VIDEO: Shadow Hacks Two Ways!

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

I have SUCH easy hacks for you for shadows and reflections. I always make ghastly shapes if I try to do them by hand so I thought I would share my go-to hacks today! These are so, so easy. 

If you like the paper I'm using in trick #1, you can get 15% off here with code Understandblue15.

These are the two looks you get. I used this beautiful background stamp with this sweet deer set. The ink is the water reactive Splash ink and then I used markers for the rest. What a sweet little scene these make together - these two stamps go together like peas and carrots! (Which, by the way - don't go together at all, and whoever came up with that saying was deranged. Maybe it was a baby.)

The video is now part of my Shadows & Reflections Master Class!

Here are all the supplies I used today.

CG700 Forest And Deer Bold Prints -... [ HA ] CM489 Love You Deerly - Hero Arts [ HA ] AF428 Splash Reactive Ink - Hero Arts [ HA ] X-Press It Transfer Paper — X-press It [ XPR ] Pentel Graph Gear 500 Pencil | BLICK... [ BLIC ] Pre-Cut & Scored Cardstock [ CTC ] Marker Universe [ MRK ] Art Anthology BIG CRAFT MAT 24x36 311473 [ SSS ] My Sweet Petunia [ MSP ] MISTI Stamping Tool [ MSP | HA | SSS | ELH | MFT | UNT ] Rotatrim Professional Series Cutter -... [ BLIC ] LightView 2in1 LED Magnifier for... [ BRG ] Teflon Bone Folder - Ellen Hutson LLC [ ELH | SSS ] Crafter's Companion GEMINI... [ SSS ] Scor-Pal MINI SCOR-BUDDY Scoring... [ SSS ] Essentials by Ellen Storage... [ ELH ] Die Storage - Clear Storage Pockets... [ CHC ] XL Stamp Storage Pockets [ ELH ] Mermaid tidy towel case and glue... [ ETS ] Lawn Fawn STAMP SHAMMY Cleaner LF1045 [ SSS | CST ] Airtable: Organize your stamps & dies [ ART ]

Last night I made one of my new faves - egg roll in a bowl! I saw the original recipe in a Whole 30 group I'm in, and I don't really like pork and made a few other tweaks, and it's delicious! I haven't tried it with her spicy mayo, but her original recipe is linked in my modified one so check it out! Here's my version. You can serve it with those wonton strips from the produce section if you miss that crunch of an actual egg roll but want fewer calories - that's what I did.

This card today is for my Virtual Stamp Night challenge at Splitcoast! Come join us for this fun, stress-free weekend of challenges and inspiration! 

Also - through tomorrow - there's a huge sale here on markers, with freebies and free shipping AND you can use my coupon code on top of that - Understandblue15 for an extra 15% off! Buy yourself a Christmas pressie.

And if you are a Pokemon GO player - happy community day! 

Loveyameanitbye.

CURRENT COUPON CODES
15% off anything at Marker Universe or any of their other sites - Understandblue15.
10% off the whole store at A Colorful Life Designs - LydiaFan10
5% off at LBC here with code LYDIA5
Phone stand for filming link below in the banner - 20% off sitewide with code UNDERSTANDBLUE

From Russia With Love

It's amazing how, at the end of the day, all good things lead back to bacon.

Yes, even in papercrafting.

Yesterday, I was making my sample for my Virtual Stamp Night challenge at Splitcoast this weekend (come play!) and I had a bacon-related revelation.

You know how your paper warps when you do watercolor or embossing techniques? Well I usually glue my card together and then go slip it under the pile of magazines on my coffee table until it's dry and that flattens it out.

But then I realized - I have the perfect card flattening tool - and I don't have to dig through a pile of magazines to find my card after I use it.

It's a bacon press!

I've had this bacon press since 1990 - and I've actually never used it for bacon. The secret to good, flat bacon is to start with cold bacon in a cold pan. But it's so cute and heavy duty that I couldn't get rid of it.

