable card. Stamps are from The Craft's Meow

If you are interested in seeing more of my papercrafted gift projects, please be sure to check out these "Gift Idea" posts!

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Well, readers, thank you so much for sticking with me through this long post! I think I'll wrap it up here. A huge THANK YOU to the fabulous Colleen for inviting me to post with her today. If you have arrived here outside of the blog hop, I'd love it if you popped over to meet Colleen and say HI! Her work is so beautiful and elegant--I know you'll love visiting with her!!

Thank you so much for visiting today!! I hope that your summers have been swell thus far and continue to be.
Be well!
Emily

Hope you had a Happy Easter!

We had a wonderful Easter here at our house! It was a quiet one (just the four of us), but the weather was beautiful, Easter worship at our church was lovely, and we enjoyed some time together just hanging out. I wanted to share a few photos of our day.

We started with a light Easter breakfast before church. I thought we'd be crunched for time, so we decided to delay Easter baskets and egg hunt until after church. To help ease the "sting" of having to wait, I set a "fancy" breakfast table with pretty paper Easter napkins and my pretty apple blossom glass plates, with a fun strawberry-patterned cake stand elevating our triple berry muffins. That's a bowl of cut fresh pineapple in the foreground and a bowl of colored hard-boiled eggs at the far end of the table.

My daughter's extensive collection of handmade pompom chickies served as our festive centerpiece.

Here's a peek at my daughter's Easter basket, complete with handmade {by me} Easter cookie pops. I was tired of going the store-bought route for Easter treats!

The white bunny head pops are double-stuffed chocolate sandwich cookies {I'd say "Oreos" except they aren't; I went with the more economical store brand ;) } dipped in melted vanilla-flavored white candy melts. I cut pink jelly beans in half for the noses and used some leftover chocolate frosting to pipe tiny eyes. I made the ears from large marshmallows, snipped on an angle and dipped in pink decorating sugar. I made the ears in advance so I could press them into the bunny pops before the white coating set up. I'd seen several different versions of bunny Oreo pops on various blogs and combined the aspects of each that I liked best to create these. They were so much fun to make!

Can you tell that the darker cookie pops are supposed to be the hind ends of bunnies? (Or "Oh, look--bunny butts!" as my daughter put it!!) For these, I dipped Girl Scout Peanut Butter Sandwich cookies in milk chocolate candy melts. The bunny tails and feet are miniature marshmallows (for the feet I snipped a marshmallow in half and pinched the top to form a more longish jack-rabbit's foot shape). For the fluffy tails, I actually snipped off the tops of the marshmallows and dipped the sticky end in white sugar, but it is way too fine to actually see. I tinted a tiny bit of frosting pink and piped on pink paw pads. I came across the idea for decorating these on Pinterest, but the chocolate-dipped peanut butter sandwich cookie idea was all mine. And it's delicious!!!

That's it for my Easter photos. Thanks for indulging me! I hope you had a wonderful weekend.

Thanks for dropping by for a little slice of bliss with me today! I'll be back on Wednesday with a DeNami Product Spotlight. Can't wait to show you!
Emily

Christmas Stamped Gifts

Happy December 1st, my friends! It's time to start those Advent calendars--what a happy time!

Today I'm bringing you a few more holiday gift projects as part of the Purple Onion Designs Holiday Design Team. Today the team is focusing on stamped gifts. I think I've mentioned before that I'm trying to make as many of the gifts my family will give this year as possible. First I have another item that will make a perfect teacher gift--what elementary school teacher ever has enough thank you notes?

I started by making a set of six one-layer thank-you notes, two each of three different designs using the super sweet Laurel, Filbert, and Elm characters from Stacey Yacula's holiday rubber stamp collection and a whimsical Thanks sentiment (#PF01), all from Purple Onion Designs, of course. Stamped on linen-textured cardstock and colored with Copic markers, these simple notes will be easy for a teacher to use and mail (with lumps, bumps, or extra postage!).

