A Skylanders Themed Pop-up Card

So my niece's newest passion is Skylanders.  For her last birthday she received the new Skylanders Giants starter pack.  I always try to go with suggested gifts, as I am always happy with a sure thing.  So Skylanders it was and that meant a themed pop-up card to match.  

Now one of the nice things about doing a product themed card, is that there is tons of art online that you can print out.  Look for a high pixel count and watch the amount you enlarge the images.  In this case I went right to the downloadable images on the official website.  I am fairly sure that  using these images for a one off card, especially one that comes attached to a couple of the official products is ok.

Now in Skylanders, as far as I, an adult who does not play the game, can tell, the characters move around between islands, which hang in the sky, completing tasks and collecting treasure.  So my card is supposed to be one of these islands.  I've stuck on a couple of houses, which are made using one continuous piece of paper.  They are connected and form one v-fold mechanism.  I used a stamp from Local King Rubber Stamps to create the wood texture and one of their dies to cut the window and door elements.  A few old Prima paper flowers and Perfectly Pearls finish off the cute little window boxes.  Parallel fold mechanisms off of the valley folds of the glued down fronts of the houses hold up some rocks and and the mushroom character.

My niece enjoyed the card, the Skylanders much, much more.  Oh well, I had a blast making this.  I think it turned out very cute.

Tim Holtz Silhouette Die Card and Ornaments

When I first saw these cute dies, I thought I have got to have these.  They will work perfectly with family history themed scrapbook pages.  So I put my name on a list and then they came in and I brought them home and thought now what?  I want to use these little darlings now and not just put them away for some unknown nebulous later.

Fortunately, my mother-in-law's birthday was coming and I thought what the heck.  I used the dies to cut white artboard, which is a real favourite of mine.  Rather than the grey or brown chipboard we all know and love the white artboard is .... well, white.  This means you can use it as it is or colour it without worrying about how the underlying colour will change the outcome.  But, as soon as I popped one of the diecuts out of the die, CAMEO, popped into my head.  It looks just like a cameo.  Well, after that both the card and the two ornaments were easy.  I cut the ornaments out of black chipboard (you can also buy artboard in black).  The silhouettes on the ornaments were then covered in a few coats of UTEE.  Excuse the sparkles, all my embossing powders have some level of sparkle after a while.  Some ribbon and a gilding pen were all that was needed to finish these heirloom look ornaments.  Paper is a great way to get in on some of the current Christmas colour trends without spending a whole lot of money.  Have you seen some of the black and white trees this year?  These would be perfect.

The card was basically the same idea, without the UTEE.  I framed the black cardstock in gold mirror paper and then put the whole thing on some Basic Gray paper from my stash layered over black velvet paper.  A lovely elegant card for a lovely elegant lady.

A Shawl or How I Didn't have quite enough on my plate yet.

Every year my husband's company throws a lovely Holiday party.  Everyone dresses up and the season is ushered in in elegant style.  Usually there is much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth on my part as I try to put together an appropriate outfit.  This year I bought a dress in the spring that I knew would be perfect, so that was taken care of a long time ago.  Shoes, which are my biggest challenge (blame really crappy feet), got knocked off the list at Ron White's Outlet Store closing sale.  I managed to update my dressy handbag rather easily.  All that was left to be done was a wrap.  My dress is navy blue lace and a black "pashmina" just doesn't look right.  So, in the midst of classes starting back up (lot's of latin translating) and my irrational need for a historically (sorta) correct Tudor outfit, I thought yes, what I really need to do at this particular point in time is to knit a lace shawl.  Something, I might add, that I have never done before.  The lace shawl part, not the knitting.

Check out all the knitty details at my project page over at Ravelry.





Yep, it's being blocked in the basement.

The pattern came from the All Knitted Lace blog.  I wasn't sure how easy this would be to complete in the 2 months I had given myself to do it, but I finished 1 1/2 weeks early.  I made a few mistakes, but the open lacy pattern is forgiving if you are not a perfectionist.  I have learned that perfection and finished can sometimes be mutually exclusive outcomes, so I always go for finished.  I can't wait to wear this.

Addendum:

Ooooh I loved wearing this!!!  So light yet warm and it went perfectly with my outfit!

