Day 4 countdown St. Patrick's Day +

Good morning!

An Irish Friendship Wish

"May there always be work

For your hands to do;

May your purse always hold

A coin or two;

May the sun always shine

On your window pane;

May a rainbow be certain

To follow each rain;

May the hand of a friend

Always be near you;

May God fill your heart

With gladness to cheer you."

RUBBER STAMPING

Today I thought we could explore the wonderful world of rubber stamping together. I am still amazed when someone says to me "Rubber stamping? What is that?". I have been rubber stamping since 1983 or so, starting out self-taught as there really wasn't that much information out there about it. I have been teaching rubber stamping classes for a couple of decades! Wow.

In the back of a craft magazine I found an ad for a company named "Bizarro", that had rubber stamps. I saved up my money and sent off for the catalog. I think I may even still have it! The pages became very dog-eared and worn what with me reading and re-reading every page of quirky images.

To illustrate how much rubber stamping can be economical, I still have that original bottle of copper embossing powder I purchased for my first batch of home-made-rubber-stamped Christmas cards. I also still have the stamp I used. Both are still quite usable!

To illustrate how much rubber stamping can be outrageously expensive, I now have an entire room dedicated to my hundreds of stamps, thousands of sheets of paper and cardstock, and dozens of bottles of embossing powders, fun flocking, pearl ex, embellishments....well, the list could go on for quite a while!

How sweet it is!

hand stamped and colored domino magnet by inkspired

"The person born with a talent they are meant to use

will find the greatest happiness in using it."

- Goethe

Let's start with a fun rubber stamping project for any level stamper!

St. Patrick's Day Party Cupcakes

The fun baking part-

To do ahead:

Make a batch of cupcakes, let cool.

Frost with green frosting. If you can't find any pre-made, simply use a can of prepared white frosting, and drop in JUST A COUPLE OF DROPS of green food coloring. Really, just a couple. Mix well. You can always add more food coloring a drop at a time.

Sprinkle frosting with green tinted coconut to simulate grass.

How to tint coconut:

Add a few drops of food color to coconut in a jar; shake until evenly tinted.

The fun rubber stamping part-

Find a simple rubber stamp with an Irish theme - shamrocks are great. The image should be no larger than 1 1/2".

Purchase a good ink pad. Go ahead and invest $7 and get a green one. I like Stayz-on, Brilliance or Marvy Matchables.

You will need a pack or so of lollipop sticks. You can find these anywhere they sell Wilton cake decorating supplies (I get mine at JoAnn's Fabrics).

Now you want circles or squares or ovals of plain cardstock.

You will also need the same amount of green cardstock cut into shapes. 

There are many hand held punches in these shapes.

For more addicted stampers, there are the cuttlebug or cricut machines, etc.

Or you could do the old fashioned but really cheap way, and trace around a bottle or jar for a round circle, and cut out.

Ink your stamp lightly. No grinding, pounding or smacking.

Stamp your simple image onto scratch paper first to practice, then stamp onto the shaped plain cardstock.

Pretty!

Let dry or help it along with an embossing gun to set ink.

No, a hair dryer won't work.

Now make a sandwich:

Shaped and stamped plain cardstock circle face down +

    blob o' glue, with lollipop stick in the center +

        shaped green cardstock.

Press to secure lollipop stick. Let dry.

alternate - you can tape the lollipop stick in place and then glue the green card onto the back.

Or, you can put a dab of frosting on back side of stamped circle, and push lollipop stick into that, then a dab more frosting and squish the green cardstock in place on top.

Go clean your stamp. Using an old washcloth or tube sock, dampen the cloth. Dab your stamp repeatedly onto it and slightly scrub until no more green comes off. Then stamp several times onto scratch paper to make sure there is no more ink leftover. Your stamp should not be wet.



For extra pretty, tie a thin ribbon bow at the base of each stamped circle, around the lollipop stick.

Push one decorated lollipop stick into each cupcake.

Ready to go!



