Why the Hell Not?

Artisan Entries - Part 3

As promised, I'm posting two more of my Artisan Award contest entries.  Today's post contains my two 3-D items. 

The first item is made with the Just Jawing stamp set.  When I first saw this set, I have to admit that I did not like it.  I thought it was weird.  Really weird.  Somehow goth and yet cute.  Weird.  Ick.  Ugh.  Blew!  However, the more I saw it used, the more I liked it (talk about the power of peer pressure).  Add to that the Rockabilly Designer Series Paper (which sadly retired shortly after I made this) and I was in love! 

I made a box using the usual 2-4-6-8 box template, with a slight variation in where I put the score lines.  The box/bag ended up being about 3 inches wide on the widest side and about 1 1/2 inches wide on the shortest side.  Since I used DSP, I could easily punch the handle using the largest star punch.  I also used some of my absolute favorite (and of course, now retired) Stampin' Up! ribbon, which sadly only came in a ribbon "bundle."  I used the red ribbon from the Dress Up Ribbon Originals.  I also used a button from the now retired Button Bouquet.  Of course, all of these retirements weren't a surprise as well, the items all used the 2008-9 In Colors, which were conveniently my absolute favorite In Colors we've ever had!

I also used Fine Galaxy glitter (the red one) and Mono Multi glue.  I believe I used Sticky Strip to adhere the "box" together as if I used Snail, it would fall apart.  Snail is simply not strong enough to hold 3-D items together, even if they're only made with DSP.  However, Sticky Strip will hold just about anything together!

As you can see, I stamped the skull stamp in Stazon Black onto one of the patterns in Rockabilly DSP, cut it out, glued it onto another design (the Kiwi Kiss dots) from the same pack and cut it out again, leaving a small Kiwi Kiss border.  In fact, Rockabilly is the only paper I used for this project, except for a tiny bit of Whisper White that I used to paper piece onto the bones and teeth.  Wait, aren't teeth also bones?  Apparently not.  The things you learn...

The design on the belly band is really simple.  I hand cut a skull and cross bones from one of the pieces in Rockabilly and adhered it onto a Kiwi Kiss button.  Then, I adhered the button to the star punched from another pattern from Rockabilly (the same as I used for the box itself - the black glossy striped piece).  And lastly , I punched a scalloped circle from another pattern from Rockabilly, adhered the star (and stuff) to it and then adhered it all to the belly band.  It actually all went together fairly quickly. 

And for my second project. 

This one is cool, if I say so myself.  The pictures do not do it justice and I did not make a second one to keep for myself as it was somewhat of a pain in the rear to make.  Despite many tries, I could not get the color to show properly.  The color of the sleigh is Riding Hood Red, which is a nice deep crimson.  I used textured cardstock to give it a big more dimension.

The concept is very simple.  I found a stinking cute sleigh and reindeer set from K & Company last Christmas, bought it, and never put it together.  Then, I got to wondering if I could make a cool sleigh using the Top Note and Join in the Cheer dies.  Enter, the result:

I bet you're wondering how I did the "legs."  That's a good question!  I cut six layers of Chocolate Chip cardstock for each leg and used Mono Multi to glue them together.  Now, had this not been a SU contest, I would have just used my Xyron, but I had to work within their supplies.  The weird thing on using this method is that it makes the layered paper feel like a really thick felt.  It was kinda funky and totally flexible.  However, since I glued the entire strips together before deciding which parts I wanted to use, I had extras to use on other projects.

Assuming you're past the, "that girl is high for trying to glue six layers of small scrolly letters together!" thought, you may be wondering why I used six layers.  Well, the answer is simple.  I tried three first and the legs wouldn't hold the sleigh, so I upped it.  Six held the sleigh well, even when I pushed on it.  I did let the legs dry really well (actually for about a week) to make sure they would hold the sleigh. 

