Card for Lovebirds - From the Archives

Hello friends,

A long-time couple I know have a marriage that is to be admired. This card was made for their last anniversary . . . A few new supplies had found their way into the house and I needed to play . . .

I have been a fan of silhouette art for most of my life, probably originating from the silhouettes my mother collected and displayed in my antiques-filled childhood home. 

This card came together quite quickly, once the idea took off. I die cut the people and a heart from black cardstock - (notice the shadow at the top of the heart) and another heart from red paper. It was all arranged and mounted on a vintage book page that was layered over black paper and then mounted on a cream card.

The sentiment and label outline were stamped on cream paper and added to the card.  The inside was penned with a personal greeting. Off it went to my friends . . .

It's golf season so . . . although I'm not creating much, plans for many things are swirling around inside.

Til next time!

S.

Cards for today

Hello friends,

Here are two cards I recently made. The first is a clean and simple up-cycled card - an image was cut from a magazine, mounted on patterned paper and then adhered to a card base. There is a wealth of interesting pictures to be found in magazines, advertising flyers, travel brochures, glossy newspaper inserts and catalogs that can be cut out and easily made into cards.  I think this one is pretty cute.

The yellow patterned paper is a great complement to the flowers in the boots and brightens the weathered wood background. Since the card base is red, a piece of thin white paper is added inside for writing a message. Although this card is an odd size due to the size of the boot picture, it will fit nicely into a 5 x 7 envelope. Or if you are the proud owner of an envelope punch board, you can make a custom size envelope.

The next card has more of a vintage feel. This carved image stamp from Magenta was stamped in Ranger Red Geranium ink on off-white paper. The edges were torn into an oval shape and inked with Distress Ink in Vintage Photo. I tore a book page to the approximate size to fit the card base and did some machine zig-zag stitching around the edges in red thread. The stamped image was glued on and the layers mounted onto the kraft colored card. This one also has a paper glued inside for message writing.

I am a fan of the look of kraft with red - the red stitching adds a bit of pop to a card that could otherwise be non-descript and bland. Images mounted on book pages are very "in" these days and a vintage look is easily achieved using inked and torn book pages.

Cheers til next time!

S.

BabyThemed Note Cards

Hello friends,
Over the past several years, I have become addicted to rubber stamps. And there are so many wonderful ones out there. I had always loved stamps as a kid  . . . there's something about the images . . .  being drawing-challenged, stamps are a great way to create without having to put pencil (and mostly eraser) to paper.

Many of the stamps designed by Tim Holtz for Stampers Anonymous, especially his "mini" blueprint series, have found their way via the UPS truck to my house. ("What can brown do for you? Hah!)  I own the set pictured below, bought originally for the stack of books in the lower right (that librarian thing . . .)

The baby-themed images were perfect for making some note cards for the soon-to-be mom to use as thank you's or whatever.

Below is a grouping of some of the cards made - four of them using the blueprint stamps. I didn't take individual pictures of the cards . . . so squinting is necessary . . .

 The images were stamped on watercolor paper and color applied using Ranger Distress markers and ink pads (Spun Sugar, Faded Lilac, Scattered Straw, and Evergreen Bough). The ink pads were stamped onto a silicone craft mat and using a wet brush, the colors were picked up and slashed across the image . . . in all honesty I can't really call what I did "painting." Shading was added with the markers in places I thought shading should be. I do confess to watching a YouTube video or two to see how other people worked with the inks and just went from there.

After the images were dry, I tore ( the ABC blocks) and cut the images to fit on patterned paper that was layered onto a blank card. All in all, I was pretty happy with the results. And so was the mom-to-be.

The "onesie on a hanger" cards are made with a stamp I picked up at Michael's, stamped in red ink on white cardstock with a pink mat on cheerful paper. The clothesline card is made from some paper I unearthed from my thousands of sheets and added onesie puffy stickers to "hang" on the line.

For the "Where's Waldo fans, if you look closely and compare my bear card to the image on the bear blueprint stamp, you may notice a difference. It's the eyes.  Intended to be buttons, the original eyes on the stamp are way too big and spooky-looking for my liking.

So . . . out came the craft knife and those button eyes were history - sliced right off the stamp. (You can change anything with the right tools.)  A circle of black marker makes a much nicer eye while a heart punched from red cardstock and a bow tied from red DMC pearl cotton complete the look. One handsome bear.


Until next time!

S.