15 Minute Wonders and Who's Counting?

The most FAQ is

"How long did it take you to make that?"

My flip answer is

"On a good day, just the right amount of time, on a bad day a little longer."

Design time not included,

the first two new digital cards from Quietfire Design,

can  be constructed in 15 minutes.

The Dream Window Card 

straight from the Silhouette Store it looks like this.

Ungrouped, you are ready to cut out your layers.

I find it quicker and easier to cut most pieces individually.

This Dream was sketched in silver before cutting and I decided I liked the plain better, and the timer was ticking!

I ended up adding a black layer behind the white Dream, to add some definition and dimension. 

Once your pieces are cut, I used all 80lb good quality paper, it's just a matter of glue and placement.

***DING***

The You are Amazing Card 

was made from my scrap box.

I love how it highlights Suzannes's calligraphy .

Even slightly off balance it looks great- embrace imperfection!

The file on the Mat

Ungrouped

I didn't add or subtract a thing! Just cut and glued.

***DING***

The next two cards "took a little longer" and it was still a good day.

I enjoyed a pleasant afternoon messing about with paper and ink and design and a fine beverage.

(here you may want to hop over to T is for Tuesday)

The Smile Floral Step Card

makes me smile!

On the Mat

Ungrouped, more than once.

I added a small offset layer to the Smile to mat and define it and give it a bit more weight as part of it would not be glued to the card.

Glitter brads are holding the flowers together and they are stuck to the card with a 3D Dotz.

Side view

My Grandmother often said, Thank you is always the right thing to say.

And you can't have too many Thank you cards.

Originally I thought this would be a 15 minute wonder, and I just couldn't stop when the timer went off!

Much fun was had by me finding paper scraps to cut and assemble.

On the Mat

Ungrouped

The "Thanks" panel is popped up with fun foam aka pop dots.

The card base, the label base and the "Thanks" are painted with gold acrylic paint, as I couldn't find just the right scraps and I have lots of white.

Once you own these files, you can always use the parts as you wish in any design.

A by product of the Amazing card is the lettering left on the mat.

I used them to make an edgy birthday card for my edgy niece !

Happy Birthday Plain and Simple is an invaluable new rubber set of 7 stamps than now comes cling mount!

Suzanne recently crowned me the digital cutting queen, quipping that I make use of virtually every file she makes.

Shingles and summer have slowed me down a bit, and I'm a few behind, so come back often to see if I can catch up while Suzanne is out playing in the Rockies!

Comment and Questions always welcome!

Lemon Balm- T is for Tuesday-

Most of my life I heated and cooked with wood, and when my tea got cold I just popped it into the warming oven.

Now, I have this handy dandy cup warmer next to my desk.

I'm enjoying a cup of lemon balm tea- said to be good for nerve pain- Shingles!- in this lovely cup made by my DD.

There is lots going on at my place so please hop down to

this post for the latest here,

and to 

Poetry Journal Monthly

for a new prompt and this months opp to see and be scene in PJ's.
(live July 1)

Comments and Questions always welcomed!

WOYWW June 25-The 5th ATCs and Potential

WOYWW?

Above you see a poetry Journal page in the planning stages. The background is painted, I have several poem choices and a new pen!

Please hop over to 

Poetry Journal Monthly

to see what other PJers are creating and to post your own entry.

I'll start a new Mr Linky in July-soon as I figure out how!

Here is how I display my latest swaps and these are the WOYWW 5th Anni ATC's!Thanks one and all!

Twiglet! Oh my! You have inspired me to overcome my fear of free hand machine embroidery!

I'm off to desk around the world!

Comments and Questions Welcomed!

Fobbed! A Fabric Fable-T is for Tuesday

Here you see some (operative word, some) of my scissors in their native habitat.This mug was made by a dear friend of mine, Dave, who called himself, Lost Guide Pottery. I cried when the handle broke, and smile seeing it sitting on my desk, tea-less and scissorful.

At the last Fiber Arts Alliance Meeting (FAA- find us on FB), we had  a series of mini demos by members, all invoving scissors in some way, and I was the ONLY demo-er who's scissors were

(GASP)

 fob-less!

