Recent Cards Using Alcohol Inks and Tim Holtz Products!

Hello Everybody!

Last weekend Meredith and I went to Creations Galore and did some card making.  Here are a few cards I created!

First and foremost...I made my mother a Mother's Day Card.

All right, so I apparently screwed up getting her b-day gift.  I wanted to be creative and get her something she would not expect... apparently she was really looking forward to her Target gift card and flipped out when her b-day gift was a Hobby Lobby card.  Originally I was going to make a Target card, but I decided since she wasn't going to be surprised with her gift...I was going to make a killer card.  Here it is!

 

 I used her favorite color...black.  (Yes I know.) I took alcohol inks and did some dying to lighten up the card.  

 

 This is what I wrote inside.  Don't tell her I wrote this. She'll freak.  I stamped the "i love you" with individual letters. 

Next is a sympathy card... 

Everybody knows who this card is for... if you don't...well... look at the colors of the card... duh!

My butterfly is raised.  I used dots to make the butterfly raised.  I also used alcohol inks again.  This time I used cool colors to give a berry effect.  I didn't dab this time; I just rubbed it onto the smooth glossy paper.  Then I embossed with dark purple with my favorite super large flower stamp.  The picture doesn't do the card justice...but it is amazing.  I was pretty shocked with the outcome.

The next two are a series.  I used a pineapple stamp as my inspiration! I have no idea where I am going to use these cards...but I'm sure I'll figure it out! 

This one might be a "pick me up" card.

This one is a "Thank You" Card.

This is yet another alcohol ink with an embossed image on it.  Originally I put the martini on the page with a bright pink.  It didn't show up too well so I decided to trace it.  Then I got the idea to emboss it with gold.  It has a southern feel to it.  I love it!

For the alcohol technique, I put the ink on the page (instead of the ink applicator.)  This left some interesting patterns.  You can see some circles on the page as well as some blending.  I love the effect it gives...kinda like a watercolor feel.

This is a "just because" card.  It was towards the end of the night I was just running out of ideas...

 

 This card is a sympathy card.  There seems to be a lot of those going on in my life.  This one was intended to be given during the spring. 

 Nothing too special about this card.  I dry embossed the "With Love"with the cuttelbug.  Meredith insisted I had to color the words...but I really don't like how I did it.  I wish I did the swirl and the with in the color purple and the love in the color pink.  After all, love is the word that stands out.  

I also embossed with a dark purple.  I love the effect, but I don't like where I placed the butterfly. 

Then there's this card...one that I made today....

Afterwards I decided to purchase distress inks and Perfect Pearls.  Both are Tim Holtz creations.  Perfect Pearls is a micropowder that makes things shimmer.  Distress inks help distress (or age) the paper.  I have been watching videos and experimenting some new ways to incorporate them into my card.  

This is what I did... 

First I embossed with a cream piece of paper.  I used the argyle cuttelbug folder.  

Then I gently put distress ink (I used aged paint) on the raised parts of the embossed.  Then I painted perfect pearls purple powder over the distress ink.  

 

The powder binds with anything wet, so I was able to wipe off the excess stuff. 

Then I dabbed my ink applicator in the green distress ink. 

Then I rubbed the ink on the edges and my craft mat.   I did this several times to layer the colors.  I also used my aged paint (it's a dark orange) as well. 

This is what my piece of paper looked like.  It took about 5 minutes to finish.  It was easy, fun and very cool! 

I did this a few times with different folders, distress inks and Perfect Pearls to make this card.  This is what the final product ended up looking like...

 and inside...

so...thank you Tim Holtz for making my cards look awesome!!!!  I would advise everybody to try this technique.  It was so easy, fun and quick!  Plus, it looks so awesome! It gives the vintage and metal look.  I love it!

That's all for now...

<3

Em

Em Makes More Cards!!!!

Hey Everybody!

I wanted to share with everybody some of the more recent card creations I have been working on!  So many exciting things are coming (such as birthdays, graduation, mother's day, etc) so I decided to make a bunch of cards in advance! I had a card making night a few weeks ago.  Megan and Meredith came over to play.  We had a blast! We all learned new techniques and insights to cardmaking.

Meredith worked on her 12 cards for the March of Dimes.  Megan had some b-day cards.  I was all over the place, I had b-day cards, thank you cards, grad cards and more!  

