Wednesday, September 8, 2010

You Are My Sunshine

When my daughter was hours old, I sang "you are my sunshine". Because (as I wrote on one of the clouds, she was and she is). The second song I sang to her was the theme song from the Beverly Hillbillies, because I had exhausted my repertoire of lullabies.

That fabulous sunshine paper was in my first kit (A Sassafrass Summer) from Club Ruby Designers. Wendy the Bling Queen did a fabulous layout, but I needed two pages and I only wanted to use one of my sunshine sheets and we live in a single sun solar system (sorry toooo much Star Trek), so I put my twist on it.

Using the very technical string tied around a pencil, I measured out the distance I wanted my circular cut to be, held the end of the string at the corner and drew an arc on the back of the paper. Then I cut along the line and kept the scrap for a future project.

I welded “You” to the top of one of the clouds on the Gypsy, and “are” to the bottom of another one. Welded “my sunshine” to a circle that I had partially off the page. The clouds are from Going Places, the lettering is Doodletype. The clouds are cut from Papertrey Ink's Stamper's Select White Cardstock at a pressure of 4 and a regular blade set at 3. I also used a really sticky mat, not brand-new-anything-you-stick-to-me-will-have-to-be-pried-off-sticky, but really sticky :D.

From a 3 inch strip of paper off the green print paper in the kit, I cut some hills out with scissors. If it makes it easier, you could also draw hills on the back of the strip.

I used a sepia micro pen for stitching everything except the sun, and for that I used a white gel pen. If I had to do it over again, I would have used a bolder font or put another larger circle big enough to go under the “my sunshine” so it would stand out more. DD’s picture will go in the sunshine mat when I find it lol.

A side note about welding letter to shapes with the Gypsy. I put my shape on one layer, then I make another layer and line the lettering up on the second layer. If everything is on the same layer it’s too easy to accidentally pick up the shape and get everything out of kilter. When I have everything lined up where I want, I hit the save button. Then go to the first layer and click on the shape, then go to the lettering layer and hit the paste button. Then I use the arrows to line up the shape just the way I want it, save again :D.

I hope to have the link Gypsy file posted soon, if you are interested :D.

Let's Get Organized, Organized... erm *looks around, and starts again* ... Let's Get More Organized, Organized.

You know the tune (sing it to Olivia Newton John's "Lets' Get Physical). So this is my work table lol. I just finished one entry for a contest, one card for a series with others, and I'm working on another entry, a blog hop and some things just for fun. And the Halloween stamps are being used as part of my stamp every stamp I have campaign.

You'll note the clearing to the right... That's only there because the Cricut mat would get stuck otherwise and that would waste paper lol.  If you are wondering why I have Cricut cartridges out as well as my Gypsy, the answer is, there are three things better without the Gypsy. Plus if you are going to use the very lovely Graphically Speaking, it's a lot easier with the handbook. After this batch is done, I really need to get to work :D.

Only now I've given myself an earworm lol . You don't hear Olivia warbling?? Noooo good deed goes unpunished lol. But seriously my mojo moves out of the house if this surface is empty. Cluttered desk is to cluttered mind what empty desk is to... Maybe I could make a cute little mojo house!

If you want to see what other work areas look like go here.