My Tombstone Artist Trading Card

I’m playing in a Tombstone shaped artist trading card swap on the Pennywise Arts Yahoo Group!  There are 9 of us, each making 9 identical cards to swap out. 

My wonderful husband Brian has been creative too.  He’s designed lots of templates and cut files for my Cricut.  His last batch was five different tombstone shapes.  Perfect!

Using Sure Cuts Alot software and my Cricut I get myself into crazy details that I would never have considered when all I had was a pair of scissors!  Ü 

The base and front of my card are cut from bronze Stardream paper.  Even the copper Stardream background insert and the acetate were cut on my Cricut. 

I stamped Copper Brilliance crackles (Stamper’s Anonymous) around the edges.  The crow image (from Inkadinkado) is embossed onto the front of the card and acetate at the same time.  **It had to be heated very carefully so as not to melt and warp the acetate.

I created a foam tape box around the window and filled it with a mixture of micro beads and sealed them in with the copper cardstock backing piece.  The bat was punched from glossy black cardstock and added to the card with foam tape.  A gem is the finishing touch.

I’ll be sure to share the other tombstones when the swap comes back later this month!

Hugs, Suzanne

Trick Or Treat

It’s PWA tradition that our design team member Christine Grabb gets first dibs on Halloween, her most favorite holiday of the year.  Christine’s creative ideas and “beadniques” are something that I always love to see!  If you like her style be sure to follow Christine on her personal blog:  http://gotasunsetinmyveins.blogspot.com/

Chriss tells us how she made this card below:

“I took some double-sided paper and made the base card, then I flipped the paper over and made a paper 'ribbon' from the print on the back side (yay! bats!); I couldn't get the tail right, so I ended up using the corner of a medallion shaped die.
Papertrey Ink stamps and die helped make the tickets out of more patterned paper and I added a some hand-dyed seam binding.  To finish it all off, I took a small square of O'So Sticky tape, removed the rubber liner and adhered it to some black paper, which I then punched with a bat.”

“I removed the paper liner and dipped it into Clear Mini Beads.  You could use the Black Opaque beads too, if you wanted a little less sparkle but I like a little bit of bling.  Stick it on with some foam tape and you're done!  Thanks for looking and stay tuned for more Halloween goodies!!”

Hugs!  Suzanne

Happy Halloween

Being sick for the whole month of October really didn’t leave much room for blogging but I just HAD to get Chriss Grabb’s spooky creations up for you before the holiday past by!

Halloween is Chriss’s favorite holiday and she loves to create all things bats year round!

This fun banner has been hanging in my kitchen:

Lot’s of great paper layers with a spider web background stamp and micro beaded letters make up this great decoration.  Oh, and lets not forget the due cut bat dangly!

Chriss also created this great Halloween card: I think this photo showed the sparkly watermark background off very well, but the lavender micro beaded background not so much.  Some things you just gotta see in person!

Halloween Cute!

These darling designs were conjured up by my friend and designer Marianne Colschen. It's usually pretty easy to spot micro beads in a photo because they 'wink' back at you with their reflective nature.

Wanting to add texture to a design but just not sure where to start? Try placing a piece of O'So Sticky Tape over the words and bead them with clear micro beads!

Because light refracts through the clear beads and creates a bit of distortion of the image underneath the larger the image is, the larger the beads can be. Pennywise beads come in three sizes: regular, mini and ultra fine. If you are concerned at all, it's always safe to use the ultra fine micro beads with any image.

Both O'So Sticky Tape and micro beads can be found on the Pennywise Arts website http://www.pennywisearts.com/

Micro beads add texture, dimension and sparkle to any project!