Victory!

Yay, I'm so happy! I managed to not only find all the materials for but actually complete the altered pen project, and used one of the stamps I purchased yesterday! Huzzah! I **love** looking at the purple Himalayan poppies I picked out at Hobby Lobby yesterday, so I'm very happy with how the altered pen project turned out. The materials I used were:

• green floral tape (also comes in white at Walmart)
• spray of artificial flowers without too many poky or fragile bits
• pack of stick pens
• wire cutters (got mine for a buck from Dollar Tree a while back, so glad I did now!)

A tip on working with floral tape and pens is don't pull the tape tightly around the shaft of the pen til you're getting ready to finish off! The first pen I did is very sticky to write with because I pulled the tape tightly all the way up the pen, which exposed all of the adhesive that's in the tape.


I also worked up a card using the Rubber Stampede Santa Collage stamp I picked up at Michaels yesterday. I've been ogling this image for a few years now and decided to indulge myself and pick it up this year. This card looks simple, but I personally am not looking forward to finishing assembling five more of these babies before moving onto my next project. All that layering is a pain!!!! Santa looks a little bit (ok a lotta bit) like a hippie with his rose-coloured glasses. That was an unintentional design addition, cos I forgot that putting liquid glass over dye ink results in tinted liquid glass. Having learned my lesson, I tested other products before applying them to Santa; for the record, Stickles will also cause Distress Ink to run. I gave poor Santa a bloody moustache and eyebrows on my tester! Instead of adding any sparkle to give the focal image more visual weight, I opted to mount Santa on dimensionals. With all the adventures I had making this card, I had mixed feelings about the results until I showed it to Sheldon and he wholeheartedly gave it the Husband Seal of Approval!

Stamps: Santa Collage by Rubber Stampede, sentiment by My Sentiments Exactly

Ink: Walnut Stain, Aged Mahogany, Brushed Corduroy, and Vintage Photo Ranger Distress inks

Paper: starry paper from Memory Stor, green and brown cardstock by Fiskars from "Country" collection, patterned card base from the wedding section in Michaels.

Other: liquid glass by Plaid, Prismacolor pencil crayons

Sheldon and I also spent today together watching fun shows; our faves are primarily Japanese, British, and Canadian in their origins. Today we treated ourselves to:

1. the Lucky Star OVA
2. Chi's Sweet Home
3. Ga-Rei Zero
4. Skip Beat
5. Merlin
6. The Rick Mercer Report