Hello everyone! :) It's a cloudy and cold sunday here in Antofagasta, it seems that spring sure it's taking its time to arrive. I don't really care, summers are SO HOT here that I'm not looking forward to it, but I do like that daylight lasts more.

Anyway, it's the beggining of october and that also means the "beggining of the end" for us, law students. In october starts the last period of tests at my faculty and then, in November, final exams begins. Chaos, collapses, ultimate doom and etc.

So, I won't be able to do as many projects as I'd like but I'll keep updating and making cards and ATCs. I'll try to make more projects on weekends so I have more things to post on the week (every second day or so). I have my tests on fridays/saturdays morning, which would leave me weekends to rest and be crafty.

Well, onto today's project. This is a failed Trifold card that turned into a Criss-cross card :) On July I made a card for my dearest friend yuih. My intention was to make a trifold card, but I screwed up and scored wrong on the right side. I finished the card how I could and then I saw this whole "Criss-cross" card thing invading the blogs and galleries. I felt so smart because I had made something similar by mistake and decided I would try to make a criss cross card "again" :p

I started this card with this gorgeus paisley patterned paper from the Lilykate collection of Basic Grey. I have a small pack of 6x6 lying around for months and had only used it for a few projects. This paper deserved more love <3 I grabbed also one of the non-patterned sheets from the pack to cooordinate. The indigo (?) and light green cadstock are from a local paper pack (which I have to buy more, it has saved me many times already!).

Card base is a 4"x12" piece of indigo cardstock, scored at 4" and 8", in order to make a nice square criss-cross card. Then I cut the diagonals in the squares left of the side (so the whole piece looks like a trapezoid). Then I cutted a 3,75" square in the patterned paper and cut it diagonally, so the triangles would leave a 1/8" margin. Glued the flaps together and a small portion of the bottom of the card (so the insert wouldn't fall, LOL).

For the insert I cut a 3,5"x4,5" piece of the light green cardstock and added a 1" strip in the yellow paper, which I scalloped with my corner rounder (can't you tell I'm addicted? :D). I added a beige fabric flower and a paper flower I dyed myself with COPIC BV02 so it'd match the paper and added the small blue brad (since I don't have a small punch to make the hole for the brad, I used a pushpin to make a small hole on the paper). Then I adhered a small square of kent paper to write a sentiment.

Finish touch was the small light blue rounder clip with the tied ribbons, which are scraps my mother gave me because she does ribbon embroidery and always ends up with little pieces of ribbon here and there. The knot was hard, because the scraps are the size you see them in the picture, I didn't cut any of it.

Oh, and while I was enhancing my picture in Photoshop I decided to make myself a watermark :) Fonts are free from DaFont.com (Mutlu & 04b_03) and there's a small butterfly brush in the background (for now, I'll make myself an illustration soon). The watermark is actually pretty small (200px) but I enlarged 250% with Photoshop and it didn't got screwed, yay! I defined the watermark as a brush for PS so I could use it with any color ;p

I was thinking about making a small tutorial/walkthrough about how I clean my pictures in photoshop to be posted or about how I made my watermark (or maybe both, I don't know). I hope someone is interested :)

This card is for the Weekend Sketch Challenge #21 by the amazing Beate and was made using the tutorial she wrote. WOW, 21 weeks already? I remember I participated on the very first one :)

This is my first card using the "Merry & Bright" stamp set that appeared in the Holiday Mini by SU! And it's actually the first christmas card I make in *years*. When I was a freshmen in highschool I made christmas cards with cross-stitched motifs as the main image, but only for close friends and the guy I dated back then. This year, celebrating my "stamping anniversary"  I want to go back to make christmas cards, so this is the first of many (or so I hope).

Since "firsts" are important I wanted to try untraditional christmas colors, at least once, and I had this river rock/blue bayou/soft sky combo stuck in my mind for a few days until I had time to make it.

I'm not very good at following tutorials so I always end up screwing something up. On this one, the corners of the folder were a pain for me, lol. For the front of the card I made my "own" patterned paper stamping the snowflakes from the Merry & Bright set and a random snowflake I got as "Thursday Tip" prize in the OSA group (I knew that snowflake would come handy sometime!).

For the inside of the card I, as always, made a scalloped border using my corner rounder, stamped the snowman with black Staz-On and watercolored it with the same inks as the papers. Then I stamped the saying in Blue Bayou on the little tag... I'm very happy tht it turned out right where I wanted it! (which is a first to me, LOL).