Fun extra - if this is for a school party, you can write the name of each student on the back, plain green cardstock side to personalize!

"If you're lucky enough to be Irish,

then you're lucky enough."

inkspired

http://www.inkspired.etsy.com/

dominoes@myinkspired.com



Day 6 St. Pat's Day countdown, paperdolls, mazes and vintage clip

Good day!

"A world of wishes at your command,

God and His angels close at hand,

Friends and family, their love impart,

And Irish blessings in your heart!"

Today is a beautiful day outside. The wind is still, the sun is shining and there are some blue skies peeking out between clouds. My Great Dane Tanner just wants to sit outside in the sun - sniffing the breeze and soaking up the sun, and, well, what ALL Great Danes do - napping!

and one of my favorites - remember, he is napping -

"Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's spirit remains unawakened."

- Antole France

Here is a wonderful celtic knot maze from Dover:

You can click on any of my pictures and they open in their own little window. You can then copy and paste, or just print.

Please be courteous about copyright laws.

If you didn't come up with the idea, don't say you did.

Try to always give credit where credit is due.

Here is another interesting maze based on Ireland:

courtesy of Dover

For future Crafts:

Time to save an egg carton or two. These need to be made out of the paperboard/cardboard kind, not the styrofoam white ones. Any color will due, as long as it is bio-degradable cardboard type material.

For a SUPER Egg project coming up, please start saving those twistie ties that come on bread or bags of things. You will also need a variety of silk ties to cut up. Not any other kind, just silk ones. I finally broke down and purchased a handful from my local ARC thrift store. My husband had this strange objection to my cutting up some of his ties....go figure.

A silk scarf might work, I'm going try that this year also. I don't know if it will work yet, so don't depend on just silk scarves. Get those ties!!!

For our CD project you will need a hundred or so CDs. That means a pile of them! It does not matter what is printed on the CD at all.

We will be making a purse with all the gum wrappers you are saving. You might want to hook in with a youth group or something to get a good supply of them. Perhaps a junior league baseball team? I kinda' shudder to think one person would chew that much gum themselves!

Here is another paper doll set with an Irish theme:

Liana's Paperdoll Blog is a website with all original (and copyrighted) paperdolls and their fantastic wardrobes. Well worth a check.

joechip.net/liana

Well, I think that's enough for today! I'm looking forward to a recipe for traditional Corned Beef and Cabbage cooked in a crockpot for tomorrow.

"Irish Alzheimer's:

You forget everything except the grudges."

 - Judy Collins



inkspired

http://www.inkspired.etsy.com/

dominoes@myinkspired.com



Greetings!
I have another post all ready to go, but I just don't feel it is right for today. Had a bad evening last night, but I know that God is in control, and He has a perfect plan for me and my loved ones.

As a mother, I have incredibly fierce feelings of protection for my son - he's 23! Sometimes I truly feel like a mama bear protecting her cubs.

Yet, he is 'grown up' whatever that means.  I have to let him deal with problems to strengthen him and mature him. But oh, I would so like to go and just punch someone in the face. Okay, it would be a slap because if I ever tried to punch someone I know I would end up with broken bones! Believe me I am not a violent person at all. I don't even like to yell, much less speak in a loud voice.

Yet, here are those protective mom feelings.
I can just pray, and it is so hard to not do more.

How dare someone deliberately injure my son! Perhaps I want to be part of a Tennessee clan, where the motto is: "you hurt one of us, you hurt all of us, and all of us will take care of the problem."

Well that brought a smile to my face. That's good.

Something else that brought a smile to my face was JT the visiting cat, and Tanner the resident Great Dane.

Tanner loves to hang out on the couch. He prefers our bed, but darn it, we just don't offer that to him very often. So he is sprawled on the couch, taking his morning snooze in the sun.

JT is an ornery little cat. Oh, that is, a big-22-pound cat who loves his mistress and would just as soon eat everyone else. He has to have his claws covered with vinyl protection nails. They put two on each claw in the front - and superglue them on. The vet staff has to put him asleep to do this as he is so mmmmm, well let's just say there are many scarred vet techs around that know JT by name, and would just as soon never see him again.

