American Spirit

Heyooo, I don't think I've ever documented the holiday cards I've been sending out, so I remembered at the last minute to do it this time. I don't know if anyone else has noticed that all the good holidays are squashed into 3 or 4 months of the winter (When we need holidays the most, honestly), so the spring and summer are kind of dead.
The one big holiday we can all agree is awesome is the fourth! Illegal fireworks, red white and blue decorations and food, and all the flag waving and barbequing that would be weird the rest of the year.
I splurged and bought a little star stamp to get a little crazy on these cards, and had a lot of fun with it. It'll be a good addition to the cat and noodle bowl stamps that've been passed down from my mom.

My poor ink pads, this is why I shouldn't have nice things.

First things first, dig through your gallon ziploc bag of stamp accoutrements and pull out all the patriotic colors and stamps you have. I came up with this half dead metallic set and a silver pen, but hey simpler is better.

My innate classiness just screams outta this pic, huh?

 This'll be a quick post, basically I did a little random stampy all over the cards, as well as a few little guys on the inside. I won't show you that though because that's where I also wrote my heartfelt messages to friends and family such as "Hey there cowboy, enjoy this here Fourth of July card. Hope a firework doesn't explode in your face. Love, A".
It's not what you do that's important, it's what you say.

This is America.

So that's it! I also wanted to include a little red white and blue banner for people to hang on their doors or computers or punch bowls or whatever, but I sealed the envelopes before I remembered that. I'll keep it in mind for next year.
Have a happy Fourth! And remember, don't drink and drive cause the cops are out like crazy.

Cork it to Me, Part Duex

So, decided to make a prettier display for my jewelry. Right now I have a Christmas themed memory board as my holder, and it looks a little ghetto. I've been carting around this blank corkboard for a couple of months in my car and decided to put it to work.

Pretty exciting Sunday night, eh?

Gathered my oh-so-professional paints that you might've seen in my dough ornament post and some varied accoutrements. I'm going to be painting a design right on the cork using any oddly shaped things as stamps, cut up sponges, paper towel tubes pressed into cool shapes, pencil erasers etc. I also used paintbrushes so I didn't go 100% insane trying to get the designs I wanted.

Ignore the reminders I have written on my hand.

To get a perfect circle when I started, I taped down a tupperware lid and painted my first bits around it. Once I take away the lid I'll be able to use the bit I already painted as my guide, working outwards or inwards, depending.

No I do NOT eat cheese directly out of a tupperware. Jeez.

I'll spare you the grisly details, mostly I just used bigger or smaller dots as my main medium. But I also threw in some smushed paper towels rolls (to get the sharp cornered oval shape you see on the outskirt of the design), and bottle caps (the largest circles you see). I took it slowly and tried to repeat patterns that I thought looked good, I didn't have a design in mind but tried not to overdue it.

Kinda looks like a monster with lots of eyes and teeth, yes?

I did the same on a few other corners of the board, some of them came out better than others. I didn't really dig the design in the upper right corner, but I'll just put that at the bottom when I put my jewels on it so no one can see :).

Little off center, but no one's gonna give me a score.

It's hard to see, but someone wrote something offensive on the board edge (About school not being super fun, groundbreaking.) So I needed to paint over that too.

This lady weirded me out the whoooole time I did this.

I taped up the cork, making sure the paint was dry all the way.

Still weirding.

Shot it with some spray paint, let it dry. Did a second coat. Let it dry.

Ta-daaaa!

Voila, finished board. Hate to cover it up with my plastic diamonds and discount jewelry, but I have to throw that stuff somewhere.

Aaaand back to looking like crap.