To hold the folder closed I used a light blue fiber I had around, but I'll replace it with soft-sky stitched ribbon as soon as it arrives 'cause I just ordered some from Laura. Now I know what she meant when she said she loved SU! product because they're easier to combine together.

By the way, I tried a "different" kind of photography, using a complete white background (well, enhanced in photoshop <3) which I think shows the colors a lot better than my other pictures. I think I'll stick with this kind of picture for a while :) Thanks for looking!

By now, everyone and their mothers know that "Yatta" means "I did it!!" (Hiro, my favourite character from the Heroes t.v show, popularized the word). And it was like I totally felt today, when FINALLY Claudio brought me the damned toner photocopies of images I printed.

Milly, the colorless blender thing didn't worked for me :( I tried several times with different images and different papers and solvents until I found one that worked. My best results were on a smooth paper (for marker coloring) and using nail polish remover as my transfering medium, LOL. I found that better results are achieved when rubbing nail polish remover both on the front of the paper where I wanted to transfer the image and then on the back of the image to transfer. I even could transfer some color from some laser photocopies :)

On the left one I applied solvent both in the paper to transfer and in the back of the image and scrubbed with a spoon. On the right one it was only on the back of the image to transfer.

My only complaint is that toner photocopies are really expensive. I mean, it is $1 for one letter sized sheet, and it was $0.50 for the laser photocopies, which is also pretty expensive for me. I mean, being a student I'm used to photocopy for 2c each one on photocopy center around the university. I'm not really used to this thing of going to professional photocopy center.

I'll have to go, though. Because in my experiments I used almost all the images I had in mind for the definitive ATCs. I'll work on getting a better "collage sheet" over the weekend so I can send it to photocopy on monday or so :3 I want to paint a background for them and then transfer the images.

Argh, I always make it so hard on myself on just little card. I should probably start making easier things for trades, so I won't take so much time doing then. And my hand were sore for scrubbing so hard with a spoon D:

As I mentioned, a friend of mine is having her birthday. Her name is Dafne, she's a year older than me, but we ended up being classmates :p She loves the color pink and she is known as "bunny" by everyone (and she's quite known! she is very kind and knows people from every corner of Antofagasta, LOL).

Yesterday I also received some new rubbah and wanted to use it right away, so I got busy right away. I find it easier to create cards if I have a color combination and a card sketch, so I grabbed this patterned paper (K&Co I think it is, for what Laura told me). From the endless color combination it offered I choosed purely pomegranate and soft sky, haven't even touched the firt one and soft sky is my favourite! I can tell because I'm running out of that one :(.

Having my color combination ready I browsed around and based on an old sketch challenge by Beate.

I used the patterned paper as my first layer and faux stitched the border, though it's barely noticeable because my sister borrowed me a white gel pen and it seems she's also running out. Over it I added a small square of light brown textured opaline (again a failure to match the cream color in the DP, grr) stamped with a big swirl in soft sky ink and small flower in purely pomegranate, both stamps from the Baroque Motifs set I just received <3

I wanted to change a little my very used bunny stamp, so I masked out the dandellion (I put masking tape on the stamp, inked and removed the tape) and instead added a small paper punched flower in the same patterned paper from the first layer. The white scalloped square was punched by Laura and she kindly send some samples to me (OMG, I'm so spoiled :p) so I don'tknow exactly what punch it is.

And that's it, I'm ready for saturday's party :D

(I took this picture with Claudio's camera since my sister just told me yesterday that she broke ours. Crap.)

As far as I remember "makenai" means "cheer up" in japanese :) (i could be awfully wrong too).

Yesterday Laura posted her second sketch, and to make it even more fun she's making it a challenge and will be sending gifts to the best card.

I started this card with the paisley patterned paper (which was a gift from Laura, thanks! :D), I don't know why it's much easier when I have a color combination. So, I took a sheet of soft sky, wild wasabi and river rock (this one is not such a close matcha, but it is what it is).

I decided I would be using soft sky a my base so I cut a 4,25"x8,5" strip and folded it in half. Since I wasnt going to anything with the base son I put it aside for a while, after I cut a 4,25"x2,75" strip of the patterned paper. I matted it with river rock, leaving a 1/8" inch on each side. Then I addered a scalloped border in wild wasabi using my corner rounder.

Since I don't own any sentiment stamps I decided to make mine. I found a quoute about friendship by Louisa Mary Alcott ("Stay is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary"). To choose the right colors I used the SU Color Combos page :) One of the fonts is Mutlu (the light blue scripty one, available on DaFont) and the other is a default one that comes with Windows. I printed my sentiment and matted it with soft sky (again a 1/8" margin).