And then today - it hit me like a lightning bolt - it's the PERFECT card press!

A few minutes under the bacon press and my card was perfectly flat! God bless bacon!

The VSN (Virtual Stamp Night at Splitcoast) theme this weekend is Around the World in 80 Days, and each challenge this weekend takes inspiration from a different country.

For my challenge, I chose Russia - specifically the Imperial Faberge Eggs. The story of Faberge is very intriguing, and the majority of the eggs made by the House of Faberge were made for the Romanovs to give to each other. It's a fascinating story for me, because it starts with a gifted French artist, goes through a horrid governmental overreach, and ends up with Aqua Net. Not even kidding. Read about it.

What's cool about Faberge is the uniqueness of those eggs - and how just the name Faberge calls that particular magic to mind.

So I chose my favorite Faberge egg as inspiration - it's a deep cobalt blue egg (currently owned by Prince Albert of Monaco) with ornate gold detail. It's stunning. So I used the First Sight stamp set (coming in the Occasions Mini January 4th) to emboss in gold, and then I spritzed it and added Turquoise, Violet and Ultramarine Brusho. I let it air dry so the color stayed vivid.

The ultramarine separates so that you see both blue and violet, which I love.

Speaking of color - my new online class is available now! It's a color combo study for the upcoming Picture Perfect stamp set - available January 4th. Here's a peek of one of the layering images in the set - I stamped out the four steps for this image.

This class shows you 24 total color combos - 5 combos for the hummingbird, taken from real bird photos, 1 hummingbird combo that give it a vintage, sepia look, 10 combos for the rose stamp, 5 for the starfish and 3 for the leaves.

These are unique combos you will be surprised by, and I also give alignment tips for this multi-step stamp set.

If you're a demonstrator and pre-ordered this set - you'll love this class for your own classes. If you are not a demonstrator - if you buy this set from me beginning January 4th - this class will be free with your purchase!

A little something for everyone.

Hope  you come play along with us for Virtual Stamp Night - the challenges are amazing.

Loveyameanitbye/

Blue Snow, Of Course!

I had my monthly class yesterday and despite the frigid temperatures, we had a blast. It was also my customer Christmas party, so everyone went home with a prize.

One of the cards we did was for a VSN challenge by Lee - to create snow in a color. Well boy that color choice was hard - NOT.

I saw this technique in Tootsy's gallery on Splitcoast and I thought it was so cool.

What I did was cut a snowflake with my Festive Flurry Framelits out of the chipboard that comes with every package of Designer Series paper. I taped that to the back of my Core'dinations Coastal Cabana, and used the sanding block to sand it, giving me a ghostly blue snowflake for my background. Then I just added a precut, silver glimmer snowflake from the Festive Flurry ornament kit - I'm having a class on this next weekend, by the way, if you'd like to come - and a Frosted Finishes embellishment. It's so sparkly and cool. I think they enjoyed it.

Now speaking of blue things - I had a little fun experimenting today with my Pan Pastels, now that I've cracked them open.

I am no good at drawing, but I still made this fun portrait for an art journal page in under 7 minutes.

Want to see how?

I have a video tutorial over on Project Reanimate, because it involves a little recycling. To see it, follow me to my Making Faces tutorial.

Loveyameanitbye.

Sir-up or SEAR-up?

It's amazing how words and colors make people feel. This week, a lot of people posted the Pantone color of the year.

Here it is.

And here was my reaction:

Me too, kitty.

Me. too.

Radiant, my hiney. It's so dull and awful. It seriously makes me feel ill. 

But some people love it! What part of our brain determines whether a color makes us gag or squeal?

My theory is that it's the same part of our brain that makes us cringe when people pronounce something a certain way.

Take syrup for example. When Bobby Flay said SEARup this morning instead of SIRup, I wanted to reach through the TV and tape his mouth up with some radiant orchid duct tape. But he'd probably say the same about me if he heard SIRup.

Then there's CARmel and CARAmel. I'm a carmel person, personally. CARAmel gives me an eye twitch.

