Floral Mini-Album Pt 4 Working on Pages 2 and 3

Recently I made a new mini-album, about my mum who died in December. I was unable to publish anything about this until now because it is a present for her best friend, who sometimes visits my blog, and I wanted it to be a surprise for her. I wrote a series of blog posts as I did each stage of the project, so I didn’t forget what I did, and they will be published in sequence now the project is finished and has been given to our friend.

If you want to see the finished project, please click here.

I have been following some amazing Youtube videos by Jen, who I discovered the other day: https://www.youtube.com/user/jenofevedesigns

She makes and sells beautifully organised templates for downloading and printing, for making mini-albums of various sizes, and the videos show how she constructs them. I am adapting some of her ideas for this project, and think I may follow her example and create my own templates for future use, because when making mini-albums, you can spend a huge amount of time planning and measuring and adjusting, and if you had a standardised set of components that you could mix and match, this would be a huge advantage and would save a lot of time – you would know that the various pockets, tabs, envelopes etc. and their respective mats, would all fit perfectly. Finding her channel was a revelation to me.

I originally intended to use lace for the page I’m working on at the moment, but nothing I had seemed really suitable. I found myself wishing I’d got a border punch to produce a nice lacy effect, and then I remembered I’d got a multi-shaper punch which I hadn’t used for ages. It’s OK, but the pattern repeat is rather large for what I want, so I shall use it for now, and probably get myself a more suitable border punch before too long.

I cut a long narrow piece using the part of the punch for border punching, and trimmed it down to length, and scored and folded a tab at the top. This is the piece on the right in the above photo. On the left is the piece I cut off, which I am keeping for now as it might come in handy somewhere else in the album. The centre piece was produced using the punch as a corner punch, and then trimming the card down to size, to produce a useful lacy black mat for one of the pages.

Here is the strap being constructed. I have taped a magnet on the reverse of the top layer. The photo shows the straps for both copies of the album.

The inside of the flap on page 3. This shows the magnet at the left-hand edge, which will keep the flap closed, and the one in the middle is for the strap. These will be covered up by the Distress Oxide background piece.

The front of page 2 with the magnetic strap in place. The tab over the top attaching it to the page will be covered by the Distress Oxide sheet lining the inside.

This is the pocket for page 2 being constructed.

You can see the tabs for attaching it, with the double-sided tape in place. I distressed the edges of the green paper with Forest Moss Distress Ink.

In her fabulous Youtube videos, Jen has so many useful tips, and I used one of these on this pocket. You peel back a small amount of the backing on the double-sided tape at the bottom of the side tabs, fold them in, and then fold up the bottom tab so that it sticks to the exposed glue on the side tabs. This holds the bottom tab in place. You can then remove the backing paper and stick the pocket in place on the page. (Another useful tip she shares is that if you make a mistake – and I make plenty! – you can unstick things stuck down with double sided tape by heating it with a heat gun, which softens the glue, and you can then peel the pieces apart! I never knew that, and always regret how permanent double-sided tape is when you get it wrong. I have wasted quite a few things in the past because I thought my inaccurately placed pieces were beyond redemption.)

The pocket in place, with the magnetic strap folded down.

If I had thought about it more carefully, I would have put the magnet for the strap inside the pocket rather than behind the page, because as it is, it has to work through more layers of cardstock, but it seems to hold OK. That’s the trouble with projects like this – they tend to evolve as you go along, and it’s really hard to think ahead sufficiently!

Here is page 2 with the magnetic strap open.

This is the double-page spread of pages 2 and 3 with the page flaps closed.

You can see that I have used the oval black punched piece on page 3, simply sticking it down as a photo mat.

The inside of page 2, with the flap open, showing how I have used my Distress Oxide background pieces.

The double-page spread with the flaps open, revealing the Distress Oxide background pieces.

It’s coming along nicely. I’m getting very excited about this project!

Pop-Up Valentine Card for my Hubby

Recently I found a video on Youtube with a number of pop-up designs for Valentine’s and I thought it would be fun to make one for my hubby. This time last year I was in hospital for Valentine’s and didn’t make him one, but he gave me the biggest one I’ve ever seen, and all the hospital staff thought it was brilliant!

Anyway, this year, I’ve managed to escape being in hospital for Valentine’s although I am waiting to go in, so there’s no excuse for not making one for him this time!

I began by making the simple pop-up mechanism from white cardstock.

This is the outside of the pop-up, folded. You can see some of the construction lines.