Anne Boleyn Costume: Wearing History

 All done.  I estimate about 80 hours of work which includes the hours spent embroidering the neckline and cuffs of the chemise.  I tried to do as much hand work as I thought was necessary, but as time ran out the veil didn't get hemmed, but rather melted.  Yay nylon!  The hat got made twice and finally worked as a combination between coif and hood.  When put on over the fake hair it all stayed very firm and relatively comfortable for hours.

 It was really hard to keep the layers sitting perfectly with movement and I soon realized that the ladies sitting or standing for their portraits would have been perfectly arranged beforehand and then tried to move as little as possible.  I am fairly sure that everything was fitted properly, perhaps the straps on the kirtle could be moved more towards the shoulders.  I was concerned with covering the straps of the corset.  The chemise just moved all the time.  I did find it sat better when I had my daughter pull the chemise from inside the sleeves to minimize the bunching and that did help.

This brings me to the issue of dressing ones self in this era.  I am almost certain that at the elite level of society in which this dress was worn, no one was dressing themselves.  I met a friend for lunch in order to have the fore panel done up completely.  I used hooks and thread bars to hold it in place.  The real Anne would have been pinned into her fore panel. 

 I also figured out that no Tudor woman asked her husband, "Does this dress make my butt look big", unless she was looking for yes as an answer, because clearly that was the point.  There is so much fabric back there it is hard to really imagine without experiencing it.  That little section of skirt between  the side panels has about 4 1/2 metres of fabric in it.  I sewed it three times, once with extra strong nylon beading thread.  And because that just doesn't give enough volume, there's a bum roll under there for that little extra oomph.  All this creates weight.  Lots and lots of weight.  I woke up this morning with sore biceps from lifting the skirts and walking around, not to mention the constant holding up of the velvet sleeves.  Women of this period were no delicate flowers.  They were women of steel.  Look at the portrait of young Princess Elizabeth.  It appears that most of this gown is velvet She is so slight in this portrait.  Now consider that she is standing there in what probably amounts to 30lbs. of clothing.  You can actually see that the mass of the back of the dress is piled on something behind her.

 So this is a thread button, or my interpretation of it.

 Here you can see the picot edging on the chemise and the small part of this project which is papercrafting.  The B is a chipboard letter from my scrapbooking stash.  Not terribly accurate, but enough that a couple of British people I met along the way immediately recognized the costume as Anne.  The other thing I kept getting was Victorian.  Only 300 years off.

 I only put one row of pearls on the hood.  There should another row on the lower edge too.  The ruffled bit should be gold organza, but I used red.  I decided to use it attached to the coif rather than directly to the hood.  I think this was a good choice as it made for a really secure arrangement.

Here the chemise shows pulled through the false sleeve extensions.  I decided not to do false pull throughs, but rather I extended the chemise sleeve by about 3 inches which created just the right amount of extra to show through the slashes.

I have to give a few credits at this point. The Elizabethan Costuming Page was a great resource for the construction of the corset, farthingale and hood.  And speaking of a farthingale, brings me to Farthingales Corset Making Supplies without whom there would be no farthingale.  I have used them before and will continue to do so for my corset making supplies and hoop steel.  Finally, the Tudor Tailor by Ninya Mikhaila and Jane Malcolm-Davies was an invaluable resource.  This book provides basic patterns, historical background information and a great deal more for anyone looking to either recreate or simply to understand the clothing of the period. 

My Kirtle Made Me Cry

OK, so let's just start by saying that maybe I'm a little perimenopausal right now and I have always been moved to tears rather easily.  But know too, that they were tears of happiness.  When you go from a hand drawn not exactly your size small scale pattern in a book to full size fabric pieces in cross-all-your-limbs approximately your size things can go badly.  In fact they can go very badly indeed.  So when the corset and farthingale went on and then the kirtle went on over top and it all worked exactly the way it was supposed to, I was over the moon.

I have not yet finished the shirt as I am still working on the embroidery for the cuffs and the neckline will come down to just peak out from under the edge of the kirtle.

 

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This shows the side lacing of the kirtle, which again I am not sure how I am going to do by myself.  You quickly realize that this level of dressing required the assistance of another person.  Another problem I have yet to address is that of going to the bathroom.  We'll see how it goes.

The trim around the neckline is some metallic trim with plastic pearls sewn over top.  Now the whole thing except the neckline, and front triangle of the skirt gets covered up with a black damask gown.  My husband is very confused.  Why would you cover that all up.  He sees a dress and yes it is a dress, but a noble lady would have worn a gown over it. 

