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Friday, December 31, 2021

VIDEO: Dry Embossed Freehand Texture + New Year's Wishes

*Compensated affiliate links used where possible at zero cost to you. No posts are ever sponsored or paid.*

CURRENT COUPON CODES
20% off anything at Glassboard Studio  - UNDERSTANDBLUE.
15% off anything at Marker Universe or any of their other sites - Understandblue15.
10% off at Sweet Sentiment with code UNDERSTANDBLUE
10% off the whole store at A Colorful Life Designs - LydiaFan10
5% off at LBC here with code LYDIA5
Arkon Mounts - 20% off sitewide with code UNDERSTANDBLUE

What are your New Year's traditions, if you can even believe that it's here already? We do the very traditional (for here anyway) blackeyed peas for luck and greens for prosperity. My issue with this has always been that I LOATHE blackeyed peas, despite my love for most beans and peas. My sister solved this in the late 1900s, saving me from gagging down a single blackeyed pea every New Year's by inventing peaxté - a faux pate made from blackeyed peas and other things - recipe at the end of this post. We eat that on crackers with a chiffonade of whatever greens we are growing this time of year. I harvested some chard from her house and I also have two different kinds of sorrel out back. You make a little nest of the greens on a cracker, and put the peaxté on top. It's quite delicious - like an upscale bean dip. I made that yesterday so it could rest in the fridge and I'll bring some to my mom today. Other traditions around the world are fun - I was reading up on them yesterday. In some countries they believe eating round foods is lucky - think citrus, etc. I could make that work with cucumbers for sure. Technically the peaxté is round if you eat it on the right cracker. In Brazil, people wear white for luck. In Demnark, they smash dishes on the doorstep - that might just be drunk people and not so much for luck. In the sweetest tradition, farmers in Belgium wish a happy new year to each one of their farm animals! One Colombian tradition has people grabbing an empty suitcase and running at top speed around the block to guarantee they will travel in the new year - maybe we need to do that to get rid of the rona! In MY homeland in upstate New York, you can buy these little peppermint pigs that you smash with a hammer at New Year's. They are quite delicious, the little pig shards. They are closed for the year, but you can find them next year at www.saratogasweets.com. Japan has a beautiful tradition I might adopt this year - eating long noodles for longevity - with all manner of symbolic toppings that are really sweet. I always have soba noodles - I adore them - so I might do this on New Year's day in addition to the peaxté. They also ring a bell 108 times, which I find fascinating, as that number is a magical one in lots of ways, not the least of which is the number of stitches on a baseball.

Anyway - whatever you decide to do, I hope it's fun, peaceful and lucky! What I do NOT do is resolutions - because that's just a lot of pressure. I prefer sort of daily resolutions, honestly - today I'll do my laundry! Today I'll make art! That kind of thing. Then I don't disappoint myself with some year long checklist I probably won't pull off - it's good to know yourself!

Now because goldfish are considered to bring luck and prosperity - I'm bringing you a goldfish today and a fun video for altering your stamp images with dry embossing. 

Here are the supplies I used to create this fun mixed media tag:

To create the tag, I sprayed the sprays onto my craft mat and smooshed the tag into them. Then I spattered them with the same colors. I collaged the rice paper and gel print onto the tag, and added the fishy and the sentiment sticker. The black dots I made with black glue, which makes PERFECT round, shiny dots.


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Here is the video for the scale texture you see - it's such an easy and fun technique!



Goldfish Stamps
[ ELH | SSS | ALTN ]
Goldfish dies
[ ELH | SSS ]
Sticky quotes
[ JGG ]
Stylus & paint dot set
[ AMZUS ]
Polychromos
[ BLIC ]
Matte medium
[ BLIC ]
Silicone spatula
[ AMZUS ]
Black glue
[ SSS ]
Fuchsia spray
[ JGG ]
Turquoise Spray
[ JGG ]
White spray
[ JGG ]
Tim Holtz Tags
[ CST | ACH ]
Warm Whites Rice Paper
[ JGG ]
Bristol Smooth
[ BLIC ]
Hot press WC paper
[ BLIC ]
Amazon.com: McGill Paper Blossoms...
[ AMZUS ]


If you are not signed up for my newsletter, you can do that below or in the sidebar - and if you are, then you already know about my crafty de-stash boxes! I'm packing ten medium flat rate boxes FULL of new and gently used stamps, dies and more as a fundraiser for the Gabby Petito foundation.  Here are the deets! (PLEASE DO NOT SEND A PAYMENT UNLESS YOU ARE NOTIFIED YOU'VE BEEN CHOSEN.) 


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On to FOOD!