Next up--some packaging to make this gift extra special! I slid the notes and six envelopes into a cellophane treat bag and stapled on a hand-stamped bag topper created with a variety of Purple Onion Designs rubber stamps: an oval frame from the Vintage Journaling Set, the smaller flake from the Snowflake Set, a fantastic sentiment from the Handwritten Holiday Set, a pair of To/From sentiments for the back of the topper, and, of course, another sweet Filbert the Penguin!

 

Here's a little peek at the back of the package. You can see the tone-on-tone snowflake stamping a little better here, and there's the To/From sentiments that make this packaging gift-ready!

My fifth-grader is already excited to give this gift to one of his teachers!

For my second project, I'm sharing a snowflake Christmas ornament. I started by stamping the six-pointed snowflake from Purple Onion Designs' Vintage Snowflake Set and heat-embossing it in silver. After trimming it out, I mounted it on a snowflake diecut and blinged it up with silver Stickles and rhinestones.

I wanted to make my snowflake commemorative, so I stamped the date (using a retired mini alphabet/number set from POD) and a "Merry Christmas" sentiment from the Handwritten Holiday set on the back of the ornament.

Be sure to swing by the Purple Onion Designs blog today for lots more ideas for stamped holiday gifts from the POD Holiday Design Team!

Enabler alert!! Purple Onion Designs is running a Holiday Sale right now, with 25% off ALL STAMPS in the store! The sale runs through Tuesday, December 10, 2013. So be sure to check it out!

Thanks for stopping by today!
Emily

Ways With Washi: CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS + a Giveaway!

Hello there, DeNami Friends! It's time for my October edition of Ways With Washi.

I don't know about you, but every year I wish I had more time to make handmade gifts and decorations for Christmas. My problem is that I never start early enough, and once I start thinking, "Oh, maybe I should make something fun for Christmas," it's too late. All my other Christmas preparations are much too pressing, and I run out of time. So this year, I decided to start early. I know that we are still three days away from Halloween, but today I'm sharing a few ideas for jumpstarting your Christmas decorating with washi tape.

So, let's get to it!

For my first Christmas project today, I made a tabletop Christmas tree. This silver-and-aqua beauty stands about 7.5" tall. Can you spot the washi tape?

Starting with a Styrofoam cone, I covered the tree with overlapping circle punches. I chose two coordinating subtly patterned papers, dressing up some with overlapping strips of Musical Notes Washi tape and stamping others with DeNami's Teeny Star Background in silver ink before punching out the circles. I anchored each circle with a straight pin from my sewing supplies stash after glamming up the stock white pinheads with a bit of silver nail polish. 

I finished off my tree with a loopy baker's twine bow (from DeNami's Summer Twine 3-pack) fastened to the treetop with a decorative stick pin and a tiny tag stamped with the Noel sentiment from DeNami's Christmas Greetings stamp set.

My second project is a Christmas tree ornament. I started with a clear flat ornament that I picked up for cheap at a local big box crafts store. Then I cut out poinsettia petals from Red Stripes Washi Tape and leaves from Lime/White Dots Washi Tape and adhered them to the face of the clear ornament. Can you guess how I made the petals and leaves look so uniform? I stamped a petal from DeNami's Whimsical Garden cling set on cardstock to use as a pattern for trimming my washi tape flower parts. A cluster of amber rhinestones creates a realistic-looking center to my poinsettia. I finished my ornament by stuffing it with some multi-color DeNami Iridescent Shredds for a bit of sparkle.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here! I hope you picked up a few ideas to use in your own Christmas decorating this year

GIVEAWAY

How would you like to win a roll of washi tape of your very own? I have a brand-new roll of Black/White Dots Washi Tape from DeNami Design that I'd love to give away to a reader of this post. Want to be in the running? Just leave me a comment on this post using the word "DECORATE." There's no need to be a follower of my blog to enter, but if you are a follower (or become a new follower!), you can have a second entry in the drawing--just leave me a second comment telling me that you are a follower and how you follow. :)

I'll leave commenting open until 11:59 p.m. EST on Wednesday, October 30, 2013, and will draw one commenter at random. The winner will be announced right here on my blog on Thursday, October 31, and if I'm able to find an email address, I'll be sure to contact the winner as well.

