TIPsy Tuesday - A Fresh Start for Chipboard

I really loved the blue chipboard shown below when I bought it on a close-out. It's so pretty. I've long ago thrown away the packaging so I don't know who made it. Unfortunately, I've found little use for these patterned blue pieces. Either they weren't the color, shade of blue, or just had too much pattern to work on layouts in the past. I may have used a few of them once. However, they were the right size for the "Handsome Boy" layout (posted on 12/16/09) just not a color match at all.

One of the many great things about chipboard is that it is just layers of paper stuck together. So if you don't like the top (or you mess up the painting, stamping or whatever), just peel off a layer and start fresh.

Take a craft knife, and carefully peel up the edge.

Then just peel away the rest of the top by hand. Take care not stay within the same layer of paper.

The resulting very white layers looked so much like Jasper's white fur that I decided not to recolor the tops. You could paint, dab on ink or stamp the remaining chipboard. You may even be able to use the tops that are leftover depending on their condition.

So take a new look at your decorative chipboard and forget about the current color. You can always rip off the top layer and start fresh.

Last Minute Gifts

A wonderful appreciation or hostess gift is a set of monogrammed notecards. These use the Lovely Letters alphabet from Stampin' Up! I made them a little smaller than the standard card size.

I got the card design from Kristina Werner's Year in Cards for this month. She used buttons in her circle. Because of the limited amount of this pretty designer paper I had to work with my circle came out kind of small. It was the perfect size for a monogram.

I'm really tickled with these. If they had been made with an "L" instead, they might not have left my house!

Ingredients: Stamps: Lovely Letters by SU!; Flourishes Vol 2 by Autumn Leaves
Ink: Close to Cocoa Craft, Soft Suede (stamped off)
Cardstock: Blush Blossum by SU!

DSP: Nook and Pantry by Basic Grey; My Mind's Eye for lining envelopes

Ribbon: fabric store

2010 Classes at Two Peas

MellyPea, the education coordinator at Two Peas in a Bucket, has posted several teasers on her blog for free classes coming up in 2010. Here is the list:


Class 1 - Making the most of your die cutting machine (on the 5th of each month) (Couldn't be a more appropriate class for me!)

Class 2 - Pattern Paper every which way (on the 10th of each month) (And another really needed one to help justify my paper addiction!)

Class 3 - A Year in Cards (on the 15th of each month)

Class 4 - Mini Album a month (on the 20th of each month)

Class 5 - Digital 101 (on the 25th of each month)


Each class has a different instructor. I'm sure the Two Peas website will have more on these as they all start next month. http://www.twopeasinabucket.com/


I'm excited; I've learned so much in the Photoshop Elements and the Year in Cards classes they offered this year. If they operate as they did this year, you don't even need a login to see the videos. This is such a wonderful service!

More time in Whoo-ville

OK, I may have gotten my cuteness fix from this set now. The card above is a simple design we are going to make at my next card class in January when we will do all Valentine's cards. Many of the other designs we are doing are more time consuming so I needed something quick to balance things out. This is a very versatile card layout based on one I saw on Splitcoaststampers. The Bermuda Bay is a nice non-traditional Valentine color to break up all the pinks and reds I've got going on.

I made a few more of these cards using some My Mind's Eye paper and got to playing with the Polka Dot Basic stamp set - perhaps a little too much :-)

When I've got space to fill out, my favorite thing is to stamp tone-on-tone as with this cloud stamp in Close to Cocoa.

Ingredients: Stamps: Whoo Loves You? by Hampton Arts

Ink: Close to Cocoa, Bermuda Bay, Soft Suede, Rose Red from Stampin' Up!; Chalk ink from Colorbox

DSP: Thoroughly Modern from SU!; My Mind's Eye

Cardstock: Sahara Sand, Whisper White, Soft Suede

Ribbon: Bermuda Bay from SU!

It's snowing! It's snowing!

It's snowing before Christmas - a very rare event here. Nevermind that I'm having to shift all kinds of things around to get work meetings and many personal things in for myself and family in the dwindling days before Christmas holidays shut the world down. I can always spare a day to look out the window at the giant snowflakes and have an excuse to bake brownies. Besides, when it snows in NC, our world shuts down anyway.

It is also the perfect day to take photos of the decorations for this year. I was really disappointed this month with Traditional Home magazine. Usually they showcase beautiful rooms filled with decorations from sparkly glass balls to simple greenery. It was one of their spreads that inspired my fireplace garland a couple of years ago. This year the decorations in their pages were sparse to say the least. Perhaps they thought it was inappropriate to display showy decorations in this economy. Well, I don't agree. It seems to me the perfect time to pull out the goodies and make the house more festive.

I love my holiday decorations and even though we have all been affected by the sour economy, I still put them out. I just didn't buy anything new. There are still quite a few things in the attic unused this season. I didn't even make my usual trips to K-mart to see what goodies Martha had or to our local ACE hardware which has the most beautiful Christmas shop in the area. I didn't want to be tempted. It wasn't just about spending money; it was about need.

On the occasional busy year, I've skipped decorating and always missed it. Christmas is about hope and beauty and what better way remind yourself than to see your favorite ornaments hanging on the tree. So here are a a couple of photos from the tree and garlands....