I didn't use a pattern to make this sleigh.  I literally just played around with it until I got what I wanted.  I did use Sticky Strip to adhere the sleigh for all posterity.  I also put a shelf in the sleigh to hold the presents.  For the presents, I just made little boxes using scraps of paper from the Sweet Nothings Simply Scrappin' kit, Bella Rose DSP, and Taste of Textiles (which I LOVE and unfortunately they retired, argh!).  I used various hemp twines (most of which are also now retired...see a theme?) to make "ribbon" for the packages.  I used Sticky Strip to adhere the packages together and to the sleigh. 

The front and back of the sleigh are not attached to the sides.  Rather, they're all attached to the bottom, which holds it all together.  To make it stronger, I actually attached an axle of sorts to the bottom of the sleigh to both hold the thing together and help support the legs.  I actually attached the legs using Mono Multi, since I did not have the space to use Sticky Strip without it showing.  Weird, I know, but it worked. 

The scrolly parts on the sides are simply cuts from the Join in the Cheer die with vanilla half backed pearls from the Pretties Kit.  And yes, I only used one layer of paper for those embellishments.  ;) 

And to leave you and for your viewing pleasure, a view of the backside...

Mmmm.....Strawberries

Strawberries, how do I love thee?  Let me count the ways...

This is our strawberry patch in mid-June.  As you can see, there are tasty red berries on the plants.  It's a Where's Waldo thing kids so play along.  The plants are no longer producing as it's too hot.  Plus, strawberry plants really stop producing after about two production years and these have had those years. We'll likely pull these plants this Fall and plant new ones.  Sniff.  Sad.  Sorry babies.  Your time has come.

Do you see the owl?  He's carefully watching over the berries and fending off the hoards of birds.  You can't see them but they're flying in an organized attack pattern overhead.  Brave owl.  Fighting off the finches. 

He looks a little ticked too.  He's probably mad that some of the birds are faster than him. That and that the squirrels keep going Kung Fu on him and tipping him over.  But he's a strong owl and he overcomes adversity.

Look how studious he is.  He's carefully watching our luscious berries even while the evil cucumber plants try to overtake him.  What a great owl we have!

Gin Taste-Off!

In the spirit of my last post, this is another taste-off between varieties of gin inspired by Tales of the Cocktail 2009.

It seemed like about 2/3 of the drinks we were served at Tales were gin drinks of one sort or another, and to her great surprise, Karen liked almost all of them.

We attended the Martin Miller's Gin tasting room, and ended up with a bunch of airplane bottles of their gin, and little cocktail shakers as well.   The drinks they served in there were fantastic, and made me really curious about their gin in a more standard drink.

So... just like the cachaca taste off, I drafted Andy (my brother) into helping me.  We decided that Gin and Tonics were the way to go, since we're both partial to them, and I'd brought my entire bottle of Plymouth Gin down anyway.

First, we smelled the gins.  Neither smelled particularly remarkable - they both smelled very junipery!

I gave each glass a lime quarter squeezed out, 1.5 oz of gin (airplane bottle dose), and 2 oz of tonic per glass.  I stirred that up, and added ice. 

Andy started with the Martin Miller glass and instantly exclaimed "Uuhgh." and proclaimed it "funky, and not in a good way."  My Plymouth G&T tasted fine - I happen to like Plymouth.

We switched the glasses, and he said he liked the Plymouth much better, even having never had Plymouth.  I tasted the Martin Miller's G&T, and it had a distinct taste of cucumber or something like that.  The Plymouth by comparison, tasted almost citrusy, and its taste worked with the tonic water and lime, unlike the Martin Miller's, which clashed and tasted, well... odd.

Clear winner for gins and tonics:  Plymouth

Stay tuned for more taste-offs and some upcoming cooking entries!

-M

Hey look, I was short!

Hi, it's me - Karen.  I'm a giant.  A gentle one, usually.  I'm actually taller than my dad now, but I wasn't when this picture was taken, hence the title above.

I grew up traveling every Summer.  Mom and dad would scrimp and save so we could spend two blissful (yeah, right) weeks in the car going somewhere in the U.S.  Thanks to their determination to see the United States and get us "cultured", my sister and I have been to most of the states and have many incredible memories.  We also inherited their love of travel and passion for trying new things.  However, we hate driving places.  Oh well, two out of three ain't bad. 