I do a lot of art on the go , and could be carrying up to 20 scissors at a time, and I always identified them with just a piece of masking tape!

(shame and embarrassment)

As luck would have it, Suzanne of Quietfire Design,

asked me if she had sent me the paracord from the Prima Publishing event at last winters CHA.

I looked in the goody box she sent me and there it was!

Scissor fobs in the making!

This is what I had left after making the two fobs.

There was about 8ft of cord, and an instruction book, by Leisure Arts

subtitle

Everybody wants one.

I experimented from the book, ripped them all out and delved into the lanyard making canyons of my mind( and youtube) and came up with a design using what we use to call the box stitch,

added some elephants ,because I could, and some beads to hide where you stabilize the cord by melting it with a lighter.

My second attempt, I started with a knot stitch at the bottom- the book was helpful for this- and finished off with box stitch, beads and a worry doll.

(tell tail tape still in evidence!)

I can proudly enter July's FAA  show and tell with my newly fobbed scissors.

Did y'all make gimp lanyards as kids?

I had to laugh at this brilliant PR job using the pararcord.

It does go faster.

Just for fun, below is one of my favorite Billy Collins poems.

The Lanyard

The other day I was ricocheting slowly

off the blue walls of this room,

moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,

from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,

when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary

where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist

could send one into the past more suddenly—

a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp

by a deep Adirondack lake

learning how to braid long thin plastic strips

into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard

or wear one, if that's what you did with them,

but that did not keep me from crossing

strand over strand again and again

until I had made a boxy

red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,

and I gave her a lanyard.

She nursed me in many a sick room,

lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,

laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,

and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,

and I , in turn, presented her with a lanyard.

Here are thousands of meals, she said,

and here is clothing and a good education.

And here is your lanyard, I replied,

which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,

strong legs, bones and teeth,

and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,

and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.

And here, I wish to say to her now,

is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,

but the rueful admission that when she took

the two-tone lanyard from my hand,

I was as sure as a boy could be

that this useless, worthless thing I wove

out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

(no idea why this is all caps and too tired to mess with HTML!)
Comments and questions welcomed!

Jack and Mother Goose

Two years ago, my dear friend Sissy aka Mother Goose, asked me to help her design a quilt square for a friendship quilt for a long awaited grandchild.

Unfortunately, Life happens and Sissy was not able to participate in the making, and fortunately, Life happens and Jack and Sissy and the quilt square will all be together this summer in Montreat.

 The square is only 5" and these pieces are teeny!

I used this fabric glue that I got in the goody box from Suzanne at 

Quietfire Design, from the Prima Publishing event.

It was a life saver.

I ironed my fabrics onto some freezer paper  and put them on my Silhouette mat.

This was the first time I have tried cutting fabric with the Cameo.

I lightly traced the cutting areas and put some glue on the edges and let it dry completely.

I started with a rough sketch above, cleaned it up and darkened it to put into the scanner and import into Silhouette DE. I flipped it so any stitch lines or glue would be on the back side.

Here is the jpg import. I enlarged it a bit, so easy!

The next step is tracing to vectorize your image for cutting.

 There are lots of good videos on this process.

Here is the screen shot with the first cut lines and the image line removed.

Save everything!

That is the best tip I can give you.

After cutting, I put more of the glue on the edges and let it dry as there was no way I was going to turn these edges.

The glue held the pieces in place nicely and added almost no hand to the fabric.

A few simple quilt stitches with metallic thread added shape and dimension and a bit of glimmer.

The quilt was finished awhile back, and  I'm told there is a place waiting for Jack and Mother Goose.

I can't wait to show it to them.

 I love you went into every stitch!

Comments and questions welcomed.

WOYWW June 18-Clear the Deck for Mother Goose

WOYWW?

I been working on a long over due commission and had to clear off all inky items that could possibly make a mess of my fiber.

You can see the quilt square top on the left- there will be more on this in a later post.

Susannne of Quietfire recently asked me if she had sent me the paracord stuff she had gotten at CHA, and lo and behold she did.(more on that coming too! I love you if you subscribe by email!)
 I also found a flower peg loom in the same package, I forgot about, so I quickly made one of those!

As I'm typing, I am praying that dear Julia will be back with us this week.