Next Step: Gown.

Tudor Underwear

I see London, I see France, but my dear lady, I see no underpants.  In Tudor England the thought is that women didn't wear underpants.  If they did, they made them at home, perhaps from scraps of linen left from making shirts, chemises, coifs and other small items.  We have no written record, of women's underpants and therefore we have no evidence as to what really happened beneath all those skirts.  Registers contain records of cloth bought for specific projects and letters contain instructions for items of clothing to be bought or reworked.  Everything we know about clothing in this period comes from those types of documents and is combined with what we can learn about clothing from portraits and other images we have from the period.  There are a few examples of garments, but these are exceedingly rare.

So my project is moving ahead and I am fully kitted in the Tudor equivalent of the underwear we know about.  Shirt, Farthingale, and Corset.  I debated a petticoat and decided against.  As it is, if Halloween is not about two degrees Celsius inside the house, I am worried that I will die of heat.  What it will be like to wear all this clothing in the subway and in class I don't know.  To sit in this without the gown is a challenge, but my word, there is no slouching, whether you like it or not!

From Karen's Sewing Corner.  Shows a single laced corset.  Notice no bows.

The corset of this period was typically single laced, meaning a single cord going back and forth from one side to the other.   I've done ear ties so that I can tie it myself.  It's also back closing so gaps are not nearly as vital to the function of the corset.  As Karen's corset demonstrates, a front opening corset needs to close.  Also, I can't see the back when I'm lacing so I have no idea how it's laced.  The other thing I ran into was that my 15 year old daughter is not as meticulous with fitting as I would be and a dress form just does not cut it when it comes to fitting a corset.

The other thing I think I am going to change is take some metal out of the top two rings of steel in the farthingale in order to get a better cone shape.  I have also seen some farthingale patterns where the steel supports are closer to the waist.  After sitting in this one, I think the first ring is in exactly the right place.

Next step: The kirtle.

Happy Horsey Birthday: Horse Pop-Up Card

So here goes this year's attempt at trying to impress my niece with a card.  In all honesty, she does seem to enjoy them so it's not like she is super difficult to please or has ever sneered at past attempts.  I think in her preteen/teenage way she quite enjoys them.

Now my niece has been taking riding lessons for years and horse themed gifts have happened more than once.  This year she even worked over the summer helping to clean barns and teaching younger kids to ride, so clearly she loves horses.  Why else would you have anything to do with horse poop?  So I decided I would do a horse themed pop-up this year.  It was more artistic and less child-like and that appealed to me.  I shopped around my initial ideas (rough drafts) with my family and my husband suggested more horses in addition to the initial two part silhouette and I tried it and liked it.  I went with shades of brown card stock and a green field.  I love the way the horse silhouette folds when the card is closed.

I decorated the front of the card with a horseshoe cut from gold mirror paper.  I doubled up some of the elements to give it more depth and then added the Happy Birthday banner using some Scraptivity  and Hero Arts alpha stamps.  I used some Vintage Photo distress ink to distress the stamped and embossed banner.  I sure hope she likes it.

Well the comment was, "This is my favourite card so far!"

See the pages list at the side, there is now a How-to for this card.

Halloween is Coming

Every year Halloween is a big deal.  Some years are bigger than others.  For me its an awesome excuse to dress up and this year I've decided to explore something I have curiosity about.  This year I will be Anne Boleyn.  For the evening when the kiddies come, I am hoping I can work out how to have my severed head on a pike.  I tried to convince hubby to be Henry VIII or the headsman, but his last idea was robot, but I seem to remember some grumbling about that being too hard.  He enjoys the holiday, but obviously doesn't feel the need to commit the same time and effort that I do.

Part of my curiosity is how they wore all those clothes, so for a change I am hoping for a cool Halloween.  I'll be wearing 4 layers of clothing on top.  A smock, corset, kirtle and gown.  Some models add boning to the kirtle, skip the corset and add a petticoat.  I've decided to go a little transitional, so will use a corset and farthingale to support the kirtle and gown.  For me it will be a little more flexible moving forward and besides, I've learned with Halloween costumes, no one is looking for a history lesson besides me.

