Autumn Thank You Card

The second of two posts today.

Warning – long post, picture-rich.

A card for the teacher of our felt-making class. She has been so wonderful over the past few weeks – just the right balance of demonstration and instruction, and letting us get on, encouragement and inspiration. As this five-week course came to an end I suggested to the others that I make a card for us all to sign, which would be given to her at the end of the final session last night.

Since the theme of this course was loosely an autumn theme (although we have proved that anything goes!) I thought I would make an autumn card.

Using a palette knife, I applied a thin layer of Polyfilla One Fill (known as joint compound in the USA) through my large leaf stencil onto an A4 sheet I’d created from my backgrounds folder.

As this was only a thin layer, it didn’t take long to dry, with the help of my heat tool. I then added some Forest Moss distress ink, using an Inkylicious Ink Duster.

Then I applied the Polyfilla through my bricks stencil, this time applying a much thicker layer, fading out the edges.

I trimmed the card down to size to fit on an A4 folded to A5 card base, and used the stamp set “Real Leaves” from StampAttack to add some leaves to the blank piece.

I used the Tim Holtz Dot Fade stencil to apply some Antiqued Bronze Distress Stain over the leaves.

After this I applied some Clear Rock Candy Distress Crackle Paint – I have had this for ages and it had got distinctly gloopy! I tried adding some water to thin it down, and gave it a good shake, and hopefully that will do the trick. These products really should have a “use by” date on them, because we all assume they last forever, and they certainly do not. No cracks appeared; only a rather rough, textured shiny surface which I quite liked.

After drying with my heat tool, I added some Walnut Stain distress ink using one of my home-made ink blending tools (a piece of Cut ’n Dry foam stuck onto an old wood block left when I unmounted some stamps).

I decided the leaves needed something extra so I added some Crackle Accents but this was not a success – I forgot that you are supposed to leave this to dry naturally at least until the cracks start to appear, and I launched straight in with my heat tool because I’m too impatient to wait! So no cracks from either product! Never mind, they look nice and shiny at least! I added some Walnut Stain distress ink to darken them a bit.

Time to cut them out. I rather enjoy fussy cutting and find it quite relaxing.

Once the Polyfilla through the brick stencil had dried, I coloured it with a mixture of distress stains and distress inks, and used both blending tools and Inkylicious Ink Dusters, using Spiced Marmalade, Rusty Hinge, Brushed Corduroy and finally some Vintage Photo. Using the Ink Duster enabled me to colour the sides of the bricks.

To emphasise the bricks, I painted between them with Black Soot distress ink, swiping the ink pad over my craft sheet and picking it up with a wet brush.

I attached the leaves with hot glue, which proved not to be ideal because one of the leaves popped off just before we gave the card to the teacher. Pinflair would have been better.

At this point I distressed the edges of the sheet a little with some Vintage Photo, and began work on the card base. I ran the Vintage Photo distress stain around the edge to give a darker base, and then repeated the process using the Antiqued Bronze distress stain. It doesn’t look much on the photo, but in real life it has a nice metallic sheen.

Originally I wasn’t going to do anything fancy inside the card, but I found this brilliant tutorial from Jozart, and I thought it would be fun to make the inside more interesting by using her idea. For the pop-up, I used a lighter-weight card, and coloured it by swiping various ink pads across my craft sheet, spritzing them with water and smooshing the card through the ink. However, it all got much too wet, and while the colour was great, the centre tore, so I decided to abandon it and save the card for cutting the sentiments from. You can see the tear in the picture, running from the centre towards the bottom.

I cut another piece for the pop-up, this time from some pale yellow card, and  used the brick stencil to apply distress inks, in Spiced Marmalade, Fired Brick, Rusty Hinge and Vintage Photo, all applied with blending tools. When I did the Vintage Photo, I offset the stencil slightly to create a shadow effect but it ended up lighter than the bricks. I ended up adding shadows using distress ink as a watercolour as before. I did the same with Black Soot between the bricks.

I then had to ink the pop-up background and the back piece. I didn’t smoosh them this time, but used blending tools and Ink Dusters, with Vintage Photo, Spiced Marmalade and Forest Moss.

The inking on the pop-up and back piece completed.

For the sentiment, I used my new alphabet set (Darkroom Door Alphabet Medley), stamping onto the rejected background piece with Versamark and then adding Biscotti Perfect Pearls with a soft brush and heat sealing it. I made another sentiment for the front of the card, and I cut these out as little strips with individual words on them. Originally I tried using gold embossing powder, but it didn’t show up enough.

Here is the text attached to the back piece, using Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive.

 

As I had the stencilled brick across the fold of the pop-up, I decided to fussy cut the brick edges to make it look more natural.

Here is the pop-up, scored and folded, and laid on top of the back piece.

I attached the remaining fussy cut leaves onto the pop-up using hot glue.

It was at this point that I discovered that when the card was folded, the pop-up stuck out beyond the edges of the card… Ooops!! You can see that I have scored a second line on each side, 3/4 inch in from the original score line, which has solved the problem.

When the pop-up is open, it is possible to see down inside at the lower part of the back piece, so I inked it well with Mowed Lawn distress ink and added some leaf stamping (same stamp set) in the same colour, and also added some of the ferns to the sides of the pop-up.

After this session I ended up with a fabulous piece of kitchen paper that I’d used to mop up all the gorgeous inks! Once it is dry, it will be used for other projects.

The fussy cut leaves are quite similar to the background in colour, and I needed something with a bit more impact to finish the layout, and while I was trawling through some Tim Holtz videos on his website recently, I found an excellent one on Glassine paper. He made some leaves coloured with alcohol inks. In the next picture, you can see two sheets of glassine which have had alcohol ink applied, in Sunbright Yellow, Chilli Pepper and Lime Green (Pinata brand) and Adirondack Gold and Copper Mixatives, and some Pinata Clear Extender (the equivalent of Adirondack Alcohol Blending Solution), all applied with the felt blending tool. One sheet has been crumpled

Not having any dies or punches for leaves, they had to be cut out by hand. I made some leaf templates from scrap card.

The glassine leaves mounted on the card front.

The pop-up was made from fairly thin card, and I thought it needed reinforcing, so I stuck another piece behind. Then I inked the back in case it showed.

The completed pop-up.

I stuck the pop-up inside the card, using my ATG gun. Before sticking it, I swiped the glue tape with a Pritt glue stick so that it was repositionable.

The completed front of the card. I attached the sentiment using Pinflair glue.

Now for some detail shots, first of the outside of the card:

and the inside:

To complete the card, I inked the back, using a combination of distress inks in Spiced Marmalade, Forest Moss, a little Fired Brick and Vintage Photo.

For the envelope, as this is a standard sized card, I chose a plain white one from my stash and inked it to match the card, adding some inking inside. I stamped a few leaves using Evergreen Bough distress ink, but unfortunately the stamping showed on the reverse – I would probably have done better to make a separate liner for the envelope, but maybe I’m being too perfectionistic here!

The finished card and envelope.

I think this card has the feel of autumn about it, and hope it is an adequate thank you to a lovely lady who is also an excellent teacher – the felt course has been such fun, and we are grateful for all the time and energy she has put into preparing it, and her enthusiasm and passion for felt-making, which has inspired us all. I have wanted to make felt for a long time, and this course has been a springboard for great things in the future!

WOYWW visitors – please scroll down for this week’s post.