Handsome Kitty

Jasper is my baby. I was delighted when he stayed put for this photo. I wish he were more of a lap cat but then again, he does spend a little too much time outdoors tromping through the poison ivy. Maybe it is a good think he doesn't crawl all over me.

The design below was cut with the Accent Essentials cartridge on the Cricut. The center is Stampin' Up!'s Build a Brad. They make wonderful custom accents and are super easy to use. You do need the 1/2" circle punch to go along with them.

This chipboard has a wonderful texture; more on that in next week's TIPsy Tuesday...

Ingredients: Stamps: Flourishes from Autumn Leaves

Ink: Baja Breeze from SU!; distressing of journaling using Ranger's Antique Linen and SU!'s Sahara Sand.

DSP: Periphery by Basic Grey; Solid from My Mind's Eye

Ribbon: Basic Grey Periphery and Stampin' Up! Very Vanilla Taffeta

Chipboard from unknown source

Fonts: Serifa BT; Enchanted Prairie Dog from dafont.com

TIPsy Tuesday - Selecting the right ink

Have you ever had an acrylic stamp or a rubber stamp for that matter that just wouldn't ink up very well? When I received the Whoo Loves You? set last week, I just had to put it work right away. My first image though didn't show up that great. I tried again with another type of ink and got a wonderful image. I did more experimenting and here is what I learned:

1. New acrylic stamps may have some residue left from manufacture that needs to be cleaned off. It will wear off in time but to speed up the process use a clean pencil eraser over the stamps. Papertrey Ink had suggested this in their instructions but I actually found it more necessary on the another companies set.

2. When stamping with this new stamp before using the eraser, Papertrey's Hybrid Ink worked the best. Stampin' Up's Craft Ink was the next best in adhering to acrylic. Dye inks like SU!'s Classic Ink pads performed the poorest. (I have also found Stazon Ink to work great on Acrylic but because it stains my stamps and has a limited color selection, it is not my first choice.) Dye inks, such as Stampin' Up! classic and Ranger, are great for distressing.

3. To get dye ink to adhere to acrylic, stamp first in Versamark and then in dye ink. The Versamark gives the dye ink something to cling to. I can't remember where I heard that wonderful tip but it works. In this photo, the card on the left was my first stamp from this set. The one on the right was made using this technique. Both are stamped in SU!'s Riding Hood Red classic ink on the same cardstock. You will always get better results with SU! products on their whisper white or very vanilla cardstocks than on colored cardstock.

4. For the card above with the cloud of hearts design, I used Fluid Chalk Ink from Clearsnap (Colorbox). This cat's eye style palette has several shades of reds and pinks together in small easy to use applicators. You can also buy these individually. I've often read on-line or heard in videos about how great chalk ink was for stamping and I'm certainly a believer after trying this out on the tree and the heart cloud above. The heart cloud had never been used nor had I gone over the surface with an eraser. I just inked it up in chalk ink and got great results. The only downside I found to chalk is that it takes a little more effort to clean off the stamp.

I used Papertrey's Hybrid ink for the greeting. It was a little fuzzy in the chalk ink.

5. Also, place something soft under your paper when stamping with acrylic stamps. Wood mounted rubber stamps have a cushion layer built into them. Acrylic on acrylic blocks do not. One of my stamper friends, Betsy, recommends using that white thin foam that comes in packaging. I had some that my Cricut was wrapped in. Place a couple layers of this under your papers when stamping.


These are just my experiences with a few acrylic stamps. I plan to continue my experiments to decide which type of ink I want to invest in future. Also, I want to do more experimenting on a variety of surfaces. Pigment Ink, such as Stampin' Up! craft, has proven very good on a variety of surface in the past. I'd like to try the fluid chalk and hybrid ink's as well.

Summary of benefits:

Dye Ink such as SU! classic and Ranger distressing inks - great for detailed images such as greetings, dries immediately, distressing ink

Pigment Ink such as SU! craft - works on a wide range of surfaces, allows easy embossing (so you don't have to buy a lot of separate embossing powders)

Hybrid Ink such as Papertrey ink - great coverage on both acrylic and rubber. Can do embossing if you work very quickly.

Fluid Chalk Ink such as Colorbox by Clearsnap - great coverage on both acrylic and rubber. dries quickly.

Ingredients: Stamps: Whoo Loves You? by Hampton Art

Ink: Scarlet Jewel, Aqua Mist by PTI; Riding Hood Red, Rose Red and Cameo Coral by SU!; Cat's Eye by Colorbox in

Paper: Aqua Mist by PTI; Chocolate Chip, Whisper White by SU!

DSP: Garden Green by SU!

Easier Commenting

I've just changed my settings to make it a little easier to leave comments.

I noticed that when I wanted to leave a comment on someone else's blog if I had to sign into my Google account, I'd usually skip it. If I had the option to use Name/URL or Annonymous, I'd leave a comment. Maybe that is just me. Still it finally hit me that I should check how my blog was set up. Sure enough mine was set up by default to require commenters to have a Google or some other account to leave a comment on a post.

Sorry it has taken me so long to make this correction.