Printables Aren’t Just For Framing

My to do list today ( besides bathroom cleaning) includes making a birthday card. A guy birthday card which I always find a challenge. I’ve been having fun w/ printables and since they’re essentially resizable JPEG files, I decided “duh” , I could make one with a birthday theme and resize it to whatever size I want to use on a card.
So here ‘tis…and you’re welcome to it as a printable or whatevs. If you use, would appreciate a follow but would LOVE a link back with what you did w/it!

Haven’t made the card yet. Or cleaned the bathrooms!

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Thanks For Stopping By !

BFF#11: Netty’s Craftings

TGIF all! Welcome to another :

here at The Answer Is Chocolate. This week’s featured blogger comes

to us all the way from Northamptonshire, UK, the lovely Netty from her blog:

Netty is an amazingly talented paper and mixed media artist who produces pieces that just make me swoon. Every time I look in my blog reader, she’s got something or other done for one of the many challenges she enters, or has had a piece published or has just made something fantastic as a gift or just because. I envy her ability to interpret the themes of the various challenges which she makes look easy.

For example, look at this altered notepad she just did:

Or this beautiful card she did following the requirements of a challenge to incorporate inking and stamping masks:

What fascinates me most is her attention to detail and the way she jokes about using tossed off materials :

As Netty describes it, this piece uses “chipboard waste”. HA I wish my waste looked so good! No wonder she’s been published in the UK’s Craft Stamper magazine.

There’s so much to look at on her blog, truly a feast for the eyes, so I’ll end with this which while coffee themed, I’ve told Netty I’m considering it chocolate themed:

I promise that you’ll spend lots of time oohing and aahing when you go visit her! And she leaves the sweetest comments.

Cheers,

I'm A Stumblin' Fool!

Be nice! No I didn't fall down the stairs ( or up, as I've been known to do...trust me it can be done!). I'm one of those late bloomers sometimes, and I just "discovered" Stumble Upon and I am hooked!  I'm just barely Facebook literate ( my son would argue that point and not from the standpoint of telling me I'm being modest) but while I was on my FB page, I saw a post by my friend Erin at Crafts and Sutch in which she mentioned Stumbled Upon.

Being nosy  curious, I went to check it out. I'd seen this little logo on people's sites, and seen people mention it on their blogs,  but today was just the day.  One of the things I'm really focused on is finding websites and blogs that feed my creative appetite, that are inspiring, that are ones with projects and ideas similar to mine etc. This is PERFECTION!

You can select your interests and then you click your little stumble button and up comes a site. You can "like" it and then it gets saved for you ( or if it's a blog, you can choose to follow it ) or if it's not your thing, you can just "Stumble" again and again and again. But wait...that's not all.

A new car! Just kidding :) But you can "follow" some of your favorite bloggers in Stumble Upon and then you or they can share w/ each other or post to Facebook or Twitter.  I know...your head's spinning. Mine too. Some days I don't know whether to like my face or tweet my book, but social networking is here to stay so I'm trying to at least pretend to keep up with it!

So check it out if you're interested in finding some new ideas or places to stalk, I mean visit. I'm theanswerischoco on Stumble Upon.

And I'm writing this because I'm really excited about it. The Stumble Upon people don't even know about me ...yet.

C is for Celtic

 

It’s also the middle letter of the word LUCKY.

I wasn’t going to make a banner for St. Patrick’s Day. I really, really wasn’t. Until I did. I may have a slight problem with banners. Mr. Chocolate will tell you there’s nothing slight about it.

I love, love, love and did I mention love, Celtic knot work. I bought a book once to learn how to do it. FAIL! But who needs that when you have the whole internet and a bajillion free fonts at your fingertips? I found this font called Celtic Eels and downloaded it and used it to create the letters LUCKY in my graphics program. Being greedy, I also downloaded this “dings” font ( these are images that correspond to letters) called Deco Dings and kept typing letters until images I liked came up. Scientific huh?!

After I printed the letters on white cardstock, I trimmed them and mounted them to black and green papers and then added some embellishments from my pot of gold rhinestone stash.

Finished off with clothespins covered in paper scraps and more rhinestones.
If I did this right,  you can click here and get the .PDF file with the letters and “ding” images I used. If that doesn’t work, email me (email link in sidebar). If you download, appreciate a follow.

Lucky I’m in love with my best friend !

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Mixed Metal Madness

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Thank You Bev!!

Thank You Megan!!

I haven’t made any jewelry in a while and have been seeing gorgeous mixed metal chain necklaces everywhere. Being a sufferer of the condition, ICTMTM ( I Can Totally Make That Myself)  I decided to play around.
I started out with some metal chain from Bead Landing ( Michaels)

And got out some other supplies from my stash:

I had some pewter “pearls” from a previous project and some big white “pearls” I picked up because they were there. Since I wasn’t sure where I was going w/ this, I didn’t take pics along the way.
I mixed different lengths of the large chain in the middle of the first picture with the dark chain on the left, attaching on either side with jump rings to some other chain I had in my stash. 

I strung some of the pearls on head pins and attached them to the middle link of each layer of the necklace.

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Mardi Gras Printable

I don’t live anywhere near New Orleans but that didn’t stop me from wanting to make a Mardi Gras printable because well, why not?

Let the good times roll!

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