The picture in this page is from one of those Summers.  We're off somewhere (I think it may be Yellowstone) and of course mom was left behind with the camera.  When I showed her this picture and asked her where she took it, she got flustered and said that every dang picture she took of us was from the back as we were always running away from the camera.  Well, hello!  When you take five freaking minutes to focus the dang camera and want to take eight million pictures a day, we have no choice but to try to escape! And of course, my dad was my partner in crime...

I rounded the corners of the mats to match the lovely '80's style of rounded corners on prints...  BTW, next time I decide to set THAT many eyelets on one page, shoot me.  Or at least hand me a drink. 

Here's the page:

The paper and eyelets are from Bazzill.  The doodling template is Doodlebug, I think.  I'm guessing the brads are from Making Memories.  I doodled in a pen from Sakura that is a copper color.  I journaled in one of my many white gel pens as I've tried just about every brand.  "Daddy and me" is written with rub-ons, and I can't think of the brand name.  No idea on the rest, as well, I made this three years ago! 

Here are some detail shots:

 

Okay, to tell you the truth, I'm not sure it's me in the picture.  Mom wasn't sure either.  See, my sister and I were the same height for a very long time, despite the fact that she's several years older.  Add to that our wonderful matching rainbow hairdos (sooooo another post) and gorgeous homemade clothes (also another post) and we were hard to tell apart from behind.  So, I guessed.  But, the beautiful thing about history is that whatever the storyteller says is what people remember, so it's me in the picture!

More Artisan Award Entries

For your viewing pleasure, here are two more of my Artisan Award entries.  Over the next few weeks, I'll be posting the projects two by two every Friday.   As background, I entered the 2009 Stampin' Up! Artisan Award contest and didn't win.  Weird, I know.  ;)

Below are two of my cards.  I've fallen in love with Stampin' Up's Decor Stencils, especially for making cards.  I know they were intended for stenciling on the walls, but hey, I like to use things in ways other than their intended use.

For this card, I traced the stencil (I think it's called Kind Thoughts) with a Rose Red marker.  It took forever, but I loved the look.  The flower is from the Pretties Kit and I died it using a water brush and Old Olive reinker.  Our non-spiffy camera actually picked up the fact that the color is darker on the end of the petals and lightens as you go to the center. I think the set is Great Friend, but honestly, I'm too lazy to get up and look it up in the catalog and it's a PITA to look it up online. I'm a really good searcher too!

Here's a close up of the flower and detail on top:

To get dual colors on the butterfly, I used a little trick I was playing around with.  I inked the butterfly with Pretty in Pink ink (I think) and then took the small writing tip of my Old Olive marker and traced the outline of the openings in the rubber (i.e. the rubber doesn't ink where there are holes, so I traced around the holes to "line" the holes with color), huffed on the stamp to re-moisten the ink and stamped.  It took some time but worked really well.  The color is also more subtle than if I'd taken the marker and done the outline after I stamped.  I then took my  Mono Multi and ran a line of glue over the pattern and topped with Dazzling Diamonds glitter.  Lastly, I cut the image out.  

This card also shows another of my current favorite techniques.  I love to line the outside of a cut out image with marker.  It just gives the image a little extra dimension.  You can see this on the medallion that I stamped "for you" on. 

Here's the second card:

Sorry the lighting is so bad.  I took these pictures in a light box on my dining table and part of the lighting issue is due to a missing chandelier, which is a whole 'nother series of posts!

I actually made this card at about 2 AM at a retreat.  I was just playing around with this set and really liked the result. 

