Floral Mini-Album Pt 16 Tags and Tabs for Pages 1-4

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 discovered a very useful tutorial on Youtube for using your envelope punch board to make tabs. I decided to make tabs for the page tags, to make it easier to pull them out, and also to indicate that there is actually a tag inside the page to be pulled out! The tabs also add a decorative element.

I cut the tabs for the page 1 and 2 tag rom the red paper from the paper stack, and punched them with the envelope punch board, and rounded the bottom corners with my corner rounder punch. I inked half of each tab piece with Dusty Concord Distress Ink, using an ink blender, and then distressed the very edges all round with Black Soot Distress Ink.

I put 1” wide double sided tape on each side of the tab, and trimmed the excess with a small pair of curved scissors.

The tabs folded over and stuck down onto the top edges of the two tags, with the inked side on the page 1 side of the tag, and the plain one on the page 2 side, to match that paper.

Here are the two pages (one for each album) with the tags inserted, showing the tabs at the top.

This is what the tags look like when they are pulled out.

I didn’t do a lot to the paper I chose for the tag for page 3; just some double distressing, first with Hickory Smoke, and then with Black Soot Distress Inks.

Page 4 needed a bit more work. At this stage I forgot to photograph the paper as it was, but you can see it in the photo that follows. I also forgot to photograph the process for altering this paper, but I smooshed it with Pumice Stone Distress Ink first of all. This is a very subtle colour and is useful just for dulling down rather bright colours. My ink pad needs re-inking so I had to repeat the process, and afterwards, because it still didn’t show up very much, I applied ink onto the paper with an ink blender, and spritzed it with water, and dried it with my heat gun. I am quite pleased with the result.

This photo shows the double distressing I did on these tags, first with Frayed Burlap Distress Ink, which is a very similar colour to Pumice Stone, only slightly darker – nice and subtle – and finished with Black Soot.

This photo shows the tag matted and layered on black cardstock, and lying on top of the original, unaltered paper from the paper stack. Unfortunately I had problems with this photo too – not sure what was going on with the camera – the light was most peculiar and the colours were not right, and after manipulating it in my photo editor, the original paper is almost right (a bit darker in reality) but the tag has come out too brown!

Moving on to making the tabs for these tags, I cut them from the drab grey-ish paper from the paper stack (small sample in the centre of the picture) and punched them with the envelope punch board as before, and inked them as follows: for page 3, I used Peacock Feathers Distress Ink, and for page 4, Dusty Concord, and distressed the very edges of both tabs with Black Soot Distress Ink.

Here they are, in situ on the two tags – the left one shows the side for page 3, and the right one, for page 4.

You will see that in this case, I have glued the tabs onto the centre of the tags. Here are pages 3 and 4 with their tags in place.

This is how they appear with the tags pulled out.

Finally, laying them under pages 1 and 2, you can see how the tabs line up. On the left you can see page 1 on top, and on the right, page 4 is on top (for the 2 albums).

There won’t be a tab on the tag for the final page, because it has a flap that can be used to pull it out from the page.

Studio Organisation - Rack for my Craft Boards

As part of the mini-re-organising of my desk, I have bought a rack to hold my various craft boards so that they are tidy, easily accessible, and take up less space. Up until now they have been in a heap, and the one I wanted was always at the bottom, of course. When I got my new scoring board, this was so large that it was not convenient to store it flat.

I found this rack on Amazon. It is metal, and quite substantial, and has three nice wide slots so it will hold a lot. It is really designed for kitchen chopping boards but I thought it would be ideal in my studio.

It has nice non-slip feet too.

Here it is in situ, with my boards in place. The photo was taken from the side. Above it, you can see the cup hook with my two heat guns hanging – another space-saving idea. The cables are a bit of a pain but there’s not a lot I can do about that.

There is room for the Cuttlebug in front, and I have also pushed the partitioned wooden box a bit further to the right, giving me a few more inches to play with on the desk.

In the rack, from back to front, I’ve got my new purple scoring board, a smaller Crafter’s Companion scoring board, my Tonic Stamping Platform, my envelope punch board, my paper trimmer and my ATC glue gun.