Then I painted the fabric flower (also a gift from Laura :p) with Soft Sky ink, with a brush. The brad is also painted with wild wasabi ink. The small flower were done with a flower punch I bough here, I punched two on two colors and then glued one in the back of the other (hope that makes sense).

After all of this was done I glued the strip of papers to the card base. I really liked how it came out, even when most of the card is empty one hardly notices because you're too focused on the main strip and all the layers and embellishments. I'm also not used to make so many layers, so this took me a little out of my comfort zone. Glad I did though, and I must thank Laura for that. I hope you keep those sketches coming, I really like the challenge! :D

Some time ago I posted about a personal trade with lw2dragonflies, she wanted some ATCs with some of our local holidays/festivities as theme.

Both were hard to produce, I had to search a lot of reference pictures to make them as accurate as I could. But it was also difficult to not get inspired to make a card about our "Fiestas Patrias" when we were actually celebrating them :p

So, the "huaso" is the most important tipical character here in my country. Still, in the rural zones of the central regions of Chile, there's people that dress like that :) Surrounding the huaso we have our national flower (the "copihue"), kites and trompos, which are both tipical games.

The scanner didn't get the colors too well they're more subtle and brown-ish. This one was painted it two steps: first I applied brown in different tones (ochre where lighter colors would be, a dark brown/black tone where the darkest color) and then I painted with the colors, so that would be a "antique" look to the painting. The background is not white, it's a light blue with ochre :p

Inking is a little screwed, because my pen nib broke :( The kite was the first thing I inked with sepia ink, where the lineart is worse, the rest was done with a fine brush.

So... with this I declare my trade with lw2dragonflies FINALLY over :D I already made the envelope and have both cards ready to be send tomorrow.

Whew, I finalled finished my ATCs for the "Next 9x9 Swap" hosted by heymaggie on ATCards.com. Ladies, let me tell you this is a *huge* task for someone like myself, who had only participated in 5/5 swaps. And I like to make my life even worse, by making 3 different design and all handpainted and stuff. I spent way too much time doing them.

I'm waaaaay to tired to start scanning and fixing and uploading right now (just thinking of it makes me sleepy), so it'll have to hold until tomorrow morning, because I have clases a little later than usual (10:30am).

On other notices, I sent "Wishlist" RAKs to Paperfairys and Robin. Hope they arrive soon!

Good night people, so you all tomorrow! :)

ETA (09/11): Here they are in all their glory! I will only post pictures since I gotta run for school, but I'm free in the afternoon so I'll have time to add a description :) As always, they're uploaded on my Flickr account if you want to see a bigger version and a somewhat lame description :p


So, I started with a 7,5"x10,5" piece of Fabriano paper, and I discovered that the sheets of the block I buy are perfect for making two sets of 9 ATC blanks, with only a 0,1" scrap on one side.

The background was painted in two rounds with two differrent techniques: first I did a light wash with lots of water and little watercolor, letting the colors blend by themselves with the water, added a little bit of salt and let dry outside for a day. Usually, it's a pain to remove the salt from the paper, and I always ended up screwing up the paper bu rubbing so hard. Not anymore, I found a little useful tool <3 (that I NEVER imagined it'd be useful for this, LOL). Then I splattered some more watercolor with a syringer (i can't make "nice" splatter with a brush :( ), then dry outside again.

When the background was done I cuted it to the ATC-size and added a sturdy background. Then, I traced every design on 3 ATCs and added little details with white and red gouache paint. The lineart is made with COPIC multiliners, which are awesome because they're anything-proof (bad thing I only have black ones)

Lastly, but not least (I think), I choosed one of Pablo Neruda's poems ("Poem 20" to be exactly) to add random verses on the big empty spaces of my cards. I like to incorporate something "chilean" on my cards from time to time, so I can make my country a little more known abroad :)

Hello everyone! Happy Labor Day for those in U.S.A :) It's a quiet (and cloudy day) here in Antofagasta. I just came back from class and I wanted to share this card right  away.

The little book on the left is a compilation of short stories about Santiago and the urban life. It's an annual literary contest financed by the company my father works for, so this year they gave their workers a free copy of this book. I was thrilled! (and I'm looking forward to participate next year :)

Anyway, I loved the cover design and thought about making a card about it. The colors, the design everything called me. At first, I was going to imitate the circle design, but I found some technical difficulties, lol, because I seem unable to cut a semi-decent circle without a paper punch, so I gave up on that and instead used one of the new card sketches from Pagemaps.