Now my sister does something different every year with the peaxté, and she's not big on writing things down, but I pinned her down in 2012, 2016, 2017 and 2020 for how she made it, and this year I made the 2012 version - so here it is with my edits. It's delicious. 

1 tsp-ish bacon grease, or you can cook bacon as described below

1/2 large sweet onion, finely chopped

1/4 tsp. cumin

2 chile pequins, smashed to dust - I grow these, so any chile pepper you have is fine

1 can black eyed peas

1/2 can navy beans (I did about 3/4 can)

Bay leaf

2 fresh sage leaves

2 sprigs of fresh thyme

1drop liquid smoke

1 tsp. salt (I use Redmond Real Salt, which is less salty, so adjust for your salt)

Fresh ground pepper

 

Cook bacon and remove it from pan, or just add bacon grease to a pan. Add onion and pequins and put in oven at 350 for 20 minutes - I used a la creuset with a lid - but stir every 5 minutes or so.

 

Rinse and drain the peas and soak in boiling hot water with a TBS of baking soda. Rinse and drain a can of navy beans.

 

Remove pan and put on stove top on medium.

 

Add bay leaf and sage to hot pan. Add ground black pepper, salt, 1/4 tsp cumin, add navy beans, liquid smoke and a splash of white wine and a squeeze of lemon (optional).

 

Rinse and drain peas and add to pan, cooking until very soft - about 20 - 30 minutes. If you need to add a little water, that's fine - I lowered the heat after adding it to the stove.

 

When done, blend with a stick blender or hand mixer. Put in a mason jar, and squish all the air out, and seal the top with parchment paper, waxed paper or cling wrap. The next day, serve on a cracker on top of a chiffonade of your favorite greens for good luck!


Happy New Year!!

Loveyameanitbye.



Monday, December 20, 2021

Mixed Media Collage Flower + The Cat Based Weather Prediction System

*Compensated affiliate links used where possible at zero cost to you. No posts are ever sponsored or paid.*

Happy Monday! We have had some weather extremes here the last few weeks - unusually cold, punctuated by a so-hot-I-got-mosquito-bites heat and now back to cold. This has led us to an observation about the cats. And when I say cats, I mean Splotchy, because he's the one that likes to read the cat dictionary out loud every night at 4 AM.

What we have observed is that a cold kitty is a good kitty! As soon as he gets cold enough, he hops up on the bed at 10 PM and doesn't move until the alarm goes off. On the hot day, I thought about turning the air conditioner down to 47 just to get a good night's rest!

So we developed a whole new graphical weather forecast - instead of that curved line with the blue triangles they use now, we will replace each triangle with a peacefully sleeping kitty, so that people know exactly what's coming. The warm front graphic will be replaced with a bunch of wild-eyed insane cats. Much clearer than we have now, don't you think? At the end of the day we care more about sleep than the precipitation chance!

Anyway - have you signed up to be notified when my upcoming collage workshop is live? If not, you can do so here, and you'll get an email as soon as the class is posted online.

I ask because this is one of the projects I'll be showing in the workshop. It's a 100% collage flower. I stamped this beautiful, open floral from Gina in black on a Gel Press print from my stash. Then I took some text from my alumni magazine and cut out the folded back portions of the petals. I shaded it with these creamy colored pencils in a fun, vibrant violet. Pencils are great on top of thin acrylic paint like the layers on gel prints.

The card base is faux plaster (see next photo for details) that I created with heavy body paint and black & white tissue paper, that I collaged onto the card base with matte medium and a silicone spreader BEFORE adding the plaster texture with the paint. After adding white gel pen details to the middle of the flower, I attached it with sweet pops and decided it didn't need a sentiment!


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See what I mean? LOVE this texture. 


Season of Peace
[ GNK ]
Derwent Chromaflow Colored Pencils -...
[ BLIC ]
B&W Collage Rice Paper
[ JGG ]
Sakura Gelly Roll Opaque White Pens...
[ BLIC ]
Sweet Pops — Sweet Sentiment
[ SWT ]
Silicone media spreader
[ AMZUS ]
Matte Medium
[ BLIC ]
Heavy Body Acrylic
[ BLIC ]
Pre-cut/scored A2 Cards
[ CTC ]
MISTI Stamping Tool
[ MSP | SSS | ELH ]
Rotatrim Professional Series Cutter -...
[ BLIC ]


What do YOUR pets do when the weather changes?

Tomorrow is the shortest day of the year - thank goodness. I'm ready for longer days! This falling back nonsense is for the birds!

Loveyameanitbye.



