Floral Tag

Today I made a tag. I have been told by the hospital to put a label on my wheelchair with my name on it, so that it will go up to the ward with the rest of my belongings after my operation on Wednesday. Originally I was just going to use a luggage label but then couldn’t remember if I had any left or where they were, so I decided to make a pretty tag with my name on it, and afterwards I could put something else over my name.

Some time ago I bought a set of Sizzix tag dies and used the largest of the set to cut the tag, from a scrap of fairly thick slightly shiny card that came with a parcel in the post the other day. I lined up the die as accurately as possible in the centre of the piece so that I could use the piece as a card mat later.

For the waste piece, without removing the die from the card, I put it back through the Cuttlebug with my No More Shims embossing mat to get a nice embossed edge to the frame. As for the tag, I selected the die of next size down, lined it up carefully on the tag with the cutting side to the back of the tag, and again with the No More Shims embossing mat, put the whole thing through the Cuttlebug again. I was very pleased with the great embossed edge I achieved.

Last week I had to re-ink my Spun Sugar Distress Ink pad and finished the re-inker. There was still a tiny bit left in the bottle so I added a small amount of water and thought I could probably use this. The same applied to my Fruit Punch Stickles – I’m not surprised I’d finished this bottle because this colour is my go-to Stickles colour! On a scrap of white cardstock I did a bit of experimenting – dropping a few splodges of the diluted re-inker with the dropper in the bottle, and then squirting two or three blobs of the diluted Stickles onto the craft sheet, spritzing with water and smooshing the piece through it. I dried the whole thing with the heat gun.

This shows that you can still squeeze a bit more life out of products when the bottle is empty! Always worth trying, anyway. At the top of the above photo, you can see the kitchen paper I used for mopping up – already maturing into a really useable piece for other projects!

I decided that it might be a bit risky to do a lot of wet smooshing with the tag, because I didn’t want to lose the embossing on the edge, so I abandoned the re-inker idea, and applied Spun Sugar Distress Ink all over the tag with an ink blender. This began to pick out the raised embossed edge very well. I spattered the surface with my finger dipped in water, left it a few seconds and then blotted it off.

I repeated the process with Worn Lipstick Distress Ink.

I distressed the edge with three colours of Distress Ink: first, Aged Mahogany.

I forgot to photograph the second colour, which was Vintage Photo. I finished off with Black Soot, just doing the very edge by swiping downwards with a blending tool.

I dropped a little of the diluted Fruit Punch Stickles onto the craft sheet, spritzed it with water and gently smooshed the tag through it. I achieved the lightest of glitter finish to the surface of the tag. I propped it up to photograph it and I hope you can see at least a little of the shimmer.

I added Spun Sugar Distress Ink all over the reverse of the tag, and distressed the edges lightly as for the front.

Now for some fun with my new Crop-a-dile. This was the first time I’d used it, and I managed to place a very nice bronze eyelet on the top of the tag.

I coloured a length of twine with Aged Mahogany Distress stain but it came out too dark, so I rinsed it quickly under the tap and squeezed it out in kitchen paper before drying it with my heat gun, to get the colour I wanted.

I selected several flowers from my recent Floral Mini-Album project and hot glued them to the tag.

I added my name with a sanguine archival pen.

After the tag has been used to identify my wheelchair, I intend cutting one of the labels from the tag die set and adding some different text to the tag, and possibly some more decorative yarn to the top. I made sure the flowers were well attached right to the edges with the hot glue, to prevent them catching and the petals becoming damaged.

I hope the nurses will get a bit of joy from seeing that I’ve taken a bit of trouble to identify my wheelchair, to co-ordinate with the floral decorations already on it.

A WOYWW Visitor and More on Infusions Mini-Album

Today Margaret (Glitterandglue) spent the day with me – she is down in Devon, about to attend a course on Pergamano being held locally. She really didn’t want to come all this way down and not meet up, and we had a really lovely day. I’d set up the table in my studio so that we could both work in there, but we didn’t actually do anything except natter and have a Really Good Time!!

My hubby was out, so she and I shared a home made soup and bread lunch. I’d made broccoli and Stilton soup, and a plaited challah loaf, followed by stewed apple and  custard and we tucked in!

She had brought some absolutely fabulous Pergamano pieces that she’d made. Here she is with some of them displayed on the table.

A detailed shot of the pieces.

The little pyramids are a selection from a total of 24 which she made as an Advent Calendar. Each one is numbered, and they are all different. They have a painted design on one face, with the number on the opposite face, and on the other two faces, panels of Pergamano work in different patterns. These parchment covers slide up the ribbon loop at the top, exposing a box underneath, with the ribbons attached to the top. The sides of the boxes can be opened in order to insert a chocolate or other small gift in each one. They were utterly and completely exquisite – I couldn’t believe the fineness and detail of the work. The flat triangular piece in the centre of the table is a card – the three triangles open to reveal a small card inside.