The card is made with a  Kraft paper card base stamped with Versamark.  The sentiment is Rose Red ink stamped onto Whisper White and backed with Pink Pirouette textured cardstock.  The Kiwi Kiss scalloped square is actually a sticker from a now retired Simply Scrappin' Kit.  The heart is stamped in Versamark on Basic Black cardstock and then embossed with Silver detailed embossing powder. I believe that the flower is stamped in Rose Red and the center thingy is in Kiwi Kiss (my new favorite Old Olive).  I hand cut the flower and punched the thingy in the middle out with a 1/2 inch circle punch.  I didn't glue the thingy to the hardware.  Rather, I just used a punch or piercer (don't remember which and either is likely with me as I use whatever I can find the fastest) and held the whole schebang together with the brad and then glued everything to the heart. 

The card is actually quite stunning in real life.  And, it doesn't have my usual eight million layers either! 

Cachaca Taste-off!

A couple of weeks ago, at Tales of the Cocktail 2009, Karen and I showed up Thursday morning at the Hotel Monteleone for our first seminars.  We were greeted by a pair of women in "tropical" attire (for lack of a better word), who had signs that said "Free Cachaca!", and who were giving out some promotional stuff for Leblon brand cachaca.  We wandered over to the rooms at the side, and checked out the Leblon tasting room, because Karen didn't know what cachaca was, and I was curious about what "Free Cachaca!" meant.

For those of you who aren't aware of how the tasting rooms worked, here's a quick synopsis.  Each producer had a room for a fixed amount of time.  They were likely required to produce at least two different types of drinks with their products for the attendees to sample.  Most producers had some sort of free gear and/or a presentation about their products as well.

On to the Leblon tasting room!  In Leblon's tasting room, I talked with Gilles Merlet, the French master cognac distiller who works for Leblon, about their process, and about cachaca in general.  Cachaca is a Brazilian sugarcane liquor that's wildly popular down there - something on the order of a billion liters of the stuff is made annually in Brazil.

The main thing that separates cachaca from rum is that cachaca is produced from sugarcane juice, much like a Caribbean rhum agricole.  That's why the US government requires it to be labeled as rum, instead of as its own cachaca category. Hence the "Free Cachaca!" campaign - they don't want to be lumped in with rum.  There must be something else that's different about the way cachaca's made, because cachaca and rum don't really taste or smell much alike, even when we're talking about rhum agricole.  Cachaca has its own odd flavor- kind of harsh on its own, and very different.  It's still somewhat sweet, and obviously comes from sugarcane though.

In the tasting room, we had our first Caipirinhas, which are a Brazilian drink composed of muddled lime eighths (4 of them, or half a lime worth), sugar syrup - about 3/4 oz, and 2 oz cachaca.  To make one, take your lime eighths, muddle them to death in the bottom of the shaker, add the cachaca, the sugar syrup and a reasonable amount of ice.  Shake it well, then dump it into a glass, ice and all.  It's one of the very few cocktails that actually retain the ice used in preparation.

We both felt that the cachaca went surprisingly well with the citrus and sugar, despite the funky odor and taste of the straight stuff.

Later during Tales, we attended a seminar where we got little airplane bottles of Cabana cachaca, which is a competing brand to Leblon, and is aged in native jequitiba rosa wood, instead of the cognac casks that Leblon uses.

The following weekend, I enlisted my brother Andy's help in a taste-off between Leblon and Cabana;  he's always up for something strange and drink related.

Our procedure for the taste off was as follows:

First, we sampled the straight spirits.  Based on that test, we both preferred the Leblon to the Cabana, due to the slightly sweeter taste.  Both were equally funky, which must have something to do with the production process.

Next, we made a pair of Caipirinhas using the same liquor.  I cut up 2 limes, and made sure to get an even mix of eighths from each lime into each drink.  I then added exactly 3/4 oz of brown sugar syrup to each glass, followed by 1 1/2 oz of cachaca.  (I did 1 1/2 oz because the airplane bottle only held that much). 

When both drinks were prepared, we each took a sip.  The surprise was that the Leblon wasn't the winner in that trial - its higher sweetness made the drink almost cloying, while the drier Cabana made for a really good Caipirinha.  I think that in the future, I'll make my Leblon Caipirinhas with less sugar syrup than the recipe calls for, just in case!

Final result:  Andy was convinced that Cabana was the way to go.  I think you can't go wrong with either - just adjust your recipe accordingly.

