Happy Birthday + Memento for Android

A mid-week post from me? I know I'm shocked as well! I just wanted to share the card I made for my sister-in-law to give to her daughter who is turning 1 this month.

Here's a side on view to show the wonderful dimension and sparkle:





Oh Glossy Accents - how I love thee. This effect was VERY trial and error but was salvagable in the end. And I took pictures of the process!

See at first I just had the balloons (from this set by Goodness & Fun on MyGrafico) printed on the cardfront. I showed my husband (as I always do) and he hemmed and hawwed and said it needed a little something. I seethed a little inside (as I always do when he doesn't exclaim and declare it the most beautiful! card! in the universe! immediately) but then thought a little bit of sparkle would do the trick. I used my clear atyou spica pen (which I also love) which made the balloons sparkle but looked awful and blotchy whenever looking at it from a non-sparkly angle (see image below) - I think because the 'clear' pen is really a sort of light greyish colour. Back to the drawing board.





I then thought STICKLES. Gosh I'm clever. So I squeezed a blob of Frosted Lace onto some acetate and painted away with a fine little paintbrush I have just for these types of jobs. Hmm. My husband declared it 'better'. However they just looked sharp and pointy to me, not balloon-like at all (see below and click on it to see it up closer!)





Then I had another lightbulb moment - GLOSSY ACCENTS. I usually make a hash of it so I was very careful - I applied it over the large areas first and then moved or dotted more Glossy Accents into the teeny tiny areas using my little paintbrush. I left each balloon to dry quite a bit before moving onto the next as Glossy Accents has a habit of spreading if you join two circles for instance.

So that's the wonderful journey that this card took me on. I enjoyed sharing the mistakes today, as I read other blogs that do this and always like seeing the 'before' and 'afters'.

Size of card: 11b (5 1/2 x 3 7/8)

Card: Matte photo paper, Bazzil cardstock
Ink: Printer
Stamp: Birthday Girl stamps by Goodness & Fun on MyGrafico
Tools: Pixma printer, Carl rotary trimmer, Helmar glue runner, clear Spica atyou pen, Glossy Accents, Frosted Lace Stickles, paintbrush

Oh and the second thing I wanted to talk about was Memento for Android. I recently got an android phone which uses Google's operating system for mobiles (it's a Samsung Galaxy S i9000 in case you were wondering). I'm not really big into the whole application thing - I have my mail and my internet and that's about all I need, however I discovered a fantastic database app called Memento which people normally use to catalogue their dvd collections.

I thought it would solve the problem I have with remembering which Prismacolor pencils I currently have in my collection, as I have to admit I've come home from the art shop more than once to discover one of the colours I bought is already sitting in my pencil caddy - usually still unused. So now when I go to the art shop I can bring out my phone and check the pencil I'm holding against my collection.

And tonight I made a database for my meagre collection of Copic Ciao markers. I really don't want to buy duplicates of those because they aren't cheap! At least with the Prismacolors while it might be annoying to buy duplicates, it isn't an expensive mistake - they only cost a couple of dollars each.

I buy the majority of my markers at my local craft shop so this database will come in handy there too.

Here are a few images of my device and database in action:

It's a very easy to use application and versatile too - you can catalogue just about anything you want! I've just started one for my custom card sizes to fit certain envelopes because I kept losing the little bits of paper I had lying around with the measurements on them.

Another great thing is that you can sync with Google Docs which means that you can never lose your database if something happens to your phone or memory card.

Find out all about it at the developer's website: Luckydroid

I hope I haven't bored you silly with this extra long post! I promise to do better next time!