My new favorite thing

I've been sick again all weekend... I don't know why.  Possibly tons of stress, lack of sleep and going in and out of freezing cold weather?  Maybe.  But I don't exactly have time to be sick so I'm knocking back the Robitussin and trying to get everything done anyway.  Today I spent about 5-6 hours working on the write-up for my team's marketing project... still plenty left to do.  I also made good progress on Banana Frog projects, made a cough syrup run and even started my laundry!  I decided while I was at it to stay up a bit longer and do a few things just for fun.

So this is my new favorite thing... I can thank Marah for helping me see the beauty in die cutting cardboard, but tonight I really played with it.  When I opened the drawer to pull out the plates for my Cuttlebug, I glanced at my embossing folders and thought to myself, "self, what would happen if you tried to emboss cardboard?"  As it turns out, embossed cardboard is SWEET.  I diecut a bunch of circles and embossed them and then tried inking and painting them.  I ended up making a whole bunch of them to make a wreath in my Christmas journal inspired by this cool one on the Maya Road blog.  I inserted it before day 4... where you can see some bleed through from Careless Copic Use on Day 5.  Oh well, adds character, right?

 

And a close-up, though it's still a little hard to see the effect of the embossing in the photo (the smallest circles are chipboard - I painted them, stamped on them and heat embossed):

And now day 5... I did this earlier this week and just got around to taking pictures.  I was actually really glad to be so far behind when I did this one since I had just seen this awesome technique from Tim Holtz that seemed perfect for a page about advent calendars.

And the obligatory close-up... for my version I just used chipboard numbers and tin foil instead of grungeboard and metal tape.  I also used Copics instead of alcohol ink in those pens... pretty much the same thing, right?

 

That envelope in between the pages is from my company's holiday party - it has the schedule of events during the party so I added it in since that was also on the 5th.  Here's the view of the advent calendar I included... Nicole found this in the store and she and Brian mailed it to me - she thought it would be a fun way to remember when we had these as kids.  I love it!  I open my little door every day.

 

I decided to skip day 6 - that day's prompt just didn't resonate with me... I didn't really have anything for it and decided that since I was so far behind I'd just skip it rather than doing an alternate prompt.  So here's day 7:

So, um, yeah.  A lot of un-checked items.  lol.  I did die-cut the other 7 check marks since I absolutely intend to do everything on that list!  I also did some more diecut and embossed cardboard here.  For these, I brushed PanPastels over the raised areas for some subtle color.

And finally, as if there weren't already enough pictures in this post, one more fun thing I discovered with the cardboard tonight.  I decided that since I was embossing it, I should try letterpressing my cardboard with ink and an embossing folder.  It actually turned out kind of awesome!  It's like grunge letterpress... considering it's cardboard, that's probably appropriate... lol.  I can't wait to use this on something.

Kind of hard to see the debossing in a photo, but it's cool!  The one in back is the first one I tried with gold ink.  That doesn's show up too well on this color, but it's shimmery if you look close :)  Okay.  done now.  Time for cough syrup and sleep.

Comments

[Francine aka DragonsLady on Shimelle's class]

I like the way you did your list - but if I tried that, I'd spend more time creating a list than actually doing the stuff on the list. But it is really a neat idea.