-M

Mmmmmmm.....shrimps

Said of course in my best Agador Spartacus voice.  I love Hank Azaria.  He's so talented.  Did you know that he voices quite a few characters on The Simpsons?  But I digress...

During our voyage through the French Quarter in NOLA, we ate at the wonderful Mr. B's Bistro.  Of course, we could have made the bread and butter our entire meal, but we decided to add a bit more nutrition.  For those of you that are not familiar with bread in NOLA, get your butts on a plane or in a car and go there just to try it.  Seriously.  The bread is basically French bread on crack.  it's designed to suck up juices so you can properly clean your plate.  The crust is super crisp yet not tough at all.  The inside is airy and slightly chewy.  The flavor is mild and perfectly complimented by their butter (which is also like butter on crack - see a theme?).  It's roll your eyes back in your head good.  Excuse me but I just drooled.

So, since we needed a wee bit more nutrition, we ordered some fish (it was good, but didn't compare to the shrimps) and shrimps.  What they call New Orleans Barbecued Shrimp, to be accurate.  Now, being from Texas, this ain't BBQ.  In fact, the recipe doesn't even involve a BBQ pit or even a grill, for that matter.  It's all made in a pan on the stove.  And you want to know what the "secret" barbecue ingredient is?  Worcestershire sauce.  Not kidding. 

Here's the fish:

It was a bit overcooked, but the potatoes and broccoli were fantastic.  The broccoli tasted like it was tossed in garlic butter.  The herbed potatoes had a similar flavor, but with less garlic and with herb zip.  Unfortunately, we didn't get the recipe for either of those. 

Note the crusty bread at the upper right hand side of the plate - and my favorite part of the bread - the end.  Prior to our meal, the waiter brought over an entire crusty fresh baked loaf (about a foot long loaf) for us to share.  I snagged this piece for sopping up any juices from my meal.  Yum!

And now for the pies de resistance:

Yes, they left the heads on.  And the tails.  And the shells.  So, it was a total pain to eat, but worth it!  We plan on making it (without heads or shells) and posting about it (complete with a tutorial and recipe) so stay tuned...

Crafty McCrafty

That's me - Karen.  You know, when we received the awesome box of goodies from 42 Below Vodka (it's the black box under the Bloody Mary pictured in this post), I was more excited about the box than the freebies.  Not kidding.  Now, had they left the miniature vodka bottle in the box, things might be different.  But alas, they didn't.  I do plan to alter the box...at some point.  And when I do, I'll post it! 

Well, my crafting started early.  Heck, it's hard to not craft when you come from a waste-not-want-not mother who was one in a line of waste-not-want-not people.  Add to that a grandmother who crocheted, another grandmother who was a seamstress, a mother who made many of our childhood clothes (don't worry, I'll post about that sometime, oy), an aunt who also was a seamstress, another aunt who is a bonified artist, and well, what other choice did I have?

I learned to sew at an early age.  I think I was maybe five.  I'm still amazed that people make it to adulthood without even knowing basic sewing, like sewing on a button.  How does that happen?  Anyway, when I was eight or nine, I got my first sewing machine for Christmas.  My sister and I spent that night intently sewing new projects on the dining room table.  Mom took pictures of this adventure and a few years ago I turned these pictures into pages.  Here they are:

Yes, we need a spiffier camera.  Especially since I messed up and deleted the copy that did not go through our photo editing program and thus had to send them through again to add a watermark.  The problem with doing that is that it makes the quality even worse.  Ugh.  Sorry about that! 

When I look at these pages I think of several things: (1) these pages took me forever to make, partly because the crappy sewing machine at the retreat I was at broke halfway through stitching and I had to hand stitch the rest (2) man I had some bad hair!, (3) I love the vintage feel of the pages, and (4) I really need to stop hoarding the remaining SEI flocked paper that I have (that I used for these pages) and make some more cool vintage pages.  These pages are some of my absolute favorite pages.  I guess I really should frame them as well, nothing ever makes it into an album in this house!