I think this is going to work really well.

I am thrilled with the partitioned box too – this is already paying dividends with everything within easy reach, instead of constantly falling off the shelf. I’ve taken the home-made ink blenders out of the ice cream box and put them in this box instead as they are in constant use.

The pull-out unit on the right is now freed up for cutting. I’ve also got some boxes of paper scraps on there at the moment but they aren’t a permanent fixture.

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.

Card Factory 2015–Three Florabunda Cards

 

I have started colouring some of the Florabunda drawings that Lucy printed out for me. For the top one I used coloured pencils, and for the other two, Inktense pencils.

I kept the colour palette fairly limited in each case, and added a little background shading. For the third one, I ran a wet brush back and forth across the drawing after colouring it, which activated whatever Inktense had not been activated while I was colouring it – I quite like this streaky background. Using a coloured pencil for the background, as on the others, gives a bit more control, and this is probably what I shall do in the future.

Initially I was a little underwhelmed by the results but they did grow on me, and I had confidence that they would be improved once the drawings were mounted, with the matting and layering picking up the colours I had used on the drawings, and I was not wrong. I am actually quite pleased with the results now.

Before I began, I had a good look through my stash for some decorative paper and card to use – I am determined to make inroads into my huge stash, most of which I have had for years and have never got round to using – and ended up sorting out a lot of muddle, and my paper shelves do look a lot more organised now! This took longer than making up the cards, which were really quite quick. (So nice to feel sufficiently better to do enough to get a sense of achievement!!)

For the first and last cards, I found a pad of gorgeous decorative card that I’d forgotten I had – it is printed in different colours with flower and leaf designs, and each one has a little sparkle in it. I was very pleased that this did show up a bit on the photos – not much on the purple one, but certainly on the greenish one.

Each card was matted with some co-ordinated plain card before sticking down onto the wider patterned card, and then the whole thing was mounted on plain white card which formed the card base.

For matting this second card, I found a piece of teal coloured card that had been the cover of a brochure. There’s quite a lot of useable card in this piece. The background layer was created with some paper with a slight texture and an embossed leather finish.

The final card is matted onto dark red, which is the accent colour in the design. See the shimmer in the background layer.

I spent a long time experimenting with different papers and cards, different layers, and different orders until I was happy with the results.

I am going to leave most of the cards blank inside for now, with no sentiments. It will be an easy matter to stamp a sentiment inside each card as I use it – much quicker than making a card from scratch!

I made plain white envelopes for them all with my Envelope Punch Board. These cards are safely in my new card stash which now has four cards in it! Not a great deal to write home about as yet, but I’m working on that! While sorting through my paper stash I found a few bits and pieces that can be used to make cards – the results of some faulty cutting with Sheba, my Cougar cutting machine, which can be salvaged and parts used – I am now very glad I didn’t throw these bits away!

Watch this space for more cards in the Card Factory.

Triple-Embossed Get Well Card

The second of two posts for today.

Feeling much better today, I was able to spend some time in the studio (two sessions!) and I made a get well card for our neighbour who had a serious accident some weeks ago.

I am making up a little basket of goodies for her, to cheer her up as she goes through a long recovery period. So far I have completed the little purple box which will contain a lavender sachet.

I had several sheets of boring printed paper in my stash which I gave the Dylusions spray ink treatment and I am using these for this project.

I have recently been re-exploring die cutting, something I have done very little of since I first started, and decided to make a double-embossed card front, using an embossing folder and an oval scalloped die to make a plain panel on which I could stamp the sentiment. This is a very effective technique and fun to do.

You begin by cutting two sheets of chipboard (I like using those card envelopes you get sent by Amazon) – it mustn’t be corrugated – to the size of the card you are going to emboss. You use a die to cut a window in them – if you run both pieces through, the die will cut the top one and leave an impression on the bottom one, which is the guide for placing the die to cut it. The window on each piece is then exactly lined up, and you can stick the two layers together. Hang onto the “positive” pieces because they are used later to help with the embossing. I used a Spellbinders Nestabilities scalloped oval die.