CURRENT COUPON CODES
20% off anything at Glassboard Studio  - UNDERSTANDBLUE.
15% off anything at Marker Universe or any of their other sites - Understandblue15.
10% off at Sweet Sentiment with code UNDERSTANDBLUE
10% off the whole store at A Colorful Life Designs - LydiaFan10
5% off at LBC here with code LYDIA5
Arkon Mounts - 20% off sitewide with code UNDERSTANDBLUE



Thursday, December 16, 2021

Crafty Rewind: Keith Haring & The Blissful 80s

*Compensated affiliate links used where possible at zero cost to you. No posts are ever sponsored or paid.*
CURRENT COUPON CODES
20% off anything at Glassboard Studio  - UNDERSTANDBLUE.
15% off anything at Marker Universe or any of their other sites - Understandblue15.
10% off at Sweet Sentiment with code UNDERSTANDBLUE
10% off the whole store at A Colorful Life Designs - LydiaFan10
5% off at LBC here with code LYDIA5
Arkon Mounts - 20% off sitewide with code UNDERSTANDBLUE

If you were in high school in the 80s, go ahead and admit that you'd wear ALL those clothes again. You might pretend on Facebook that you don't want it to come back, but I know you do. You can tell me. This is a safe space.

I can tell YOU that if I had a chance to get that primary color triangle bottle of Liz Claiborne perfume right now, I'd put that perfume on, and don my Keith Haring inspired Benetton pajama style outfit - a blousy matching top and bottom out of soft cotton with a primary colored Keith Haring pattern on it. You can tell I'm not the only one - because look what that perfume is selling for on Etsy!! HA!!

What's funny is I've Googled this particular outfit endlessly and there are no photos of ACTUAL 80s clothes out there. Everything I see is this weird, exaggerated concept that millennials have of 80s clothes. Not sure if that's because we were still using old school film and those photos don't exist or what - but I just can't find it. So trust me - it was awesome. I was working at McDonald's at the time for $3.15 / hour, and I had to save a long time to get that outfit, and so it's very precious in my memory. It had ankle and wrist cuffs (we were determined to look as fat as possible back then) that were black and it was such a crisp print. 

Anyway - that is the subject of today's crafty rewind - I guess it's a DOUBLE rewind. When I saw the this background stamp stamp this summer, I went right back in my head to my favorite outfit, so I colored it the same way. Then I used the infinity dies to cut it out to be the moon over my die cut New York skyline, which I cut twice with the dies from the Heroscape. I flipped the black die cut so the buildings are in the opposite orientation - this stretches the die to allow for layered die cut scenes. 

I used an 1/8" hole punch to cut three little circles colored with the same markers and arranged them around the sentiment from the same set.

80s peeps rejoice! :) 

This type of design always gives me a little pang about this awesome world prior to social media. There was so much that was better about growing up without that pressure, and if I'm being honest, negativity. We weren't assaulted minute by minute with people's insane opinions on things and just general rudeness, because there was no way for that to reach us - no phones, no computers, nothing short of a real human in front of you. There also was no 24 hour news - and I didn't have a TV. We were real humans, having fun together. If you wanted to "troll" someone, you toilet papered their yard. Sigh. 

Thanks for indulging this walk down memory lane! Feel free to come out of hiding about how much you loved your Benetton and Liz Claiborne and Swatch - I'm here for you.


Vintage Liz Claiborne Red Triangle...
[ ETS ]
SB267 City HeroScape Combo - Hero Arts
[ HA ]
CG845 Graffiti Lines Bold Prints -...
[ HA ]
Circle Infinity Dies (H)
[ HA ]
MIS-T Rulers
[ MSP ]
Understand Blue MINI Slimline Folded...
[ CTC ]
Understand Blue Slimline Folded...
[ CTC ]
Understand Blue Card Making Bundle #3...
[ CTC ]
Understand Blue Card Making Bundle #1...
[ CTC ]
Understand Blue Card Making Bundle #2...
[ CTC ]
MISTI Stamping Tool
[ MSP | SSS | ELH ]
Rotatrim Professional Series Cutter -...
[ BLIC ]
Teflon Bone Folder - Ellen Hutson LLC
[ ELH | SSS ]
Crafter's Companion GEMINI...
[ SSS ]
Scor-Pal MINI SCOR-BUDDY Scoring...
[ SSS ]
Storage Envelopes, Medium 25pk,...
[ ELH ]
CheckOutStore Stamp & Die Clear...
[ CHC ]
Extra Large -50 pk, Avery Elle Stamp...
[ ELH ]
Lawn Fawn STAMP SHAMMY Cleaner LF1045
[ SSS | CST ]
Airtable: Organize your stamps & dies
[ ART ]

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Loveyameanitbye.