Here's a detail shot of the squares with flowers and brads.  I made these shortly after my first Tim Holtz class (I love you Tim!) and used Ranger's paint dabbers for the big Bazzill chips. 

Pimento Liqueur!

You're probably thinking how nasty a liqueur made from the pimentos found in pimento cheese would be, right?

Luckily, that's not the sort of pimento I'm talking about.  I'm talking about something more properly called "Pimento Dram" instead of "Pimento Liqueur", and in this case, pimento means allspice.  So Pimento Dram is really an allspice liqueur.  Why they call it pimentos in the West Indies, I don't know.  Allspice got its name from the British, who thought it combined the flavors of cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg in one berry.

Why would I want allspice liqueur?  Because it makes some really good drinks, I can't find it in Dallas, and I like to make my own.  Plus, Karen and I had an absolutely divine Allspice Sour at Tales of the Cocktail's happy hour at the Presbytere on Thursday night, and I can't wait to try to reproduce it.

I did some looking, and the odds-on favorite in web recipes is Chuck Taggart's Jamaican Pimento Dram #3.  I had to do a little bit of substitution, in that I couldn't find the 151 Demerara rum around here, so I got Cruzan 151 instead.  I also plan to switch it up a little and use the Mexican piloncillo sugar instead of regular brown sugar, in the interest of a richer flavor to hopefully gain a little flavor that we may have lost without the Demerara rum.

As you can see, I've ground the berries and am steeping them in the rum.

This stage is supposed to last at least a week, and it's been in since Tuesday (7/14/09) night.

More to come later, after the steeping's finished!

-M

Stampin' Up! Artisan Entries

As many of you know, I (Karen) entered Stampin' Up's Artisan contest.  Oddly, I didn't win.  However, since we can post non-winning entries to our blogs, my loss is your gain!  Enjoy!

Note: I'll be posting all 10 of my entries, over time.  Gotta make you come back for something, right?!

 

I love this shot.  This is my sister with my niece at Mark and my wedding.  All products used on these pages are from Stampin' Up!  The actual page is 12" x 12" and is stunning in person.  Sorry our photography skills haven't caught up yet!  The ribbon up the left hand side and the ribbon around the picture are hand stitched to the page using linen thread.  I left the thread showing a bit for a rougher and more handmade look.  The main colors in this page are Riding Hood Red, Kiwi Kiss, and Chocolate Chip.

 
As further evidence that we need a spiffier camera...but I digress.

Here we find another entry - another 12" x 12" page.  This page shows the munchkins, aka my niece and nephew, who were also our ring bearer and flower girl.  The groomsmen apparently raided the closet in their changing room at the church, hence the crown on my nephew's head.  He apparently found one of the Three Wise Men's crowns.  My niece initially refused to put the ring of flowers onto her head until all of the girls in our changing room started extolling the benefit of wearing said crown of flowers and repeatedly explained how cute she'd be in it.  She was skeptical, but she went for it.  Isn't she precious?!  By the way, this is a "big smile" from the munchkins.  They have teeth, I promise. 

The main colors in this page are Riding Hood Red, Old Olive, and Chocolate Chip.  The stamp set used is Baroque Motifs.  Since I threw away the ingredient list, I'm not going to list a full list.  

Here are some detail shots:

Yes, we need a spiffier camera.  Although I have to say that I totally rocked it when I managed to accidentally (don't tell Mark) get the camera to focus in on Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman and noone else. 

And that's not a marker or ink fleck there below the date.  It's part of my favorite SU white paper - Confetti White.  And as you can see, there are at least seven layers going on with that embellishment.  What can I say?  I'm a chunky girl!

The pictures taken in the pages (which are actually awesome shots and IN focus, unlike my shots) were taken by the incredible photographers at Ryan Green Photography.  They did an amazing job shooting our wedding and very nicely allowed me to use their photos for publishing.  I don't think I can say a bad thing about the photos they took as they captured every moment I wanted, in a way I wanted, and managed to capture even more that I didn't realize I wanted but am so glad that I have them!