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.

Card Factory–Card from Recycled Wedding Service Sheet

In my stash I’ve got various old service sheets from weddings etc., some of which were printed on nice card or paper that was too good to throw away. I have a few of this particular one, A4 folded to A5 size, and some sheets that are blank on the back, so I glued an A5 sheet inside to cover the printing – this would also serve to strengthen it, as the card isn’t that thick for supporting embellishments etc. The card is cream-coloured, with a slight texture, and is slightly mottled.

Also in my stash I still have some absolutely ghastly duplex (double-sided) card that I posted about ages ago – the card itself is super quality, really thick and stiff, but the colours! Oh my goodness. Get your sunglasses out, folks. I’ve decided to use the orange side of this piece, rather than the bright cerise pink (whoever thought of putting those two garish colours together??!) and tone it down with lots of distressing, stencilling, glimmer misting, etc. etc. – it will be very experimental, adding layers until I’m happy with it.

I began by distressing the edges of the service sheet, front and back, inside and out, with Tea Dye Distress Ink. This showed up a few little creases in the card, but I don’t mind that – it adds to the vintage, distressed effect.

I couldn’t wait to get my teeth into the ghastly orange card (well, I suppose that would be one way to distress it!) – first step, distress with Vintage Photo Distress Ink, dabbing all over with an Inkylicious Ink Duster to give a nice mottled effect.

I repeated the process with Dusty Concord Distress Ink – since orange and purple are complimentary colours, when mixed, they form a shade of brown. To darken it further, I added some Black Soot Distress Ink. In each case, I used a dabbing, stibbling motion with the ink duster.

It’s starting to look a bit like leather now. Time for a bit of stencilling, I think.

I painted on a thin layer of the beige acrylic glaze left over from my Remembrance page in my art journal, laid a stencil over the top and spritzed it with water, and then blotted and wiped it off through the stencil.

After this, I painted some glaze on the un-stencilled parts, placed the stencil on top, spritzed with water, and wiped off, leaving the paint under the stencil. I blotted the whole lot off with damp kitchen paper and this is the result.

Now time for some Glimmer Mist and Perfect Pearls. I sprayed it lightly in patches with my DIY Glimmer Mist made from Wild Honey Distress Re-Inker and Perfect Pearl coloured Perfect Pearls which gave it a silvery metallic sheen – the Wild Honey didn’t show up much because it was already rather dark. I need to mix up some new DIY Glimmer Mist with a more bronzy Perfect Pearls, I think.

I dabbed at it randomly with my small Perfect Medium pad (clear embossing ink) and then brushed it lightly with dry Cappuccino Perfect Pearls and spritzed it with water, and rubbed it gently to soften any sharp edges. It now has a more generalised random pearlescent sheen which I think I am happy with.

I think this is definitely a background I’d like to use in my art journal – nice and grungey and dark, with subtle shades and shimmers. I think it needs some stamping or embellishment in dull gold or rust.

All the stamps I used are from Designs by Ryn. First of all I stamped it twice with her “Water Droplets” stamp from her Textures range (CM-T3), using black archival ink. Then I used two of her gorgeous moth stamps from her Butterflies and Moths range – the top one is “Luna” (CM-B2) and the bottom two are “Tsuki” (CM-B5), stamping with Versamark and heat embossing with copper embossing powder.

The piece was matted onto the distressed card base, and I picked out the tiny catch-lights on each water droplet with my white Uni-ball marker pen. To finish the piece, I painted the moths with Perfect Pearls from my palette: the top moth is done with Berry Twist, a simply gorgeous dichroic one which turns from purple to blue according to the light. The middle moth was painted with Mint, and the bottom one with Turquoise. All the moth bodies were painted with Plum, another dichroic one which alternates between purple and a slightly more turquoise-blue than Berry Twist. This is the finished card. Unbelievable that it started with that horrendous garish orange card! I’m so glad I didn’t throw it away.

 

Finally, a detail shot of the stamping and embossing.

Flower Swap with Judy–and an Update

In case anyone has been wondering why it’s been so long since I’ve blogged, my dad has been really poorly, and has been in and out of hospital, and is now in a residential home, although he is now quite a bit better and may even be well enough to return home, with an appropriate care package. Mum has been on her own and my poor hubby has been rushing around like a fly with the proverbial blue rear end, trying to sort them out as well as continuing to work, and looking after me, and he’s got pretty exhausted with it all. I’ve been very stressed out with all that’s been going on, and especially being concerned that my hubby wasn’t going to burn himself out, and it all took a bit of a toll on my health and I have had quite a bad dip recently, which meant I could do even less than the small amount I could have done to help my hubby. We are also in the throes of trying to sell my parents’ house, and we’ve been house hunting, and it’s all taking a lot of time.

Anyway, I am starting to feel a bit better now, and may even manage to return to my ARTHaven and do some creative stuff soon. I simply haven’t felt up to it lately – what small amount of energy I have had has had to be used for the aforementioned activities, and I haven’t felt inspired creatively at all for weeks!

Now for the main reason for this post – to share with you something really special. My friend Judy in Australia (do visit her wonderful blog – it’s amazing!) is a highly creative lady, and also has a heart of gold, is great fun, and I feel as if I’ve known her for years!! When we had the recent ATC swap with the WOYWW blog hop (What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday, where we share a photo of our work desk every week to satisfy all our nosey cravings and have a good snoop around each other’s creative spaces, and where I originally “met” Judy) – it was the 3rd anniversary of WOYWW and we all had a wonderful time swapping all the gorgeous ATCs. (I will do a post about mine soon!) Anyway, Judy said she’d rather swap flowers, so we agreed to do this. I’m afraid with everything that’s been going on, I haven’t been very quick about this, but Judy had sent me hers and they are GORGEOUS!!! They are so scrumptious and soft and squidgy and decorated with dangly beads and things, and I keep getting them out of the poly wallet I’ve put them in, just to mess around with them and enjoy them! I can’t think what to put them on, yet, but I know inspiration will strike eventually!

