Mouse Pendulum Clock

Hello! :) This project is unrelated to stamping.. It was for one of my classes. But I thought it was cool enough to be blogged about, too. :)

It's a pendulum clock (like a tiny grandfather clock). But it doesn't actually show time, it only ticks for about a minute and stops. You have to wind it up again for it to start ticking again. You can see a video of it here. :)

Here is the front:

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The mouse was inspired by a picture online, and then the wheel and the mouse were cut out from a sheet of acrylic with a laser (on a machine we have at school). It was so cool to watch how a tiny laser light moves around, and the acrylic gets cut where the light passes! :D 

The colored lines were etched (also with the laser) and then filled in with acrylic paint. Eyes and nose were simply drawn on with the paint. :)

And this is the back, you can see the weight midway as it goes down:

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That would be all! Hope you liked the random stamping-less post. :) Thanks for visiting!

A Penguin Western

Hello! :) I haven't posted in a while, been kind of busy with an internship and now school.. But here's my latest project! :) And I feel I should give a heads-up that this is a very lengthy post... Mostly pictures. It is all summarized at the beginning though. The rest are just close-ups of every slide of the accordion. :)

This project is a very belated birthday wish for a friend of mine. Took me a while to stamp and color it and then put it together! It is an Altoids tin with a story inside, on slides that come together like an accordion.

Here are the outside and an overview of the inside:

Top:

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Aren't these Mexican penguins so cute? :D Like always, I colored with PrismaColor pencils. Distressed with Distress inks. Lots of clear embossing powder on the penguins to make their black coats shiny! :)

Inside:

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And here's how it unfolds, in video form!

This is the bottom of the box:

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Side: (the ribbons go all the way around)

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Close-ups of every page in the accordion.. Most of the stamps are from the Cat's Pajamas set It's a Western Thing. It is great for little stories!

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On every page, I tried to highlight a specific detail by mounting it with foam tape. I think it makes reading and understanding the story a little easier... For example, on the following slide, the bank and "Bang!" sign are raised (it's more noticeable in real life) suggesting that some action is taking place at the bank. :) 

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I also put some text in. It's all printed on vellum... Took me more than an hour to fool my printer into printing these out! *whew* Apparently, the Epson Artisan 810 printer isn't vellum-friendly. :( I got it to work by sticking the vellum onto a piece of regular white paper with thin double-sided tape and feeding that to the printer. That fooled it into doing the job! ;)

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The sheriff's nose is Diamond-glazed. :) I used to have a dog when I was little.. An Irish setter. :D His nose was never dry unless he was sick. So I made sure this guy's nose was also wet-looking. :)

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For some reason, this next slide arose some questions when I showed it to friends. It's supposed to be sarcasm coming from the penguins who are already in jail for robbing the bank. :)

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I tried to imply a happy town by this next slide by putting some colorful and glittery music notes all around. :) You can also notice that windows on the saloon all have Diamond glaze on them. Just an extra little detail. :) That's true for every slide, but so tough to capture in photographs.

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This last slide is essentially the greeting. My friend turned twenty-one, so there are twenty-one shot glasses on this page! They are all from transparent shrink plastic. I love that material! It's amazing every time to watch it transform so perfectly. :D The orange color is supposed to indicate tequila.. Thus the cute salt and lime in the corner. :) The salt has some frosted lace Stickles on it to give it appearance of little white crystals and the lime has Diamond glaze to give it some freshness. 

The four shots on the right I intended to appear empty. Up until the moment I actually glued them securely to this page, I couldn't place why they looked weird. Apparently they have a line in the middle that I failed to notice earlier... :/ Tsk tsk, my attention to detail is usually better! But I figured tequila comes in transparent too, and decided it's okay to leave them on. :)

As a disclaimer I should say that I do not expect this friend of mine to actually drink 21 shots of tequila.. That would be dangerous. This is just for decorative purposes. :)

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Sadly, the stamp set It's a Western Thing that I used for most of the project does not include "the End" sentiment... To keep fonts consistent, I carefully inked up and stamped the letters I needed one by one from the "Happy Birthday, Pardner" sentiment I used above. Still, there was no capital "E"... Inking up part of the "B" and stamping it upside-down worked perfectly though! ;)

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Behind the "the End" you can find a hand-written sentiment from me:

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Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. :)

I would like to enter this in the following challenges:

• Hooked on crafts - #9 (anything but a card)

Products I used:

• Stamps: Cat's Pajamas - It's a Western Thing, Hola Tequila
• Inks: Memories - black, barn red; Distress - vintage photo, spiced marmalade, barn door, peeled paint, broken china; VersaColor - peony, orchid, heliotrope, fresh green, orange
• Stickles: golden rod, lime green, frosted lace, cinnamon
• Embossing powders: Denami - clear; art glitter - 89. martini
• PrismaColor pencils
• Transparent shrink plastic, vellum
• Sakura's gelly roll and souffle pens
• Beacon's 3-in-1 glue, Diamond glaze