So this morning he was prowling around looking for mischief.
This could mean jumping up on to the counter (not allowed) or taking a bite out of one of my plants (not allowed) or jumping up on the side table in the LR (not allowed) or jumping up onto my big jigsaw table (otherwise known as a dining room table) and batting my puzzle pieces around (NOT ALLOWED)!

Well, he had tried all that and frankly he was just bored.
Wait, what is that? It is long and black and just sticking out from the couch!
So he took a swat at it. Tanner lifts his head thinking "what? I was sleeping!".
So JT swats it again. Tanner is looking at him now. Oh Fun! Let's do it again!

After a few swats Tanner just lays his head down again, hoping to sleep.
But JT wasn't finished. Swat! Swat swat! Swat! peeking at Tanner each time to see his reaction. So Tanner looks at him again, and then gives this little sigh of "I'm a Great Dane. I want to sleep. You are a runty little cat. Sigh. Whatever, I'll just ignore you." and puts his head back down.
JT does a few more swats, but he just isn't getting the desired results, so he wanders off.
Dog   1
Cat    0

RECYCLED CALENDARS:
Have your friends save their old calendars for you.
Carefully take apart a variety of envelopes and flatten them. Trace around the envelope shapes, and transfer to your favorite template material. Mine is the inside of cereal boxes. Cut out.
These will be your envelope templates. You should have one for a small notecard (but still mailable size), a regular note card, and a slightly over size card. If you want, you can certainly make other sizes for specialty cards. This will get you started!

If you have the material available, tracing the envelope pattern onto clear shrink plastic, crafting plastic etc. would be ideal.
Place your template over the picture side of the calendar page. Move it around so all the edges fit. Do you like what is in the center? The clear template really helps with this, but you can lift edges while holding page/template in place to adjust also.

Trace around with a ball point pen. I find marker type pens smear too much, and a pencil just doesn't show up enough. I also tried permanent ink, but it also smeared. Cut out. Lightly trace folding lines.
Using a scoreboard (if you don't have one, get one! They make a huge difference in how your cards fold, and so much more.) score on the envelope folding lines. My score board came with a round stylus. Bone folders are popular. I know one stamper that always uses the side of her fingernail!

Crease all seams and sharpen folds with a bone folder.
At this point, I usually stop and place the beautiful calendar envelope into a labeled box.

The next step is to place your card inside the folds. Make sure everything fits well. Sometimes things need a little adjustment, a fold here, a snip cut there.
After making a good fit, get out the double sided tape. Again, I really like VivaLasVegastamps miracle tape. It comes in several widths. For envelope making I like the skinny one.
Place tape on lower 2 side flaps, and fold up bottom over that. Make sure your tape is in a good position, and peel off backing. Press envelope pieces together. To close the envelope after adding card, you do the same for the top two flaps, bringing down the top flap to close.
TIP: Don't try to use glue or tape runners. They just don't seem to hold the envelope flaps in place, and glue has a tendency to run outside the lines, and you end up gluing your card to the envelope. Not cool.

TIP:For extra security, I like to add a folded over square of scotch tape to the top two edges where the post office will be running it through their machines - where you place your stamp and where you place your return address.

Now - to finish!
Place a blank address label somewhere on the front. This is where  you will print the "to" address. This does not have to be perfectly horizontal (sorry Hyacinth Bucket). Your return address does not have to be on the front either. Sometimes I use it as a sticker to the center of all flaps in the back as a 'seal'.
Sometimes I use a matching sticker.

These calendar page envelopes intrigue everyone. Make someone's postal deliverer day! Add a smile to a friend's blah...boring...bills mail!

That's it for today, I still have errands and appointments creeping up.
Thanks for letting me have a 'mommy fit'.
Hope JT and Tanner added some smiles to your day.

inkspired

http://www.inkspired.etsy.com/

http://www.myinkspired.com/

dominoes@myinkspired.com