Margaret had, of course, brought her Pergamano kit with her, ready to use on the course, and she got it out to show me – there are lots of different tools for embossing and for piercing, and two different mats for these processes. She was going to get me going on this but when I saw just how tiny and detailed the work was, and how incredibly time-consuming, I knew it wasn’t for me – it reminded me of my abortive attempt to learn Honiton lace making before I was married – incredibly intricate work that you have to do for weeks before you get anything worthwhile to show! I may be a patient person when it comes to my creativity, but there are limits!!!

I admire Pergamano greatly. It looks like a combination of lace and embroidery, and the designs can be very pretty indeed. Having seen it being done for the first time, I admire even more the people who do it. As Margaret says, when you see images of it online, they are always close-up photos, and you don’t really get a correct impression of just how tiny the patterns are.

I think I shall stick to mixed media and playing with stuff that makes lots of texture and colour, and above all, mess!!

After she had gone, I spent a couple of hours in the studio, working on the Infusions Mini-Album again, and tonight I finished making the tags for Volume One of the album. Here are the latest photos.

I had originally decided that I wouldn’t put any text on the front of the “Stamping” title page tag, but decided to go ahead and do that after all.

The reverse of this page is as I left it when I completed it back in September. This page shows my wild grasses stamps on an Infusions background.

Moving on to the next page in the album, we come to the water droplets page. This is a stamp from Designs by Ryn, and one of my favourite – it is incredibly realistic.

Turning that page over, we have the painted flowers page.

Finally, the Versamark stamping page.

I added more Infusions to the back of this tag. You can see that the reverse of the page has not been decorated. This will be covered with endpaper of the album.

The final photo shows the set of blotting up sheets that I created. After sprizting each tag, rather than wasting the wet Infusions on the craft sheet, I blotted it up with some small square cards I'd cut for this purpose.

Not sure what I’m going to do with them all yet, but in the meantime I shall add a distressed edge using Black Soot distress ink. I’m getting quite a collection of these now.

Card Factory 2015–Two Bee Cards

My next collection of cards for the Card Factory is on the theme of bees. I have made two so far.

I began by inking up some backgrounds cut from offcuts of card from other projects in the Card Factory, using my new Fossilised Amber distress ink, smooshing and spritzing it on my craft sheet and dragging the card pieces through the wet ink. I always keep my offcuts in case I want to make something smaller with them – waste not, want not!!

First Card

The first card has a die-cut window with a bee in it, with its wings embellished with Glossy Accents.

I embossed one of the inked backround pieces, using a Fiskar’s texture plate in a honeycomb pattern, using my Cuttlebug.

It didn’t show up very much, so I inked over the top, using my brayer to apply Vintage Photo distress ink to the raised pattern, and then I distressed the edges with the same ink, using a home-made ink blending tool.

I cut a window in the top, using one of my new Dorice circle dies. It was really funny about these dies. I ordered them some time ago on Ebay, and was told there was a fairly long delivery date on them. I was convinced I had received them, and couldn’t find them anywhere, and got very frustrated looking for them, turning the place upside down and wasting lots of energy in the effort! Then I got an email last week saying they’d been dispatched, and a few days ago, they arrived! Did I dream them? Anyway, I am glad they did eventually turn up, and I hadn’t lost them after all!

After cutting the window, I stamped my medium bee from Stampotique Originals onto another offcut of card, using sepia archival ink.

I inked the background with more Fossilised Amber distress ink, using an Inkylicious Ink Duster.

Here is the window with the bee in it. I embellished its wings with Glossy Accents.

I matted and layered the honeycomb piece onto some thin brown card with a slightly marbled effect, and then mounted it onto a white A5-folded-to-A6 sized piece of card which I had previously distressed around the edges with Fossilised Amber distress ink. Here is the card completed card.

The sentiment was stamped on another offcut of card, using one of my clear sentiment stamps that I got when I first started, and I’m afraid I don’t know the name of the set or the manufacturer. This small strip was matted onto the same brown card as the main part of the card, after I’d inked it with a little Fossilised Amber and distressed the edges with Vintage Photo distress inks.

Second Card

For the second card, I wanted to make a grid background, stamping with the tiny bee that came with the medium bee stamp I used for the first card. I worked out a suitable spacing for alternately spaced rows of bees and I’ve kept a note of this in the packet with the stamps so I can refer to it again. It took quite a while to work out, and then a little while longer to draw out on the background piece, but at least this way I get a nice even result, and it’s worth the trouble, I think.

I stamped the small bees using sepia archival ink, stamping right over the edges of the background piece to give a nice overall effect. You can see the grid lines I have drawn.