Visit here for a special shout out to Julia if you missed it(it's worth going to see!)

Now that you've enjoyed snooping around my desk,

please take a moment to hop over to my new blog 

Poetry Journal Monthly

and enjoy sharing what's going on in your journal and poetry life and the lives of other PJers!

Comments and questions always welcomed!

Coffee or Tea?

Does it have to be either or?

Just in time for my second play date with T for Tuesday, Suzanne of Quietfire Design sent me ( and  as of today the rest of the world via the Silhouette Store) this fab card.

Everything you need is in the file. This is how it looks on the mat.

I added the black layers to make my monochromatic papers stand out a bit more.

After you ungroup the elements, just add an offset to the layers.

Leave me a comment if you want more step outs.

At the end of the day I take what is on my desk and create an ATC!

Swap anyone?
Please hop over to my blog Poetry Journal Monthly to share what's happening in your poetry journaling life!

Please leave a comment, and I'm off to drink in todays T's!

WOYWW June 11-Shout Out to Julia!- An Invitation cont...

Julia was taken ill while on vaca and is in the  hospital! We know what to do, so lets keep on desking for Julia!

WOYWW?

New Stamps!!!!

Huge shout out to Marlene, for the fab gift of background and texture stamps.

I forget how much I love a wood mounted stamps.

The naked rubber comes via Bibi, at RubberDance.

Stay tuned for the dancing girls tryptic!
Stamp like nobodies watching! LOL!

I need an entire day set aside to find my desk! organize and get into a space where there is room to move!
I'll call you when I get there!

The big news in my digital life is the launch of my new blog

Poetry Journal Monthly.

Yes a WOYWW copy cat, visit my post, come back and post yours with Mr Linky and enjoy a World Wide Web (eventually) tour of other PJers, be inspired, read lots of great poetry, and 

Have Fun!

Super shout out to Julia!~

The initial inspiration for this digital cutting file design from Suzanne at Quietfire Design came from a very sweet piece that Julia from WOYWW created which you can see here.

You get all the pieces you need in the one file!

you can read more about this on Suzanne's blog.

Leave your comments here and I will soon be at your place doing the same.

Leave me your Poetry Journal Pages here, and be sure to leave a comment too, to win some fab rubber stamps!

T for Tuesday

I'm new here and excited to explore a new community and make new friends!

I was working for Spellbinders standing in Michaels for 3 hours demoing their machine and dies and I could only use products sold in the store.

They gave me these tea stamps as all occasion, and I made quite a few cards, as you can imagine !
Most I gave away, and these remain as my into to the T.

Using the Grand dies, you  can make a simple trifold card

and cut a label and a strip die to make a band to hold it closed.

The big news in my digital life is my new blog

Poetry Journal Monthly

Similar to T for Tuesday and WOYWW, you visit me, read my post, visit Mr. Linky, then hop around the world(eventually) visiting other PJers- getting inspired, learning new poetry and poets and having a lot of fun!

Do join me!

Comments and Questions always welcomed!

WOYWW June 4-GIVEAWAY! and Invitation

WOYWW?

The anniversary excitement is still with us, as I await the arrival of a few more ATC's. I will show all when I have a complete set.

Above you see my desk in* art on the go* mode, getting ready to go to Fiber Art's Alliance,

and

Stamps graciously donated by Suzanne , Queen of Quietfire Design, for me to give away as I wish!

Which

segways me into the excitement here at Casa Rainbow Weaves, the launch of my new blog

Poetry Journal Monthly

When you follow the link you will see the first of my postings of my poetry journal pages, where I chose a poem that I love and embellish, illustrate, collage, sew, spill coffee on, whatever, and share it with you dear deskers and other soon to be PJers.

In shameless copying of Julia, I show you mine and you show me yours by visiting Mr. Linky at the bottom of the post, and leaving a comment for a random drawing to win a wonderful prize- this month a Quietfire Design stamp that will work wonderfully in your poetry journal.

You have a whole month to post and visit and revisit to see all the inspiration from other PJers.

Thanks in advance dear Deskers for helping me get this new visitation off the ground.

More details on the blog.

And while you are here, thanks for visiting, and leave a comment and I will be sure to visit back!