Here's what I created!

Graduation Cards;

I used the embossing gun to make the Grad show up in glitter:) I love it!  It is SNC themed.  I know that a lot of my SNC girls see my blog so it might not be wise to put the card design up online, but it's all good!  This is only the first wave.  I'll be making a second wave of cards that will look different!

Inside I wrote the truth...

Random Birthday Card:

It was random...but I love it!

Meredith made this card...THIS IS NOT MINE!  This is part of Meredith's collection she will be donating to the March of Dimes silent auction.  She is doing a card for each month of the year.  I think this is either April or May, but I could be wrong.

I loved it so much I had to take a picture of it.  It was just so freaking awesome!  I wish I had this creative ability!

This card is for my mom.  She turns 52 today! (God she's old;)) She loves black and gold so I made her card those colors.  You can't tell, but the front is embossed with gold powder. 

This is what the inside looks like!

This card was for my supervising teacher, Joannie.  It's a spring/school theme!

Then this is a collection of basic Thank You cards that I can use in the future! They are very simple, but I don't care.  It is hard to make elaborate cards anymore.  I like the simple cards too because it conveys the message in a direct way.   I used this flower stamp for my mom's birthday card.  I love this stamp very much.  It was expensive; about 20 bucks, but I use it all of the time!!!! 

I colored this one in with pencils. I gave a similar looking one to Dr. Meidl for writing such a nice letter of rec. to me.

I gave this one to Cheryl for all the help she gave during Holy Week. 

And last but not least... my favorite...

That's right! Megan got me to take the plunge!  I now own alcohol inks!  They are fun to blend and create with.  Megan had a cool technique where she used an iron so the embossed parts could stick out more.  However, I wasn't able to make it work.  So I made the flowers from my Cuttelbug.  Then I took a sponge and dabbed the ink on it.  Then I dabbed that onto my glossy paper.  This was the effect...so freaking cool!!!

These are alcoholic inks by Tim Holtz.  I love them!  I'm slowly becoming a Tim Holtz fan.   I also bought some distress ink from him as well.  I cannot wait to start playing with them:) I currently have 9 colors!!!

Life in Kindergarten (The Craft Stick Special)

Hello Everybody!

I've been getting asked the question "so when are you going to post some things about teaching again?"  Well, today is your lucky day! I am posting some pictures of my adventures in kindergarten.

I'm slowly getting my kindergarten feet back... at first it was hard.  I forgot how simple things are in kindergarten.  I'm told this is normal.  I agree.  I remember having the opposite problem when I started third grade.

My first subject I picked up was math! EEK!  We are using Everyday Math.  Everybody seems to really detest the program, but it isn't too bad.  I'm trying to be as creative as possible with teaching it, but I'm not reinventing the wheel either.  I want my ideas to be helpful and too the point. I have 45 minutes to teach math, but in reality only 15 minutes of that is direct teaching time.  The first 15 is dedicated to calendar and the last 15 is dedicated to my differentiation students.  

So my first day, we did math bundles. 

 I had a bunch of min craft sticks bundled into 10s.  Then we talked about how the number 1 in the number actually represented 10 and not 1.  We made several numbers up by rolling the die and creating two numbers.   Below is an example.  We rolled a 3 and a 2 and created 32.  We had 3 bundles (30 sticks) and 2 ones.

 Then we represented them with craft sticks.   The kids were understanding what I was looking for... but they needed me to guide them during the time I am supposed to be working with two other students... I felt like crap, but Pam insisted I did a good job.  I just need to be aware of my directions.  All in good time I say.

We are also working on subtraction.  Pam introduced the topic last week, but this week I wanted to reinforce the topic.

I created a sorting game with craft sticks.  It's pretty self-explanatory.  They get a stick and then put it in the correct bucket.

 They loved this game! I had the buckets go from 0-9 but for all intensive purposes, I didn't put those out when I took the picture.  This game was easy to make!  We worked with the Unix Cubes so there was a visual connection for those who needed it as well.  I am excited because I am able to use this game next week when we have a game day in math class! 

 Then during the independent work time, the students had to color in the correct flower on their subtraction worksheet.  I know what you are probably thinking...worksheets are evil.  Not always.  This one is based off another one they had to do last week.  They liked their worksheet last week because it was coloring! They LOVE to color...why not embrace that?