One of my first quandaries was deciding what to do about the busk.  There is conflicting evidence as to when the busk first appeared, but my corset will have one.  I figure even walking to the scaffold, Anne Boleyn would have been at the forefront of fashion.  Truth is she wore a quite conservative outfit to her execution.  Rather than the trademark fitted french gown with the french hood we all recognize, she apparently wore a loose gown and english hood.  No one would recognize this instantly as Anne Boleyn so french gown it is with a busk, but I will go with an english hood.  This way I won't have to use a wig.  The french hood sits quite far back on the head and I have bangs.  The english hood covers almost all the hair and is perfect for my bangs and distinctly not long not auburn tresses.

So first job busk and here it is.  It still needs the holes in the tip so it can be laced into place.  The busk was put on once the corset was in place and laced.  Stay tuned as the costume comes together.

Pinwheels

 Pinwheels are quite popular right now and with good reason.  They capitalize on two sided coordinated papers, they can move and they are happy.  Pinwheels can be feminine, but with a little thought can be completely gender neutral, or even be made for boys specifically.  Spring might be the traditional time for pinwheels, but with a little imagination the readily available templates can be adapted for a variety of themes.  The fall leaves pinwheel is one such example.  Imagine three of these in a fall centrepiece at Thanksgiving.

 Because the standard pinwheel is simply a square cut in at the corners and folded in, they can be made quite small.  They then make fun accents on cards or scrapbook pages.  You can be literal with them accenting a day at the fair, or pictures with pinwheels.  You can also use them as generic embellishments similar to flowers.  The card uses a Stampotique stamp and 6x6 paper from Sei.  This paper is only one sided, so I used Distress ink and a template to create a coordinating colour on the back.

This layout with its soft background papers by Prima (Ledger paper pack), Glitz, and Graphic 45 were perfect to set off the fun bright colours of the pinwheels.  The fact that the glitter dot paper matches the little pink polka dotted bathing suit was just too perfect.

Give pinwheels a try.

Templates:
Basic Square Pinwheel
Classic Pinwheel Pattern

Nathalie Kalbach Mini Album Class - Album

I had the pleasure of attending Nathalie's class here in Toronto at Bizzy B's.  We used acrylic, chipboard, papers, mists, templates, gel medium, glazes and on and on to play with a few techniques and create an album along the way.  While I finished most of the album during the 3.5 hour class, I did have to finish embellishing the inner pages at home.  Here is the result.  The pages appear in no particular order.

Oh yes and all that greenery is my garden.  Not a lot of flowers right now, as I have very little sun.  Hostas work wonderfully is this situation.

High Jinx and High Tea

I wanted to make a couple of true pop-up cards this month, rather than mechanical cards.  I was quite stumped for a bit trying to come up with an idea and then figure out what papers to use with it.  Character Constructions Bee Keeper's Tea and all the Jubilee festivities certainly put me into a tea frame of mind.  Well with the help of Graphic 45's Ladies Diary, it was easy to pull it all together.  This is what is inside the card above when it is opened.  A little help in the way of a teapot and teacup from Deviant Scrap and I rather feel like a spot of tea myself.

Well after the revitalizing power of a proper brew, I was ready to unleash my inner child.  I couldn't help myself and built a castle with a little fairy doll to live in it.

Kaleidoscope Card

I recently gave a class at Bizzy B's making mechanical paper doll cards.  I seem to always overestimate how much we can achieve in the time allotted.  So as a way to provide the class and the how to's I've made a video. This is done in three parts and at the end of the blog will be my complete written instructions with a complete supply list.

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Supplies used:

• Character Constructions Stamps:
• Beekeeper's Tea #7
• French Laundry #13
• Queen of Tarts #3 and #2
• Impression Obsession Flourishes Cover a Card stamp
• B-Line Don't Let Life Ruffle stamp
• Stampotique Spikey stamp
• Tsukineko #05 Clear embossing powder
• Memento Tuxedo Black ink
• Distress Ink
• Mustard Seed
• Dusty Concord
• Colour Box Black pigment ink
• Bo Bunny Ambrosia 12x12 paper
• Deep Red/ Burgundy cardstock
• Simply Smooth cardstock
• pop dots
• Touch Markers
• 43 Deep Olive Gree
• 47 Grass Green
• 133 Baby Skin Pink
• 139 Flesh
• R5 Cherry Pink
• Copic Markers
• YR07 Cadmium Orange
• E55 Light Caramel

 

Step 1: Cut lines on back of card front.  (Printed on back of Bo Bunny Ambrosia paper 4 ¾ x 6 ¾”)

Step 2: Cut the lines on the moving picture template.

