The Rubber Cafe Design Team Blog: November Guest Designer-Mary-Ann Maldonado- Creative Cafe' Kit -'Twas the Night

Saturday, November 2, 2013

November Guest Designer-Mary-Ann Maldonado- Creative Cafe' Kit -'Twas the Night

Hi Everyone! November is here- and with that a new release from our The Rubber Cafe' -Creative Cafe' kit club. This month's kit is special not only is it a Holiday theme, but we have not one but TWO Guest Designer's this month playing along with us to bring you even more fun and inspiration!

Today I want to introduce Mary-Ann Maldonado! You may have encountered Mary-Ann and her creative expertise somewhere along the way, as in additon her various Design Team responsibilities, she is one of Button Farm's traveling instructors! We are so fortunate that she was able to carve out time in her busy schedule to join us this month and I for one can't wait to see what she has in store for us. You can see more of Mary-Ann's work on her blog Lump, Bump, and Clump.
Enough from me here's Mary-Ann to tell us more about herself and she has a Tutorial and her first card to share all featuring product from our Creative Cafe' Kit -Twas the Night!

Hi, I’m Mary-Ann Maldonado from Methuen Mass. I was born and raised in a small town in Maine but have lived all over the United States following my retired Marine, Randy. We have a beautiful boy, Roman, a sexy dog, Flo and her chew toy, Milford, our cat. I have been playing with paper since 2000. I am a traveling instructor for The Button Farm and the blog editor for Farmhouse Paper Company. I am lucky to design for Farmhouse paper Company, Eclectic Paperie and A Flair for Buttons. I also teach at my local scrapbooking stores. I enjoy 12x12 creating layouts, cards and making mini albums. I love anything to do with my family, friends and paper. I am OCD organized which helps with my hoarding tendencies! I am pretty excited to be joining The Rubber Cafe' team for November and hope to inspire you.

Good morning, I am Mary-Ann Maldonado, and I am overly delighted to be sharing my first Christmas card with you. It is made with the ah-mazing The Rubber Cafe's November Creative Kit of the Month-Twas the Night. I wanted to keep this card clean and white with a splash of that yummy candy cane stripped paper included in the kit.

After layering papers on my 4 1/2 x 6 1/4 card base, I cut down a 3 1/4 x 4 1/2 piece of the white snowflake paper from the 6x6 paper pad included in the kit. I utilized the cluster of flakes in the lower right corner. With a brown marker, I colored only the antlers of the silly deer from "Twas the Night" (stamp set included) and added them to the top left corner. You will see below where I was going with this. I was hoping that they would resemble the twigs at the end of the pinecones.....

Knowing that I wanted the long ornament stamp from the same set to resemble a pinecone instead of an ornament, I dug out my colored pencils and began coloring with browns to get my desired look. Trimmed them out with my fine tip scissors and backed two of them with thin layers of foam tape.

Here you can see how I clumped them together, added a bow and a jingle bell.

Using the same technique I used with the antlers, I colored only the word Christmas from the phrase "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas." If you huff on it a little, it warms it up and stamps rather nicely. I added this to the lower right, overlapping the excising snowflakes from the paper. The white on white was too matchy, so I took the same brown marker that I had been stamping with and hand drew, a non-perfect border around the edges. Backed the entire block with foam to create dimension and a little shadow to help the inner block pop off the background.

I hope you have been inspired to get creative with your kit. I only have 74 more Christmas cards to go!! I will be joining you again on Monday November 11th with another card, which will take me down to 73! See you all then.