I also created a bulletin board.  This was for the Spring board outside of the classroom.  I love boards... I will be adding more to this one as projects come up! Several of the other kindergarten teachers gave me such lovely compliments on it.  Note....I didn't create the flowers...just designed the board!

I am going to start BRAIN BREAKS!!!  They are these 3 minute activities that get the juices flowing in the head... a great way to start any lesson!  Since my handwriting usually stinks, I decided to print up the font instead.  I say they look awesome! They sit on my desk...waiting to be used! (I'm waiting to be a little more FT first)

 Don't they look AWESOME in my green bucket? (Recognize it from another lesson...?)

 And finally... a look at my desk...I need to update the photo I have of Pickles.  I have such cuter pictures of him somewhere... or maybe a good picture of friends should be in place? My desk is very small so I needed to bring in one of those 3 container things.  Now I have all the binders and books there.  The flowers are hung up and the boarders are put away as well.  So now... my desk is empty!

 And last but not least... student artwork! My kiddos are AWESOME!!!

So as you can see...I'm having a ball!  More to come soon!

Hugs!

<3

Em!

A New Day for Em!

Hey All!!!!

Today I did a risque thing: I went to the hair stylist and asked her to do something to my hair.  Yes that's right.  I said something.  I didn't care what she did...as long as there were three things:

1/Easy to manage
2/I still had hair and the end of the day
3/I didn't look like Nicki Minaj

Well... forty five minutes later I looked like this:

That's right...MY HAIR IS SHORT!

Shocking...right???

 

My new hairstylist, Bianca, cut off a whooping FIVE inches!!! WHOA!!!!!!  That is a lot of hair!  

It looks perfect.  I'm still not completely used to it...she did cut off five inches!!! It's going to be a lot easier to manage now that it is shorter.  Bianca says I just gotta twist and twirl my hair with my finger and then run my hand through it. It is easy to manage because it is shorter, there is hair left AND it doesn't look like Nicki Minaj.  I say EPIC JOB! (Meredith I know how much you <3 that word, but let's be honest, everything I do is usually epic.) 

I also got new glasses...in case you didn't notice those from the new pic... those came from Shopko.

Hope you dig my new hair...I like it.  I was up for a little hairdo change.  Don't worry--it grows fast!

<3

E

Two Opposittes: Kindergarten and Holy Week

Hello Everybody!

I'm alive doing well!

Hell week is a term coinned by Father Jim from Old Saint Joe's. It is the secret nickname of Holy Week.  I'm practicing like mad to get things done...this year I'll be playing the entire shebang at Saint Joe's with Larissa as well as my usual 8AM with Paul at Resurrection.  Be prepared to be inspired to praise God through the liturgically sensitive music I've been working on all month!

Now... for the part that EVERYBODY wants to know about... KINDERGARTEN!

I LOVE KINDERS!!!!!!!!!!!  They are just the cutest things (next to Preschoolers of coarse!) My CT's name is Pam.  She's extremely nice and she's been teaching kindergarten for 10 years.   She was very welcoming right from the start.  Everybody's been nice.  I got to meet most of the 10,000 people at the school on the first day! 

For demographics...
-the entire school has about 680 kids
-7 sections of kindergarten
-Hemlock is NOT a Title I School
-I have 19 children (which is LESS than 27)...
-Most of my kids are of the age five
-all freaking cute!  (but you won't see them because I will not post pictures of them on my personal blog...so you'll have to take my word for it!)

I all ready have a lot artwork on my desk.  I also have gotten hugs.  And according to two of the girls... I am apparently their mother.  (YIKES!)

I also have a...drum...roll...SMARTboard!!!

I'm going to take full advantage of one of these in my room.  No I won't be married to the board like my tech professor wants me to be...but I will use this board to it's full advantage!

Next week I start teaching...MATH!!! (YIKES!) I have a lot of cool activities planned.  Once I have them finalized, I will post pictures of what I plan on doing.

On April 30th...I'll be teaching full time in the kindergarten classroom!

I will keep you posted as I start teaching subjects.  For now, rest assure I AM LOVING HEMLOCK CREEK! I'm very lucky I got into two placements that I really love!

So overall, Pickles and I are doing great... as you can see from the photo below!

<3
E