Step 3: Use the template for the circle as a mask to stamp Stampotique figure.

Step 4: Emboss being sure to keep circle edges free and being careful not to distort the paper.

Step 5: Stamp birds.

Step 6: Stamp dress on Memory Box paper, emboss and cut out.

Step 7: Masking so parts beyond dress top do not show, stamp Character Constructions head on front of cut moving picture element.

Step 8: Emboss and colour.

Step 9: Mask stamped head and stamp background and birds.

Step 10: Stamp tab of mechanism.

Step 11: Stamp emboss and cut out arms.

Step 12: Stamp, emboss, and cut out fan.

Step 13: Assemble mechanism: Directions and template originate from: Sheila Sturrock, Making Mechanical Cards, Guild of Master Craftsman Publications Ltd; Lewes, East Sussex, 2009.

Step 14: Use the fan in front and the 1” circle in the back.

Step 15: Use pop-dots to attach dress to card front in position, being careful to keep dots away from turning mechanism underneath.

Step 16: Use pop-dots to attach card front to card body.

Beauty in My Eyes

On the weekend I found a new toy.  I had been searching for one of these for a while now.  For a time, I could walk down Queen St. East anytime and have my pick of them all at reasonable prices, but then a lot of the marginal shops moved out as gentrification progressed in its inevitable way.  I had missed my chance and now would have to wait for happenstance.

On the way to a ROM walk, which was incredibly good by the way, we passed by the St. Lawrence Market's antique sale.   I told my husband that seeing as we arrived early we could have a quick look around.  Well the first place set up on the outside of the North building had exactly what I was looking for and was willing to let us have it for a really good price.  A few days early, but Happy Birthday to me.

  I don't know the exact vintage, but it's somewhere in the late 30's.  All the parts work, the letters are clear, even the ribbon seems pretty good.  And it was made in Toronto.  Imagine that!  I am so happy about this find.  Now at last I have a typewriter to help me finish what I wanted to do with my Zombie Manual.  Fun times.


Now I got around to taking pictures because I looked outside and saw that my peonies were beautifully lit and screamed to have their pictures taken.  These peonies were started from seeds kindly given to me by a gentleman from the Canadian Peony Society at a Canada Blooms show.  I started with a bunch of seeds, 10 germinated that summer and one, this beautiful one, made it through the winter to bloom the very next year.  This plant is heavily shaded by a very weedy wisteria, but manages year after year to produce these stunning blooms.  Where ever that gentleman may be, he always has my deepest thanks.

Big Prom Project

I always get in way over my head.  Way over my head.  This year my oldest is graduating and this very evening off at her prom.  Now she has a unique style and this should come as no surprise, as she is off to art school next year.  Prom dress shopping was filled with disbelieving laughter as she could not imagine herself in a particular dress or in one instance pulling at both the top and bottom of a another dress trying to get more coverage.  A lot of dresses didn't even make it off the hanger as they were declared to be gross.  She did find a dress online she liked, but it was from the States and our experiences with cross border mail order shopping are such that I knew it was a proposition fraught with problems.  The one thing I did get from the online dress was a silhouette that she would be happy with.  40's vintage.  OK.

Once she conceded to have me sew a dress, we had to find fabric, trims, jewelry and shoes.  We picked a Belville Sassoon pattern from Vogue.  The first thing she wanted changed was the flowers on the sleeve.  I argued that the sleeves needed something for a little wow. She picked a Chinese black silk with pink dragons.

The next challenge: Shoes.  We went to Fluevog and she found a great pair that fit the bill, though hers are black on black with a little gray trim.  I then made her a pair of laces to match her dress.

Next she needed jewelry.  A trip to the bead store and stringing the bracelet 3 times to get the right amount of slack resulted in this.

I use Chinese crystal and IRL they are way blingy.

Last step: Hair.  Love the internet for this sort of thing.  I found this photo, among others, and she heartily approved.

So that's my list of ingredients and here's the finished prom girl. The purse is vintage 50's.

And to set the Photoshop time machine in motion.........