I thought I would use some of the scraps from my mystery project for this card. Here they are, being smooshed with Fired Brick Distress Ink. This particular paper is an absolute pain to ink because it seems to have rather a waxy surface that resists liquid, and it takes ages to dry with the heat gun, too, but it’s a paper stack I’ve had from the very beginning, and I’ve never liked it much, so I thought it was high time I used it up, especially that nowadays I’ve got enough experience to know how to improve it.

For the pop-up piece, rather than leaving it stark white, I smooshed it with Worn Lipstick Distress Oxide to give a marbled effect.

After this I distressed the edges with Vintage Photo Distress Ink – I thought that a touch of brown would prevent the card from looking too girlie.

I also distressed the sides of the pop-up, masking off the surrounding areas with some scrap paper.

Then I took one of the inked scrap pieces and cut it into half-inch strips, which I wove in and out of the pop-up to create the basket.

When the weaving was finished, I trimmed off the bottoms of the strips, and left the tops at random lengths.

I have only got one heart punch, and it makes very small ones. I punched out quite a few from one of the scrap pieces, punching them as evenly as possible so that I could use the waste piece to embellish the front of the card. Then I made some intermediate and larger hearts, drawing round a little template I made and then fussy cutting them.

I also cut some hearts from some scrap gold card to mat the hearts, and also added stickles (gold and orange peel) to some of the hearts, and began to glue them onto the pop-up with Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive.

I punched the corners of the pop-up with my multi-shaper punch. It’s not designed as a corner punch, but with some careful lining up, I was able to achieve the result I wanted. I also distressed these punched corners with Vintage Photo Distress Ink to match the rest of the pop-up.

At this point I forgot to take any photos for a while. I mounted the pop-up on some pink cardstock, and on the outside, front and back, I added some red cardstock that I distressed around the edges with Vintage Photo Distress Ink, and I also added some of this ink in the centre with an Inkylicious Ink Duster. I layered a heart cut from a scrap onto more of the scrap gold card, and this embellishment was mounted in the centre of the card with a large foam pad.

I attached the punched heart strip onto a piece of gold card using Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive, and then applied the whole embellishment to the red mat with double-sided tape, folding the excess punched layer around the back, before matting the whole thing onto the pink card base.

Here is the completed pop-up, with cut and punched hearts on the woven strips and also stuck down onto the back of the pop-up to give a dimensional effect. I hand-wrote the sentiment.

Finally, the completed card with the envelope I made from more of the pink cardstock, using my envelope punch board.

The edges of the envelope were distressed with Vintage Photo Distress Ink.

Fan-Tastic Birthday Card

I haven’t blogged for quite a while because I’ve been suffering a bit of a dip health-wise, and was hoping I was finally climbing back out of it, when I got a stomach upset last Friday which laid me low over the weekend. Today, however, I’m feeling a lot better and have been in my ARTHaven for a good long session, and actually completed a project!!!

Next Sunday is my cousin’s birthday, and I always try to make her a card, as she’s been an expert card maker for many years and I try my best to impress!

This year I decided to do the fan card I’ve been wanting to make for ages. Last year I bought a set of fan stamps which I haven’t really used yet. The first step was to fold a piece of black A4 cardstock to an A5 portrait card, and I stamped 3 of the fans on with Versamark, which I then heat-embossed using black embossing powder.

I stamped one more on a separate piece of card, this time using gold embossing powder, and I cut this out and stuck it onto a further piece of black card to strengthen it, trimming it to the fan shape.

I picked out the design using bright pink acrylic paint, and when this was dry, I covered it with Ranger Glossy Accents, and while this was still wet, I added some purple gems, using some larger ones for the fan handle.

When it was all dry, I tied a bow around the handle, using some thin pale gold ribbon. I found a gold cup sequin and a slightly smaller pink cup sequin, and glued these together, placing yet another gem in the centre, and stuck this to the bow, and then covered the whole surface of this little button with more Glossy Accents.

I recently bought a 5-in-1 punch off Ebay, which is very versatile, and can be placed anywhere on the paper or card because it has no hinge, but works with magnets. You can punch corners, borders, squares and rectangles, two sizes of circles and an oval with this punch. They make several different designs but I chose the one called “Honor” which I particularly liked.

These pictures show how the punch pieces engage. The four metal circles surrounding the punch on each part are the magnets.