And don't get me started on PREEEEsentation. Really - don't.


What makes you twitchy?

Cold weather makes me twitchy. But not if it's only on paper. Tonight I'm hosting a Virtual Stamp Night Challenge for our Up to SNOW good VSN - the challenges are completely adorable.

My challenge is for you to get nekkid and STREAK!!

Hang on, you freaks - keep your clothes on! Wait for instructions please! :D

Here are all the details of the challenge - so at least keep your clothes on until you read them.

We're giving away Fan Club Memberships too so you'll definitely want to play.

For my challenge sample, I used this week's Mix-Ability challenge for inspiration. Kyra challenged us to use Versamark and chalk or pastels, so I decided to bust out my Pan Pastels that I bought in Santa Fe in 2012 and still had not opened. (Shame on me.)

I taped this stencil down over my Whisper White card base and then used my Ranger blending tool to apply Versamark all over the cardstock.

I removed the stencil and used a sponge to apply Pan Pastel in Ultramarine, Phthalo Green Tint and Hansa Yellow Shade.

They have such a soft feel to them - it's not like chalks at all - it feels more like a very silky makeup powder. I'm in love. They work so well with Versamark.

Since I wanted the technique to be the star of the show, I chose just a small greeting from Christmas Messages and a little snowflake from Snowflake Soiree. I added a teeny rhinestone to the center and voila - a streak!

Now that is a very self confident streaker!

Now, I have to bring you another crockpot recipe.

Dina sent this one to me. I modified the recipe of course - the original one called for fish sauce, which reeks like roadkill, so that wasn't an option. I always substitute ponzu or hoisin, or sometimes a mix of the two. For this recipe I used ponzu. Also, for some reason, once again the internet brings us a recipe without salt. I don't get it. So I had to use a lot of added salt. I like my peas crunchy, so I did something different with those. Finally - it needed heat - I don't think Thai food is completely done if it doesn't make my face sweat. I added a LOT of pequins - more than most humans would like - so use cayenne to taste if you want to spice it up. It is INSANELY delicious. Even my completely anti-soup human LOVED it and came back for thirds.

Enjoy! Then take your clothes off and come play in my challenge!

Thai Crockpot Chicken Soup

2 tablespoons red curry paste

2 12 ounce cans of coconut milk

2 cups chicken stock

2 tablespoons ponzu or hoisin

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons peanut butter

1 1/2 pounds chicken breasts, cut into 1 1/2 inch pieces

1 red bell pepper, seeded and sliced into 1/4 inch slices

1 onion, thinly sliced

1 heaping tablespoon fresh ginger, minced

40 chile pequins, crushed, or serrano, Thai chili or cayenne for heat 

1 cup frozen peas

juice of 1 lime

cilantro for garnish

cooked white rice

salt, to taste (it needed 4-5 teaspoons)

chopped peanuts 

Mix the curry paste, coconut milk, chicken stock, ponzu sauce, brown sugar and peanut butter in a 4-1/2 to 6-quart slow-cooker bowl. Place the chicken breast, red bell pepper, chiles, onion and ginger in the slow cooker, cover and cook on high for 4.5 hours.

Cook the rice in chicken stock instead of water. (I toast my rice first - I think it tastes better that way.) When the rice is done, add the frozen peas, stir and replace lid, while you stir the lime juice into the soup.

To serve, put rice in a bowl and pour the soup over the top. Garnish with cilantro and chopped peanuts. 

(Original recipe)

Whisper my name.

Battle of the Sexes!

I had my monthly stamp class today, and I have to say, it was a hoot.

I stayed up WAY too late last night. Yes, I was procrastinating prepping, but shut up - that's not the point.

Procrastinating would have been fine.

The problem was that the first project I was prepping involved this AWESOME FREAKING BOW!!

DO YOU SEE THAT THING??

