Earth Day recycling card, and Mama Elephant Stamp

Hi All, 

Happy Earth Day! I didn't get this post up in time per se due to scheduling issues, but here is my card for today: 

I recently bought the Stila mini-smudge liner makeup at Sephora, and it had this little plastic piece inside the set that I felt bad about throwing away, but couldn't figure out what I wanted to do with it. I finally wove some cardstock I had laying around (from a discount cardstock scraps bag) and then glued that on top of a cardstock square that I'd layered with some washi tape, then glued that entire thing on top of some yellow cardstock, before popping it all on some foam adhesives. I finally added a little cardstock piece that I heat embossed with a sentiment stamp from Mama Elephant. All I can say is that I LOVE LOVE LOVE Glossy Accents. I swear, that stuff can practically glue anything! :)

Hope everyone had a Happy Earth Day, and lived a little greener today! :)

Best, ~Z

How To: Make your own acrylic blocks!

I am all about saving money, and as more experienced scrappers have warned me, scrapbooking/stamping/cardmaking can become a VERY expensive hobby VERY quickly. Therefore, I was trying to think of ways that I could save money.

I started out with only one acrylic block that came with my Inkinado stamps from Walmart, a 3 3/4 x 1 1/4 block, doesn't fit my larger stamps. I found an article on Curbly on how to make my own acrylic blocks, and I just had to try it out. My dad is a bit of a DIY person, so he always has random materials around. I dug around our garage, and sure enough, we had several sheets of acrylic material, about 1 1/2 inch thick.

I drew several sizes that I'd thought I'd need onto some card stock (2 x 2, 3 x 3, 3 x 4, 5 x 5, 5 x 8), and then I traced them on to the acrylic.

I had my dad help me saw them, since I don't always saw straight. We used a hand saw, and it sawed quite cleanly. There was none of the splintering that other DIY-ers had warned about.

Finally, I filed and sanded the edges. The edges were dull and opaque, which was the only drawback to making the blocks myself. I heard that passing the edge over open flame would help to clear up the edges, but when I tried it, it did not give me the result that I was expecting.

Heating it also makes it give off a horrible smell, so I decided I would rather have dull, opaque edges than the awful smell. Finally, I ran the blocks under some water to get rid of all of the acrylic dust.

And thus, here we are: a set of nice, clear, (cheap!) acrylic blocks all ready for stamping! (Excuse my messy desk, though!)

Link to Curbly directions:

http://www.curbly.com/users/diy-maven/posts/7078-diy-acrylic-stamping-blocks-zero-dollars