I took the circular piece of honeycomb that I saved from the first card after I’d cut the window, and inked the edges, and those of the background piece, with Fossilised Amber distress ink, using my home-made ink blending tool.

I stamped the circular piece using the medium bee stamp, and heat-embossed it in gold. I made another sentiment strip the same as for the first card.

As before, I distressed the edges of the A5-folded-to-A6 white card base with Fossilised Amber distress ink, and assembled the card.

I have got several more background pieces inked and ready to be made up into more bee cards for this set.

Card Factory 2015–Purple Embossed Birthday Card with Tag

I have started my latest card factory. My stash is empty, and I am fed up with realising it’s someone’s birthday in a few days’ time, or someone needs a get well card or whatever, and having to work to a deadline. I thought if I could make up a good collection of cards I’d always have something ready when I need it. Most of them will be relatively simple.

My first effort is as a result of the pieces I cut before, to make finished cards 5 inches square. I embossed a whole sheet in error and didn’t use it, so that is my starting point for this card.

The first step was to ink the embossed piece of white card. The embossing was done with my Cuttlebug, using Tim Holtz’ “Damask” embossing folder, and I inked it with Shaded Lilac distress ink, using an Inkylicious Ink Duster.

Next I heat-embossed the raised surface with clear embossing powder, applying the Versamark with my brayer.

I inked the piece again, this time with Seedless Preserves distress ink, using the Inkylicious Ink Duster, and went around the edges with Dusty Concord distress ink, using a home-made blending tool. I rubbed the ink off the embossing resist using the purple kitchen paper, very slightly dampened.

Now it was time to start on the tag holder, to be stuck down to the bottom part of the card. I took a piece of scrap white card, an offcut from when I was cutting the blank 5 x 5 in cards, and trimmed it to size.

I took the piece of kitchen paper which I’d been using to mop up purple ink, and which had matured to the state when it was usable for backgrounds etc. I separated the two layers of kitchen paper (you get double for your money that way!!) and cut one piece in half. I laid down a fairly thick layer of regular matt gel medium onto the piece of card, and scrumpled up the piece of kitchen paper as I laid it down on top. I added more gel medium to the top surface, making sure it was well stuck down.

I dried it a bit with my heat gun and when it was ready to be handled, I trimmed off the excess with scissors, and then dried it fully.

I inked around the edges and on the surface, by rubbing the Seedless Preserves distress ink pad directly onto the surfaces, and then blended in the ink with the Inkylicious Ink Duster, to cover up any white, and any gel medium that was showing. I dried it again with my heat gun.

The final step was to rub on some Treasure Gold gilding wax lightly with my fingertip to highlight the raised surface of the piece. It has a lovely deep texture and a lot of lustre.

I cut a tag using my new Tim Holtz “Labels” die set, using some of the purple paper that I’d stuck down onto card, for my recent purple projects for our neighbour.

I inked the back of the tag with Seedless Preserves distress ink, using the Inkylicious Ink Duster, and the edges with Dusty Concord distress ink, using the home-made ink blender. I flicked water onto it with the tube from my water spritzing bottle, left it to stand for a minute or two and blotted it off.

I felt that the edge of the tag holder needed something to give it more definition against the card background, so I took a scrap of recycled cream gold-edged ribbon from my stash, and cut it to length, and then cut it in half lengthwise. I think this ribbon came off an Easter egg! I never throw anything like this away – it all goes in my stash.

I used the extra-sticky red-backed double sided tape to stick it around the edge of the tag holder. Tip: to store these rolls of tape, whose edges get extremely sticky and make the rolls stick together, I always separate them with a square of waxed paper.

The gold-edged ribbon in place along the top edge of the tag holder.

To neaten the back, I stuck down a strip of card to cover the frayed edge of the cut ribbon.

The tag holder glued in place onto the card. I used Scotch Quick-Dry Adhesive which is a good strong wet glue. I slipped the tag behind the holder to show how it would go.

Next the matting and layering of the card. I inked the edges of the card base with Shaded Lilac distress ink and the Inkylicious Ink Duster, and then matted the card with gold mirror card and two shades of purple cardstock.

Stamping the inside of the card. I used a “Happy Birthday” sentiment stamp from the Stamp Barn (No. CHSH 238E), using Dusty Concord distress ink, after I had lightly inked around the edges of the inside of the card with Shaded Lilac distress ink and the Inkylicious Ink Duster.

To stamp the sentiment on the tag, I heat-embossed in gold, using the “Birthday Greetings” sentiment from my Stampin’ Up set “Wetlands.”

The completed tag. I added some purple ribbon and some fancy yarns with a touch of told in them.

The completed card, with the tag in place.

This card was slightly more complicated to make than most of the others I am planning on making in the Card Factory, but I wanted to use the embossed sheet I had, and I already had all my purple stuff still out!