i love bricks

One of my favorite things in the whole world is... bricks. Yes, really. I have brought bricks from Michigan to Arizona in my luggage. Ask my kids. I have a brick (paver really) from the street near the Detroit Railroad Station; one from a falling down house; and from a little building near my husband's grandmother's house, also in Detroit. When we got back to Phoenix, we took the Super Shuttle to get home. As the driver was taking the bags out of the back of the van, he asked what was in the bag. I don't think he believed me when I said "bricks". 


Anyway, the reason I am talking about bricks is because I recently created this "brick wall" card for Close to My Heart. I originally planned this for one of my swaps. I used the new Wings papers pack and the January Stamp of the Month, "Find Your Style". The process is to stamp an image and then cut it into rectangles and then re-piece with a slight space between the pieces. This makes a brick wall pattern.


I thought it came out very well, so I submitted it to Close to My Heart in their consultant "Make it from the heart" contest. Have to wait until the end of February to find out the winners of the contest. So, wish me luck. I hope you enjoy the card.

saran wrap

It has been too long since my last post. I have been both busy and lazy, which is really no excuse.

Here is a card I made for one of my swaps. We had to make a card using saran wrap to make a patterned paper and use it as the background paper. After many searches on different ways to do this, I decided on this technique. Rather than just bunching the wrap up and "sponging" on ink, I used alcohol ink on glossy paper and then you shmear the wrap around until the ink is everywhere. Then you leave the wrap on until the ink is dry. The key is to make sure there are plenty of wrinkles in the wrap so you have a nice, random pattern.

Unfortunately, the ink I used was very dark and the pattern is difficult to see. But, this was my 6th or 7th attempt and I was getting tired of failure.

Also, the glossy paper is very important. I just didn't realize how hard it was to find glossy paper. I looked in three different stores. I finally settled on some pretty hideous green, holographic paper because the back was white. After I decided to use this particular piece, I was assembling my card when I discovered that the green paper was not actually paper, it was a sticker! I was very angry and frustrated, because I had already attached the ribbon. I had to pull off the sticker (which I then wadded up and threw across the room) and reattach the ribbon to the back side. And... the sticky tape I was using wouldn't attach to the backside of the piece. So I then had to resort to liquid glue, which I prefer not to use when attaching paper to paper because it wrinkles. And sure enough, it did.

It was a disastrous process, but I really like the finished product.