Yeah, well after I made my sample, then I made 10 squillion other bows with a bunch of different pretty paper and totally forgot I was supposed to be prepping. Until about 11 PM, when my exhaustion reminded me, and I moved on to the other two.

You can surely understand what happened.

The magic is from the Bigz Gift Bow Die, with more die cutting magic for the "merry" - which is the Expressions Thinlits set. The paper is Winter Frost. Hard to see here, but that stripey paper has silver foil in it - really beautiful.

SUCH an easy card, no stamping, just easy crazy pretty.

I made this for the Virtual Stamp Weekend challenge I'm hosting - RIGHT FRACKING NOW. :)

I named the challenge for my parents' wedding anniversary, which is today. They got married in 1957!

Happy anniversary M&D!

The name of my challenge is Battle of the Sexes, and if you want to see a HILARIOUS video about the difference between men and women, come check out the full challenge details here. I hope you can make time to make a card for it!

Loveyameanitgottagotosleepnowbye.

The Great Sinkhole Earthquake of 2011

I'm putting this in writing so that when the entire southwest portion of Austin gets swallowed by the karst, everyone will know that there was a warning sign. At a stamping class. Specifically, my stamping class.

This only recently made sense to me when last week, a sinkhole developed in downtown Austin. Much hilarity ensued, including this Twitter account, and one of my tweets to it getting published on the Austin Business Journal site.

Anyway, something clicked in my brain when this happened.

Rewind to November 5th, 2011. I was having my monthly stamp class at Mandola's. (map here) Also, I have no idea why it says "happy hour - meat sauce" on the Google Map - LOL. Whatever.

About halfway through my class, something very frightening happened. A loud roar, and the building shaking caught us all off guard. It sounded like a 747 was flying right next to the building.

We were very rattled and went and looked out the windows. It was a clear, beautiful day and nothing seemed amiss. It took a while for everyone to settle back into class because it was unnerving.

When I got home I was chatting with my co-worker, Beate, who described an earthquake they'd had that day. She said she heard that same loud roar. I emailed one of my stampy students - Brittany, and said this: "I hope you don't think I'm crazy. I was just chatting with Beate (she's in Edmond OK) and they had an earthquake.What she described is exactly what happened to us this morning :-/ I wonder if we got a rumble on our fault line??" First of all, thank God for Gmail so I could find this email. Secondly, Austin sits on the Balcones Fault, so I assumed that was what happened.

I did the citizen reporting on the USGS and encouraged my peeps to do the same, but they never recorded an official earthquake.

Now, coincidentally, my sister had been photographing the large pond next to Mandola's for several weeks. Her HOA was looking for contractors to repair a leaking pond in her neighborhood and she was doing research, as the company that built the pond near Mandola's was being considered.

Well smack me and call me Edna if a LARGE sinkhole didn't develop in this very location on or about November 18th. It started as a small leak, and got bigger and bigger and bigger until it was what you see in that news story.

So what we heard in my class was the giant karst that runs underneath several square miles surrounding this property collapsing. Here's a picture that was taken after they drained the pond. That building with the red trim is where my class was.

photo credit: Cynthia Wilcox

Frightening.

I will never, ever forget that sound.

But you know what's scary? When this happened during class, the very first thing we all did was freeze. It's impossible to absorb AND react to something big like that. A friend recently told me that fight or flight is a fallacy. What all animals really do is FREEZE, fight or flight. That's exactly what we did. Next time, hopefully I'll be better prepared. Or wait - hopefully there isn't a next time. That's what I meant :).

Here's a card I made for VSN. I love VSN because I get SO many cards done in such a short period of time, and I end up liking them better than cards I spend a ton of time on.

The background for this card is a ghost print I did in my Gelli Printing class. That circle you see was just a punched circle from Whisper White that I used as a mat.

Stamps: A Round Array

Ink: Basic Black

Paper: Whisper White

Accessories: Lace Tape, Gelli Plate, Star punch, Circle Punches

If I'm swallowed whole by a sinkhole, please remember - I sent up a flare. :)

Loveyameanitbye.