Details, details, details....

As I promised you, here are some of the tips/details/photos/etc. on the projects I made for the Stampin' Addicts Sale-a-Bration Blog Tour. If you haven't checked it out yet, you can check it out by starting either with my post here and completing the circuit, or going to Stampin' Addicts here. Oh, and if you join Stampin' Addicts (it's free, and if you love stamping then it's the perfect site for you!!) come back to this post and follow this link so they know I referred ya! I don't get anything for it other than warm fuzzies, but who doesn't like warm fuzzies?!?! ;)

On the Blog Tour, it's appreciated if we don't get too wordy or show more than a certain number of pictures, so here is Part II of all of my projects.

Now, on to Part II of my Stampin' Addicts Sale-a-Bration Blog Tour posts....

You probably remember this card. This card has a nice detail of a shorter front so that the sentiment peeks out from the inside. I was going to add some paper piercing to the bottom below the sentiment and stretching across to the left side of the card. BUT - I've gotten better at knowing when enough is enough. It is a talent I have yet to master, but in this case, I do think that the paper piercing would have been too much. I just love paper piercing though and can hardly keep myself from doing it all over!! :) I did do it around the butterfly, but that's it.

It has one of the darling new Chocolate Chip 1/4" Sending Love Epoxy Brads on the ribbon treatment. I don't know if it was very noticeable in the shot, but being that I had to stand the card up a funny way to get it to stand up since the bottom doesn't touch - it was taken at an odd angle.

So - maybe the details make you see the card a little differently? The color combo of a pink and a brown are a fave of mine for Valentine's day, so I think I had it stuck in my head when I made this card - even though it's totally unrelated to Valentine's day and I've yet to make any Valentine's cards. I guess I've just been seeing them everywhere :)

Now...on to the pictures I think you've anticipated seeing the most. The butterfly framed art (which is shown above at a fun angle). I must say, I am always looking for low-priced items to alter. I love to look at the frames on clearance at my local stores with thoughts and dreams for what they might hold, or what they might look like altered completely from top to bottom someday in the future. When I came up with the idea of the butterflies, I must admit that I looked through my small stash in hopes that I had a shadowbox type of frame, but I didn't have one. So - something I've done in the past so that I don't have to make my project more 2-D than 3-D, is to take the glass out of the frame and put it back in behind the stamped/hand-crafted art that I'm putting inside. That way it's still thick enough for the back to go on correctly, and it gives the cardstock art some support from behind since it doesn't have it from the front.

But, on to what I did. I recommend having some Dotto on hand - or some other re-positionable, non-permanent adhesive on hand. Mine was held with my fingers, and it got old - it slipped every now and then and I had to make sure to re-position it.

Tah-dah!! I used my Stampin' Up! Light Table, some SU! Grid Paper, and that's it! I've heard of people using windows, or glass coffee tables with lights beneath them instead of a light table, but for the times that I have needed it to emboss or now to line something up, it has been so much better than trying to make-do. That's just my opinion. Anyway - as I mentioned in my original Blog Tour post, you have to be using Whisper White CS because I don't think any other CS (except for Vellum CS, of course) will allow light to pass through both the grid paper AND the CS.

I centered my CS base on the grid paper and because it was 8" x 10" to fit my frame, it went from 3" to 13" from left to right, and 2" to 10" from bottom to top on the grid paper. If you have a piece in front of you, it will make more sense. I would suggest just using the center of your grid paper (it has an x and y "axis" that are more bold that run right through the grid paper in the middle of it both ways) to center your project, whatever the size (as long as it's not bigger than the grid paper of course). This is how I was able to evenly space my butterflies. I didn't even make marks on the CS! I placed the middle of the butterflies on the grid lines that I had chosen for the spacing that I desired in-between each butterfly. Every butterfly's wings touched the same line on the top and bottom of the wings as the butterfly next to it. They also were centered in the same column of squares going vertically down the page. My butterflies had a half an inch between them from the bottom of one butterfly to the top of the one below it, and a quarter of an inch between them (this was a little harder since my 1/4" consisted of two halves of two squares (2 - 1/8" segments). You can see this the best with the Melon Mambo Polka Dot (Patterns DSP) butterfly 2 down from the top right, the one to it's left (Bermuda Bay Stripes from Patterns DSP), and the one immediately below that one (Melon Mambo also from Patterns DSP). I used a little piece of Stampin' Dimensional under each wing to pop them up. I started mounting them at the top left and went to the right and then down to the 2nd row and went from left to right again, and so on.

I hope that this answers any and all questions you might have had about my projects. My third card, the one you see above, was fairly simple and really doesn't have much to it. I used my Tabletop Trimmer to cut 1-1/2" squares out of the Sweet Pea DSP and then just eye-balled placing them on my card. That's about it!

Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll keep visiting me. I appreciate each and every visit, and especially each and every comment. I'm getting ready to start working on my Master's Degree, so I don't have time like I used to to reply to every comment, but know that each one makes my day a little brighter. Thank you!! :)