Emboss It!

Yes, it’s time to show my latest DT card for Craft Your Passion! This week’s theme, “Emboss It”, caused a whole lot headache at the Thrifty Apartment. First of all, I don’t have Big Shot or any similar machine and thusly, not a single embossing folder. Secondly, I don’t own a single jar of embossing powder and wasn’t too keen buying one for just one challenge. What is girl to do?

My fellow DTs were very helpful and gave me a tip that I could use my rolling-pin and some textural items to create an embossed background. I got all excited until I realized that I literally don’t own anything that could be used as an embossing template. Just great. My deadline was just hours away when I thought “There must be embossed scrapbook papers, right?”

I crabbed my jacket and made a mad dash to the local craft store in order to get there before closing time. Once I got there, I began browsing through their stacks of paper and lo and behold, there they were! Two tiny, A5 sheets of wet embossed paper. Which cost me 60 cents in total! I truly am a Thrifty Genius.

 The embossed paper is the black, dotted one. I also used linen fabric that I frayed on the edges and old book pages.

 The butterfly is a digi stamp by Cardmadfairy that I coloured on Photoshop. Originally it has a scalloped wings and antenna but I cut them away. For technical reasons *wink, wink*.

 Go on and make a card and take part on Craft Your Passion! This week’s prize is 20 dollar gift card to Simon Says Stamp and 5 digi’s of choice from Cardmadfairy! Not too shabby, I think.

Well, I’m off to check out the latest TAST- stitch, till next time!

Gone Buggy!

I feel like such a VIP now that I’m part of a design team. Not only I get to call crafting ” a job”, which is always a bonus when meeting elderly relatives but the fact that I’m on-the-know about upcoming challenges is pretty cool too.

Yeah, yeah. I’m lame. Ish.

This week’s challenge on Craft Your Passion is Gone Buggy! I got to use this cool image by Bugaboo, I mean who doesn’t like ladybugs?

I made a mistake with the layout. Before I glued (and sewed) things down, I tried out different layouts to make sure that I’d have enough space for a sentiment. But what happened? Now I have that awkward space on the right. When I eventually use this card, I’m just going to add a giant number on the bottom right to balance things out.

I literally just came up with the idea which is quite clever as Piia’s daughter’s birthday is the next month. Now I need a giant number 3!

 These fabric buttons are from my stash. They had shanks on the back but as they are made with some very soft metal, I was able to cut them off with scissors. I also pressed the buttons little bit to give more surface for the glue to get stuck on.

 Another button! The polaroid frame is coloured with ProMarker, colour “Slate”. Afterwards I realised that it would have been better to glue the bug photo on the card and just raise the polaroid frame with foam dots. Now I glued them together before I did the “raising”.

Over all, I’m pleased with this card and I can’t wait to see what other people will come up with the theme! There’s a really good price this week, 7 free digi’s by Bugaboo and for US&Canada, a $ 25 surprise paper craft bag!

Now, I’m going to go and do grown up things. Meaning go to a bank. Always such a pleasure!

I’m a Craft Your Passion Challenges DT!

If you were wondering where the heck I disappeared, the answer is Lapland. My god-son had his communion this year and in our neck of woods, it’s a big deal. He was so cute in his suit and Justin Bieber- hair. Of which I didn’t tease him AT ALL! It seems as I’m developing as a grown up.

 

Now to the actual news: I’ve been selected as a DT on Craft Your Passion Challenges!!! I sent my application thinking there’s no way I’m going to make it but to my surprise, I got a congrats e-mail in July telling me I got in! This week was my first time creating card for them AND also my first time doing rounds commenting on people’s cards. Now that’s hard work but I did manage to say something special about everyone’s card.

Hey! Another sign that I’m maturing! Hah! Some people said that this day would never come! I totally showed them.

This week the challenge theme is Anything Goes and I used a sponsor image by Sassy Studio Design, Nurse Heather:

 Luckily I have plenty of nurses in my family and friends so I will get plenty of use out of this image. The card I created for the challenge looks like this:

 I used mix of Papermania and Crate Paper and the sentiment is something I typed myself and then printed. For colouring I used ProMarkers except for the skin, which is coloured with a Copic. Phew! Now that I’ve gotten my first DT- card done. I can focus on creating next few. I also have to write a blurb about myself (little bit late but it’s not easy to write a winner introduction to oneself. Proof can be found on my About- page) and find a decent picture of myself. Okay, there’s already one picture of me on the show but I don’t like it at all. Luckily I went out in Lapland so there’s some nice GoingOutAndHavingNiceDoAndMakeUp- photos available.