Here’s the whole collection. I’ve arranged them to look like a bouquet. Aren’t they gorgeous?

Now for some closer-up shots to show the detail.

These ones have got lots of beads on them, some of which are looped, and some are dangly. I adore the bottom left one with its dangly beady bits and all the multi-coloured layers!

These next ones are slightly more subtle (!) lol! but so pretty! Again, the bottom left one is particularly lovely, but I love them all.

It’s really hard to choose, but I think these last ones have to be my favourites. The bottom one has gorgeous dangly ribbons and beads, and the rest are fairly flat, with circles of yarn machined down, and quite a bit of shiny lurex material which doesn’t show up very well on the photo, lots of textured yarns, and again lots of beads! I love Judy’s use of buttons, too.

Every single one is different. Aren’t they joyous?

Now for the flowers I have sent Judy. All mine are paper. Here’s a photo of the growing collection in the making.

This is the completed collection. They are all quite a bit smaller than Judy’s ones. I have tried to do as many different kinds of flowers as possible. I had hoped to be able to make up some from my inked kitchen paper but time is going on, and I wanted her to have what I’d done!

Again, here are some closer shots for the detail.

These first ones are what I call my “freeform” flowers. I had some narrow offcuts of Core’dination papers from other projects, so I ran them through the Cuttlebug and then sanded them to expose the darker core.

For the pink one, I roughly drew petal shapes onto the paper and cut them out by hand. I hand-embossed them from behind, using a ball-ended embossing tool onto a piece of fun foam and then painted some Perfect Pearls onto the ends of the petals from the palette I made up recently, and stuck the petals together with hot glue. For the other two, I cut some whole flower shapes out by hand, and hand embossed them and painted them with Perfect Pearls as before, and layered them up with hot glue. In all cases the centres were made from tiny flower shapes cut with Sheba, my Black Cat Cougar cutting machine and found in with all my other flower pieces, and topped off with a gem or some Stickles. (I love Stickles – glitter glue – for flower centres – so easy, and it gives a nice bit of bling.) These freeform flowers worked better than I could have expected – it was a bit experimental!

The next batch are all roses. They are all from Penny Duncan’s rose cutting files -the larger ones are her grungey rose pattern with the more indented petals, and the smaller ones are her original rose design. All the coloured ones were sprayed with my Dylusions inks before making them up, and the two dark navy and silver ones were left over from a project I made last year.

Here is a picture of the roses being made up.

All of the next batch are hibiscus flowers in different sizes, all cut using another of Penny Duncan’s files. The stamens were bought in the wedding cake department of our local kitchen shop. Some of these were sprayed with Dylusions inks before making up, and others were coloured with Distress Stains.

The final batch is a bit of a mixed bunch. Working clockwise from the top, the poinsettias are again Penny Duncan’s design, but with yellow Stickles for the centres. I made quite a lot of these just before Christmas last year for my bag skirts project (another Penny Duncan idea!) and these flowers were from my stash.

Below those you can see two black and gold flowers. Again, these were left over from another project – originally they were rose pieces and had quite large holes in the centres, so I have put co-ordinating brads in the centres to finish them. Each one was cut from black card using my old Cricut machine (before I got Sheba) and then I hand-embossed them and drew on them with an embossing pen, and heat-embossed them in gold.  Below these is a collection of small flowers that I made for a project I had intended to do and then never completed – one day I may come back to it and cut some more flowers. Most of these were cut from some very good quality card that I bought when I first started, but the colours were simply awful – it was duplex (double-sided) card with colours like lime green on one side and bright orange on the other, or garish turquoise – adding some colour of my own, I completely transformed them and really liked the result! I did a blog post ages ago about this card, and some experiments I did with it at the time. I learnt at that time that even when you’ve made a huge mistake, buying something you absolutely loathe, you don’t need to throw it away but can alter it and make something good come out of it!!

The pink flowers (also a Penny Duncan design) were in my stash as well, from a project I did, making a whole series of thank-you cards. I loved how these flowers turned out! They are sprayed with glimmer mist, and again have Stickles centres.

The last ones I made quite recently when I was experimenting with my Dylusions inks, and used them as masks while spraying.

I painted on some coppery Perfect Pearls and loved how they came out. These also have a tiny flower shape and some stickles in the centre. This flower shape (another Penny Duncan one) is very versatile because it can be layered if you want, but it’s lovely as a single layer too.

I wrapped them all in some tissue paper that I’d sprayed with my Dylusions inks and some Crafter’s Companion glitter spray (I’m afraid I forgot to photograph them parcelled up but I’ve still got some of the tissue so I’ll show you that another time).

Flower making is such fun, because you can mix and match so many shapes and build up layers, and colour them differently, and add bling, embossing, Perfect Pearls, etc. etc. to your heart’s content! With the cutting machine I can also make them whatever size I want, and I always make more than I need for any given project so that I’ve got spares for other things, or to give away as in this case.

Thank you for swapping flowers with me, Judy, and I hope you enjoy the ones I’ve sent you as much as I love the ones you’ve sent me! What fun this has been. While collecting them together and making them up, I’ve been thinking about Judy and giving thanks for our friendship!