Rubber Stamping & Card Making with Yapha

I would like to take a minute to wish you a very happy new year! I hope that 2010 brings health, happiness, prosperity, and all that you need it to bring. Thank you for reading my blog. I hope you will continue on this stamping journey with me throughout the year to come!

This is the card that I made for Eve’s first grade teachers this year. I love how clean and fresh it looks! I put another Apricot Appeal Top Note on the inside to write on.

Stamps: A Brand New Year
Ink: StazOn Black, Apricot Appeal Stampin’ Write Marker
Paper: Basic Black, Apricot Appeal, Whisper White
Other: Top Note Bigz Die, Big Shot

Be sure and come back tomorrow for the Stampin’ Addicts Occasions Mini Catalog Blog Hop! It’ll be a hoppin’ good time!

Today’s My Digital Studio is about Opacity. Opacity has to do with how see through something is, or how opaque. A window is 0% opaque – you can see through it completely. A wall is 100% opaque, you cannot see through it at all. A gauzy veil might be about 30% opaque — you can see it is there, but you can still see through it. You can use the Opacity settings to lighten up some of the images and patterned paper on your projects. You can also use it to make a watermark. Take a look at the pages below, and also yesterday. Play around with the opacity settings, and see how it changes this. Remember, you can always undo!

In August we took our epic drive across the country. One of our stops was Hershey, PA.

September is the start of school and also Rosh Hashanah. Thankfully, both use an apple for the symbol!

I’ll be taking a break from the calendar for a few days, since I have some other exciting projects to show you, but I’ll be picking it up again on Monday. Be sure and stop by for the Occasions Mini Blog Hop on January 1st, 2nd, & 3rd!

Today’s My Digital Studio Tip is lettering. You have two options for adding text to your projects in My Digital Studio. You can use the fonts that are on your computer, or you can use the alphabet stamps that are in My Digital Studio. What you do is up to you. The only downside to using the stamps is that if you want to make them really large, they may pixelate, which is a bad thing. For the most part, I’ve just been using the fonts on my computer.

We are into the summer months here! For June, I featured pictures of my Dad and Eve in honor of Father’s Day.

July has a series of pictures we took at Old Sturbridge Village in Central Massachusetts. Eve and I had a lot of fun exploring the recreated town, especially since we were right in the thick of reading all of the Little House on the Prairie Books. It’s not the Prairie, but the time period is about right.

Be sure and stop back tomorrow for more!

Today’s My Digital Studio tip — the undo command. I love it. Use it often, that’s my motto! Sometimes, when using My Digital Studio, it is easy to rotate when you mean to resize, or resize when you mean to move. If that happens — DO NOT PANIC! Just stop, go up to Edit at the top, and choose undo. Everything will go back as you had it. You can “undo” multiple steps, as long as you have not saved since doing them. Then, when you have it how you like it, save!

Moving on in the calendar, we have April and May.

April focuses on Passover, especially the frogs! I tried to make the background of the first page be reminiscent of matzah. What do you think, did it work?

May has both Mother’s Day and my mom’s birthday, so I used those as the theme.

Feel like making your own calendar yet?

Here’s a look at the February and March pages of the calendar I have been making for my parents. I have to tell you, this calendar making is so fun, it’s hard to stop! If you plan on making one, here’s a great tip — before you get started, gather all of the pictures you want to use and put them in the same folder. This makes inserting them into the calender much easier!

Here is February, with a Valentine’s theme:

And March, combining Purim and St. Patrick’s Day:

Yep, more coming tomorrow!

One of the things I like to do every year for my parents is to create a photo calendar for them. Until now, I’ve been stuck with the limitations of online photo haring sites. But not any more! Thanks to My Digital Studio, the freedom I have with which to create the calendar is incredible. I can have any layout at all for the top page, and I can decorate and annotate the calendar date page as much or as little as I like. This allows me to put on birthdays, Jewish holidays, and any other holidays I choose, as well as make it look pretty  and match the top half. Over the course of the next few weeks I will be sharing my calendar with you. If you are interested in learning more about My Digital Studio, I do offer a free one-on-one class for anyone who purchase the software from me.

Here is the cover:

And here are the pages for January:

One of the beautiful parts of My Digital Studio is that I’ll never run out of matching paper, ink, or embellishments. They will always be there for me! I’ll post a few more months tomorrow.

After the season of giving is over, next comes the season of Thank You cards! I put together some easy and elegant Thank You cards using the Razzleberry Lemonade Designer Series Paper and the Elegant Thank You stamp. (Did you know that you can earn this stamp set for free starting January 5th? More details coming soon!) These cards fit this week’s Color Inspiration over at Stamping 411.

I added a liberal dose of Crushed Curry as well, but they certainly meet the requirements of “bright!” Here are the cards. I quickly whipped up around 30 of these.

Stamps: Elegant Thank You
Ink: Melon Mambo, Rich Razzleberry
Paper: Rich Razzleberry, Crushed Curry, Whisper White, Razzleberry Lemonade Designer Series Paper
Other: Scallop Square Punch

Now comes the hard part — actually writing the Thank You notes! I am fortunate to have so many things to be thankful for. I hope you do too!

I am so excited that Stampin’ Up is introducing the option of clear-mount stamps in the Occasions Mini Catalog (which starts January 5th). These are unmounted red rubber stamps, with the same crisp Stampin’ Up quality as always! Just like anything new, there are a few tips and tricks to getting them to work just right. I have created a little video to help get you started. (A big thanks to my cameraman Steve for doing a terrific job!) The set in the video is I {heart} Hearts, which is also in the picture above.

What do you think? Are you going to try them? I think this is a great solution for stamps you might use once a while. Same great Stampin’ Up quality, but they cost a few dollars less a set, and don’t take up as much room!

(Did you hear Biscuit bark? He was disappointed that he wasn’t in the video.)

We woke up this morning in New Bedford to what truly is a Winter Wonderland, so I thought I’d better post another card for the Pals Paper Arts Challenge! Eve was excited to go out and play in the snow, but first she measured how deep it was — 15 3/4 inches according to the yardstick she put in!

My husband asked me to make up some Christmas cards for him to send to friends this year. He looked at all of my designs, and decided on this one. I love the simple elegance of it, and the sparkle of the glitter. I made similar cards for him last year. Sorry about the glare. Between the glossy card stock and the glitter, it’s hard to get a good picture.

Stamps: Lovely as a Tree, Sincere Salutations
Paper: Ballet Blue, Basic Black, Glossy White
Ink: StazOn Black, Ballet Blue, Lovely Lilac
Accessories: Two-Way Glue, Dazzling Diamonds, Sponges

I’ve been spending this snowy day hard at work on a My Digital Studio calendar for my parents. I’ll be sharing pages of that with you soon!

This week’s challenge on Pals Paper Arts is a theme challenge of Winter Wonderland. I needed to make another gift card holder, so I decided to apply this theme while making it. I love these gift card purses! You can see the first one I made or the originals that inspired me. Here is my Winter Wonderland one:

Stamps: Patterned Pines
Ink: Bashful Blue
Paper: Bashful Blue, Night of Navy, Whisper White
Other: Snowfall Printed Window Sheet, Circle Brads (Ice), Bashful Blue Striped Grosgrain Ribbon, 1 3/8″ Circle Punch, Scallop Circle Punch, Top Note Bigz Die, Big Shot, Crop-a-Dile, Velcro

I used the Snowfall Printed Window Sheet over the Night of Navy paper for that great look! Because of this, I took the photo at a slightly odd angle to avoid glare from the flash. A little bit of Velcro keeps it closed. The rhinestone brad in the middle is hard to see, but it is light blue.