And this is what I came up with :D (right). The red cardstock is from a stack that I bought in a local supermarket (9"x12") cut to make a 4,5" square base. Then I added a 4" square layer in Soft Sky and stamped some of the Elegant Flourishes in Versamark. Third layer is a circle with the teapot stamped in red ink from my Colorbox Petal Point pad. I punched a 1/4" circle on each side and added the ribbon (which was a gift from Laura, thanks! :D), following the mentioned sketch.

I like this color combination very much, though I had a hard time putting this card together. I really did want to make a design witgh circles :( I was browsing the SU catalog and getting all of the circle punches at once would cost me $65, which is something I can't afford right now, so I'll put that on hold (and start looking for local circle punches :p).

Another disappointment this week was the cost of buying a Cuttlebug. I was looking through eBay and there are some machines for $49.99, but the shipping fee to Chile is (take a sit).... $75?!! OMG Dx And that was the only store I saw that shipped them internationally, others are USA-only. Sooo... the Cuttlebug is a "little" far from me now :p

Anyway, thanks for looking and for reading! <3

Last week, Laura (aka The Stampin' Soldier) posted a Sketch on her blog. It's been ages since I don't  use a sketch for cards, and I've noticed that everytime I do it I end up with a really nice one :)

So, I started with a 4,2" square white card, the last of my prefolded, precut white cards (gotta go buy more, they save me a lot of time). I wanted to make a "fake" patterned paper so I grabbed my Rhonna Farrer Clear set (Elegant Flourishes) and added Soft-Sky swirls here and there in a 2"x4,2" strip. Then I inked one of the blossoms on my Kodomo Die-Cut bunnies set and added little touchs of Groovy Guava.

Next I aded a strip of Groovy Guava cardstock which upper and bottom edges I scalloped with my corner rounder paper punch (the green one). My original idea was that the Soft Sky square had to be scalloped also. Laura sent me a punched one so I could trace it on cs and cut it, but neither my fiance nor myself could cut the little scallops really well, so I ended up using a simple square with rounded corners (bleh, didn't like it that much). Last layer is a 1,8"x1,8" white square with the dandellion bunny stamped in both colors. Isn't he cute? It's my favourite stamp on the set. In fact, I love Kodomo stamps, the designs are so darn cute, sad thing I can't get more right now :(

Here's and inside view of the card. I wanted to add a little "extra"and I remembered a Doodlebug alphabet that has been sitting around my room for AGES now (I got it on 2peas). I can color that, I thought. So I did. I stamped swirls and cherry blossoms and some I inked directly on the inkspot and in one I handpainted the design. I'm starting to think I should have put the "Thank you" on the upper portion of the card =/

Now, if you're wondering: Yes, I did used SCS Color Challenge, though I'm not a registered member in there. I just loved how these two colors look together and probably will use them again.

I still think this card looks a little empty, but I'll just leave it there for now. I'll go look for another sketch and color combinations, I want to make more cards, yay!.

A little note: For those concerned about my health. My wisdom tooth was hurting so much because I had a small infection on it. Curses. The Dentist gave me antibiotics and a antiseptic mouthwash, and I'm feeling a little better now.

"Este 16 de Julio sale la reina a pasear, saludando al peregrino que la viene a venerar"

Someone on ATCards.com requested a card from me that featured traditional festivities/holidays from my country. I thought it was pretty cool that someone actually cared for these things, so I decided to put all my soul on the 2 cards I'll be making for her ;)

This one, the first, is about a festival that takes place in the town of "La Tirana" in the inner part of the Tarapacá Region. This town venerates the Virgin of La Tirana, and every year on the 16th day of July the image of the virgin is taken out from the local church and "takes a walk" around town, while everyone dances around her (gypsies, natives, etc). There are even these folks dressed as demons that used to scare the hell out of me when I was little (lower left corner, my drawing doesn't make them justice!).

My father likes to make us go to La Tirana every year, to spend time with family and such, thought we (me and my sister) don't really like it now and we make sure he knows, LOL :p

Moving on, I've noticed I'm having a hard time drawing directly on the 2,5"x3,5" format so I decided to sketch in the double of that size (5"x7") the I scanned and printed in the correct size. It's a lot of work, because I still have to copy it to the ATC blank, since I want to paint this with watercolors and the ink from my printer bleeds.

I was thinking about painting the original too and maybe make some ATC-sized prints, if anyone is interested :D