On this next picture you can see the guides printed on the base piece, which you use to line up the work once you’ve punched the first part. You continue to move the card around after each punch, following the particular guide for the shape you’ve chosen. Each one has small coloured projections which anchor the punched card in place.

It’s an extremely clever design and works very well – it is fairly hard work to punch with as you have to make sure you push down firmly, and absolutely vertically, which means you really have to stand up to do it, but it makes a really satisfying “crrrrunch” as the punch goes through the card!

I used this punch to make the small-sized circle in the centre of the card, punching it from some pink cardstock, which I then distressed with Victorian Velvet distress ink to start with, and then Dusty Concord (this is my latest Distress Ink and I absolutely love it – PURPLE!!! I love purple…) I used my wonderful Inkylicious Ink Dusters – those gorgeous brushes for inking which are so soft and delicate to use – you can do the fancy punched edges of paper or card with them without damaging it.

To finish this circle, I stamped the middle with a script stamp I’ve got, using Victorian Velvet distress ink, and glued it down onto the card with Pinflair photo glue. When this was dry, it was a simple matter to rub away the excess from the edges and from the punched detail.

The whole embellished fan was then stuck down onto the circle using foam pads to give some dimension. To save on my foam pads, I cut an inch square of mounting board to support the middle, as this wouldn’t be seen from the side.

I heat-embossed the Happy Birthday text using gold embossing powder onto more of the black cardstock, and matted and layered this with a small piece of gold mirror card, and then some more of the pink card, distressed as before, and this was also stuck to the card using foam pads.

The final touch on the outside of the card was to decorate the corners with my new 5-in-1 punch.

I made the card insert from white 100 g/sm paper, and printed the sentiment “Have a Fan-Tastic Birthday” inside on the computer, using Edwardian Script font in purple (48-point, as far as I remember) – yes, I know, a bit naff but I couldn’t resist it!! (My hubby groaned…) I distressed the corners of the outside of the insert using the same colours as before, so that the colour would show through the punched corners of the card.

The inside of the card insert was distressed around the edges using the same colours as before, and I then used the fan stamps again, this time using Victorian Velvet distress ink. The card insert was attached to the card with a strip of double-sided tape on the inside of the front of the card, close to the fold, so that when you open the card, the insert opens as well.

On the plain white envelope, I distressed the edges to match, and then stamped a couple more fans, using Victorian Velvet distress ink. The hand-writing on the envelope and inside the card was done with a matching purple gel pen.

Hope she really enjoys her Fan-Tastic Birthday card!

Embellishments…

Making this card, I thought it would be a good idea to make up a collection of embellishments to go in my stash. I’m going to cut a series of circles and ovals, using my new punch, and distress them and maybe stamp a background onto them, and then add a variety of things, such as more stamped shapes cut out, with added embossing, painting, Glossy Accents, gems, etc. etc. to co-ordinate with the colour of the circle or oval. I thought it would also be nice to make some up using paper flowers as well, and maybe some embossed sentiments etc.

A relatively plain card could be made up, maybe with some Cuttlebug embossing and/or distress inks, or maybe some self-coloured stamped embossing as on this fan card, and with the addition of a bit of ribbon, these cards could be made up quite quickly.

My big stash of cards that I made after the last craft show, with inking over an embossed resist, have nearly all gone now, and I need to make up some more! My mum has also asked if I’d make her some more cards to send to people as she’s finished the ones I made her for Christmas in her Stationery Box, so I think this will probably have to be my next project after I’ve finished our nephew’s wedding present, before I start my experimental art work that I haven’t yet had a chance to begin (there’s always something that has to be done, isn’t there!!).

So… watch this space, and we’ll see what we come up with.

I found some real bargains on Ebay last week, including some simply gorgeous brads… Take a look at these!

When I opened the box they looked good enough to eat – like sweets! Good thing I’m on a diet, isn’t it. The seller sent me a lovely message that I so identified with – she said she loves brads and hates to use them up! I know exactly what she means. I’ve got quite a few lovely bits and pieces that I’m reluctant to use because I like looking at them and don’t want to part with them! Silly really… Some of these brads are going to be used for the centre of some flowers I want to make. I’ve been trying to think of a way that I might be able to make my own fancy brads but haven’t come up with anything 100% satisfactory yet; there are one or two ideas on Youtube but nothing that grabbed me particularly.

Hoping I am now going to be well enough for a while to spend lots of time in my ARTHaven. I’ve got some exciting new ideas to try, some of which I’m hoping to incorporate into my current project, our nephew’s wedding present.