Maxam Made

Making friends with your local printer can be a big advantage to your card making and paper crafting!   Printers often take on   specialty jobs which include printing on high end papers; wedding invitations, announcements, programs and such.   They end up having reams of high-quality paper which are going to do nothing but take up premium shelf space in the shop!   I have a printer friend down the road from me and I am able to purchase for pennies on the dollar all kinds of fun and expensive papers! One such treasure was an accident, I was looking for a white 100 # card stock, Mark sold me about 500 sheets for 10.00.   I got the paper home and went to make a card and discovered my new cardstock was in   fact   100# sticker paper on one side and smooth on the other!!   This paper is just the best, one side peels of and I use that to make homemade glue dots, the adhesive side is so strong I can it adheise paper or fabric to the card stock!! You can imagine how much fun this is! Oriental

I have a little time saving tip: Develop a system that works for you!  Because I make lots and lot of cards, I like to keep everything as efficient as possible.  Even if I only made a few a week, I still like to keep things as smooth as possible.  Having a system frees me to be more creative.  Part of my system of keeping the creative juices flowing is to have ready at hand, as much as possible, the components of card making. One thing  I do  is keep a small basket of card stock cut and ready for stamping :   In this simple little basket I have about a hundred pieces of card stock that I like to stamp on.  I have lots of bases cut, scored and folded, in all kind of papers with color and texture  ready to go.  Of course you aren't going to have a great deal of success stamping on a "laid" finish cardstock, but it will make a beautiful and interesting base! I have ready to use about five different smooth finish papers to stamp images on . This means I can cut in about  fift

I was in Rite Aide on Friday picking my Asthma inhaler and on the way to the pharmacy counter  I notice a sunbeam coming through a window and land on a shelf fill with bottles of the most beautiful colors!! The bottles turned out to be the most fabulous nail polish I have ever seen and at 12.50 a bottle it should have been!  I know I am cheap, but the last bottle of nail polish I bought I was 18 and it was 3.50 and it was top of the line from Charles Revson!  I went to the isle where the nail polishes were found and sure enough I found the house brand copy cat colors for .99!!!  I could just pictures dragon fly and butter fly wings, Ruby slippers, doing Faux cloisonné, all kinds of great stuff! These came in tons of colors!!   here they are on paper:   These have a very neat affect when they are on paper, they are very glittery, but not like glitter, you only see the sparkle when the item it's on is moved!  Makes the affect even cooler! This moth is colored and then coated with the

Along time ago, starting in 1995 in Windows 311 ( I was rockin) I learned how to use a word processor and drawing software.  In 1996 I started making and what I call WORD Art projects, cards books, all kinds of things.  Now in 2013 and 5 computers later I have hundreds of digitized scriptures and books along with purchased images and free down loads PLUS my wonderful stash of Rubber stamps in scripture and sentiments.  The big project was getting them all organized, which I did this week.  I now have a physical and digital  catalog of all my scripture in rubber and Digi.  I have a electronic catalog of my all my work done in office word.  Both of these are backed up in three places.  This is almost 20 years of work, I don't want to take a chance of loosing it! This started as a pretty big mess with the physical catalog:   I printed all my jpg scriptures after I created a digital catalog.  Then I inked up all my 'Our Daily Bread Designs' stamps and cataloged them, Next all m

It is the Blog Hop around the world of craft masters work desks'!  Go here to pick up on the fun: http://stamping-ground.blogspot.com/ .  On My work desk, playing with my Alcohol Markers today. Here is the mess! I made a card for one of my students, Kathleen.  During one of the discussions in class I had encouraged some of my artsy kids to draw for me, I needed stamps of people that are not Caucasian.  My kids are of a very mixed ethnicity and trying to find images that would spark their imagination and self realization is difficult!!  Maybe there are  stamps are out there that are not just cute little kids, but I can't find  them!  In Two weeks there is a big rubber stamp show coming to Springfield MA and I hope to find Stampland stamps there, they have some very beautiful images.  If anyone else has a source Please tell me!! This was also my first attempt at skin tones, both dark and light!  My husband saw a few of the "tries" and his comment matched mine, they were

I guess one of the byproducts of having a happy busing life is at the same time feeling you are a little behind with things.  I'm a little behind with correspondence, card making for sale and  card making for correspondence. But that is okay because I have also  discovered that the new chapters that are opening in my life I am also not being so hard on myself, I am taking time to smell the Roses.  I have found that this is so wonderful and relaxing I have even more ideas flooding into my mind!!  I am about to tackle my list to do for the day, but before I do that I wanted share some of the days fun!  This Morning I made my  Journal entry:   I've been thinking and teaching about John 14:21-24, I teach teenagers and during class this week I asked them what were the commandments Jesus was talking about. Their first guess was the ten commandments, I told them that was very small part of it, we took a much bigger look at what the word love means and What Jesus was talking about.  I

I haven't posted in a week and a half, I've been busy, shifting through three states, taking care of my family, the everyday stuff and some really great things!  My daughter graduated from college today, with her BA in "ed" and "psych".  I was so proud of her, and  I actually got to find her out of 500+ grads, I was only about 200 feet from her (straight up in the civic center) during the long, long ceremony and we texted back and forth, boy was that fun.  She'd look at me and wave a tiny wave, just like she did in her elementary school plays, recitals and games. It was a sweet moment, here she is:   She's the first to graduate from college, Our oldest son will walk in June at Univ of Wash and youngest son will be saying goodbye to high school  and hello to Urshan Seminary School in St. Louis. What a year this has been for my family!  Very soon it will be empty nest time.   While our kids will all be on their own in a few short months, we find the Lo

This may be my shortest ever post, I've just been too busy this week with everything else other than stampy!! Today is the day for the weekly world wide Blog of of crafters desks and I think I'm going to spend time hopping and not stamping!!  Go here to start: http://stamping-ground.blogspot.com/ On My desk: A batch of cards I made for a friends who needed thank you's.  I used G45 papers (love them) made a huge mess all over my craft room - easy to do!  But since I usually start out with everything in place it is easy to put it all back together.  I think that is realy important in order to not over purchase supplies and stash, If I can't keep it organized I can't use it properly. every work surface in my room looked like this, since I had no plan in mind for these cards, I just grabbed and glued as I went along for each card. All of these cards had textural elements on them, Glaze and brush stroke, unfortunately you can't see them in the photos.  They are all 

Thanks for Stopping by, it is the world wide blog hop of What is On Your Workdesk Weds! This is week # 204! Go here for more global work desks peeks!! http://stamping-ground.blogspot.com/ Last week I had a mystery and ALMO was the closest to solving it with the answer of Spectrum marker Storage!  Almo if you send me you r contact info I have a nice little present for you!! As you remember I had a flood  three weeks  ago, Since I lost some crafty supplies in that flood I was able to make a claim along with that and some other  "loss" dollars ,  a really good sale at AC Moore, free shipping at Amazon and an awesome husband, I was able to purchase the complete set of Spectrum Noir Markers, all 168 of them. And a storage system! This is also on the heal of another post of me blah, blah blahing about not having them and the expense of them.  I did thankfully say that if I had the opportunity (aka mula, mula) I wouldn't  mind getting a set.  Well thanks to the flood I did have