Thanks for joining me today for some more Ways With Washi!
Emily

Ways With Washi: Easter Eggs + a GIVEAWAY

Good morning, friends! Thanks for dropping by for my March edition of Ways With Washi for the DeNami Design blog. I'm tired of the drab, faded winter landscape and am craving some spring colors. So my theme today is Easter eggs. Let's see how you can add happy colors to your Easter eggs with washi tape!

I'm starting today with some good old-fashioned, hard-boiled Easter eggs!

Do you like to dye your Easter eggs? It's so easy to add colorful accents with washi tape to dress up solid-color eggs. For this first egg, I went with one of my favorite color combinations by dying the egg blue and adding big brown polka dots with washi tape! I simply adhered a strip of DeNami Brown/White Dots Washi Tape to wax paper and punched out dots with a 1/2-inch circle punch. Peel off the wax paper backing, affix the dots to the egg, and you have one perfectly stylish Easter egg. Done!

For my second egg, I adhered long strips of DeNami Pink Stripes Washi Tape and DeNami Purple Stripes Washi Tape to wax paper and trimmed each with scissors into narrow bands, two stripes wide. The stripes make perfect cutting guides! (Full-width washi tape tends to pucker when adhered to the highly curved egg surface, so you'll have better results with thin strips). Simply peel the narrow washi tape bands from the wax paper and affix to the egg, applying the stripes lengthwise from one end of the egg to the other. Add additional stripes until you are satisfied with the design.

Why is it that chevrons seem synonymous with Easter egg designs in my mind? It's so easy to add them with some DeNami Pink Chevron Washi Tape. I used my wax paper trick again to trim out two long chevrons from the washi tape before adhering them around the egg.

Prefer to go dye-free with your Easter eggs? I added lots of color to my white egg with flowers punched from DeNami's Yellow/White Dots, Pink Stripes, Purple Stripes, and Purple/White Dots washi tapes, then embellished with leaves punched from DeNami Green Graph Washi Tape.

Now, what if you'd rather go with candy-filled plastic eggs? Washi tape can add a fun splash of color to filled eggs AND serve the practical purpose of sealing the eggs shut--oh, so useful for protecting the delicious contents from accidental spills during boisterous egg hunts!

Using the washi tape's full width (shown on orange and pink eggs) is quick and provides full coverage for sealing but results in a slightly more puckered finish.

Trimming washi tape in half lengthwise before adhering to a plastic egg results in a relatively smooth finish but takes an extra step and provides less coverage for sealing purposes.

Just in case edible or treat-filled eggs aren't your thing, I've got one final washi tape idea for Easter eggs. How about decorating a paper egg? I decorated the egg on this card in a jiffy with four different DeNami washi tapes.

I traced an egg-shaped cookie cutter on cardstock and covered it with strips of washi tape. After cutting out the shape with scissors, it was ready to be adhered to this cheerful Easter card.

Whew! That was a long post, but I hope it gave you some usable ideas for dressing up your Easter eggs, in whatever form they may be, with a bit of colorful washi tape!!

GIVEAWAY

How would you like the chance to play around with some washi tape of your own? I have a brand-new roll of Pink Stripes Washi Tape from DeNami Design--the same tape that I used on several of today's projects--that I'd love to give away to a reader of this post. Want to be in the running? Just leave me a comment on this post using the word "HAPPY." There's no need to be a follower of my blog to enter, but if you are a follower (or become a new follower!), you can have a second entry in the drawing--just leave me a second comment telling me that you are a follower and how you follow. :)

I'll leave commenting open until 11:59 p.m. EST on Wednesday, March 27, 2013, and will draw one commenter at random. The winner will be announced right here on my blog on Thursday, March 28, and if I'm able to find an email address, I'll be sure to contact the winner as well.

I'm so glad you dropped by for a little slice of bliss today!
Emily

Edited to add a few tips:

1. If you find it difficult to punch through washi tape layered over wax paper, try adding a layer of cardstock behind the wax paper while punching to add some rigidity.
2. If you find it difficult to peel the wax paper backing from your punched washi tape shapes, try flipping the shape over and lightly scoring the wax paper with the tip of sharp scissors.   
3. Then simply fold the shape along the scored line to "break" it open and peel the wax paper away from the center outward.