Over and out. Thrifty Finn

 

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Purple

When I saw this weeks theme, I decided on a very specific set of photos. And when I say very specific, I mean very hard to find as I didn’t remember if I still had them on my hard drive, or maybe on a USB which I’ve lost some time ago or maybe on a CD. See where this is going? Yes, it took me days to find them and in the end they were on my hard drive. In a folder I had specifically created to hold my, and I’m using this term very loosely, artsy photos.

Okay, I’m no horticulturist but I think this plant is syringa. A good tip to find out english names of plants and animals is to type the name in your own language in Wikipedia, copy paste the latin name in English Wikipedia. Latin, surprisingly many uses in modern-day writing environment. In this case it was from Finnish: Syreeni to Latin: Syringa to English (disappointedly): Syringa.

 I love the photo challenge. It gives me an excuse to play with Photoshop Actions. Once again I used the free sets available from The Pioneer Woman. My favourite and thus the most over-used action is Seventies which gives that lovely golden sunset vibe on every picture.

When I was playing with the said actions, I began thinking I could do something more with the images. Another freebie I’ve downloaded quite some time ago, a French cancellation mark set by Just Something I Made was perfect for what I had in mind.

You know what I made? I made small, postcard sized posters thus suitable sending for a friend:

 Or maybe use one of them to make a bigger card:

Click on the text below images to download:

ThriftyFinnVueCard

 ThriftyFinnLilacCard2

 ThrifyFinnNantesCard

Let me know who you sent your card to! Or if made something crafty with them!

A Gift For My God-daughter

Couple of weeks ago my god-daughter turned 14. Eep! She is so cute and sweet and adorable and smart and every possible nice thing one can say about a person. Few months ago she asked if I could do another mini album for her, only this time about horses. How could I say no to her? For few months I stalked her Facebook- page, downloading every photo I could possibly use in the album. (In May I had enough photos but then she finally got her OWN horse, so of course I trashed the old photos, the album HAD to be about the new horse. Naturally.)

I used mix of Crate Paper and October Afternoon. Again I printed most of the pictures half size so I could fit two per standard photo sheet. The album base was a Papermania Bare Chipboard Album.

This is the cover. I made a stencil for letter E after the horse Elli, spread some glue and then covered the shape with glitter. I used transparent glitter but considering the background pattern, I would have been better off with coloured glitter.

The first spread. I also used those Jillibean Soup journaling stickers I got as an extra when I ordered the Crate Paper- kit. I love that yellow paper.

I had to include pictures of her sisters too! They have a brother too but I didn’t have a picture of him. I tried to stalk their mother’s Facebook too but there wasn’t a single one I could use. His loss.

 That’s their cat, Topi. The not-so-lean, killing machine.

 Hugsies! I’m so looking forward to meeting this horse the next time I go visit home. I won’t ride it of course. I’ll be just looking at it. From a safe distance. Say 50 meters and use my mighty zoom to photograph it.

These pictures were taken with iPhone. Had I spent more time setting the layout of my print  outs, I could have fitted three of these per sheet.

More iPhone photos. The bottom one is very artistic.

This is my favourite page. I love how Elli is all perky and set for a photo shoot when Sonja is still doing her hair.

 Elli in her stable. The text says it’s wonderful!

 The last page was the first one I did. I left the frame empty so Sonja could add her own comments there.

 Sonja was very concerned that would I remember to put the year on the back. No worries. I did remember.

Probably for the first time in her life, Sonja got a present from me on her actual birthday! I sent this on the day I got stuck in Helsinki. My original plan was to take it with me to Tampere where I would buy something extra to go with it but since I had spare time for no fault of my own…I ended up buying a make-up set from Accessorize where I pestered the sales girl about the quality of it. Can a teenage girl use it? Is it safe? Is it, is it, is it? When I was satisfied that the make-up wouldn’t blind my precious god-daughter I bought it together with some nicely packaged lip balm. I wouldn’t have but it was on sale. And right by the cash register. When I finally made it to the post office and was packaging the present, I remembered I hadn’t photographed the pages. What to do? I hawked an entire packing station to myself and fired away. All the while hoping the security wouldn’t show up. It didn’t but when I went to pay, I got very judgmental looks from the clerk.

Again, is everyone’s life this much hassle or is it just me?

Happy Scrapbooking Times!

By Thrifty Finn