You then put your card in the embossing folder, and put the chipboard with the window in it on top, and run it through your die cutting machine (with the appropriate plates). The chipboard piece acts as a sort of mask – it presses down on the embossing folder and the card comes out embossed, except where the window was.

You can leave it like that if you want, but it looks much better with a bit more definition, so you run it through again, this time without the embossing folder, with the die with the cutting side away from the card, and using the tan embossing mat, and with the “positive” shape lined up on top to help give a good embossed impression.

There are lots of Youtube videos and tutorials giving details for individual machines so you can find out the sandwich you need for your own particular machine. I used my Cuttlebug.

That’s the “double embossing” bit completed. I then did the “triple embossing” – the third embossing is heat embossing. I rubbed my Versamark pad over the raised embossed surface of the card and heat embossed it with clear embossing powder to give a shiny, more defined surface, and also to act as a resist for further inking.

I used Dusty Concord distress ink with an Inkylicious Ink Duster, all over the embossed surface. I held the “positive” shape cut from the chipboard over the plain window to stop any ink getting there. Once this was done, I went around the edge with Chipped Sapphire distress ink, using a home-made blending pad.

Then it was time to stamp the sentiment. I chose “Get Well” from the “Perfectly Penned” stamp set by Stampin’ Up, using my stamp guiding tool to place it exactly in the centre of the plain, unembossed oval. I used Chipped Sapphire distress ink to do this.

Next came the matting and layering. The purple shiny paper is something I’ve had in my stash for ages, and it was a bit dog-eared – I think it may have come from a box of chocolates or something – it’s not great quality but a nice shiny metallic purple which I chose to go with this project. I matted and layered the card front using this, and some gold mirror card, each with a 1/16 in overlap.

I inked the card base with a combination of Seedless Preserves and Picked Raspberry distress inks, using the Inkylicious Ink Duster, and finished it off with a narrow inking with Dusty Concord distress ink, using the home-made blending tool for a bit more definition, before sticking the card front down onto it..

Now for the embellishments. I punched out a butterfly using part of the paper-glued-to-card that I’d used for the box, and some of the shiny purple paper – I put these two together and punched, because the paper would have been too thin to punch properly. I chose my Stampin’ Up butterfly punch for this.

I stuck the shiny purple butterfly down onto the card and then took the other butterfly, and inked the back with Chipped Sapphire distress ink using the ink blender, and then wrapped some gold coloured wire around the centre, twisting the ends together to anchor them, and cutting them to the correct length for the antennae, and then bending the ends into small circles with my round nosed pliers. I used the stamp from the Tim Holtz “Bitty Grunge” background stamp set that I used for the box, to heat emboss some texture in gold. I bent up the wings, and attached the butterfly over the shiny purple one, using hot glue. Once the card was finished, a put a little Pinflair gel glue under the wings to stop them getting flattened.

I chose two small hibiscus flowers from my stash that I’d made ages ago, and attached them to the card, on the opposite side of the oval from the butterfly, again using hot glue.

Here is the completed card.

Here is a detail shot of the embellishments.

On the inside of the card I inked the edges with Seedless Preserves distress ink and an Inkylicious Ink Duster, stamped the sentiment again, this time with Seedless Preserves distress ink, and added a bit of extra text with a dark blue Marvy le Plume marker pen.

I cut an envelope to fit this 5 1/2 x 5 1/2 in square card, using my Envelope Punch Board. I used a piece of 80 gsm A3 printer paper which is unfortunately not very good quality. I inked the corner which would become the envelope flap, using a mixture of Seedless Preserves, Dusty Concord and Chipped Sapphire distress inks, and then used two butterfly stamps from the Stampin’ Up set “Butterfly Potpourri” which I stamped with Dusty Concord and Chipped Sapphire distress inks.

Here is the envelope assembled, showing the lining with the stamped butterflies.

I then turned it over and realised my mistake in using such grotty paper! The stamping had come through to the other side! It didn’t actually look too bad and I thought I’d just leave it. Here’s the flap closed. I inked it with Seedless Preserves and Dusty Concord distress inks as before.

The stamping showed through on the front as well, but I thought it looked quite cool, so I continued with the inking, and added some Chipped Sapphire distress ink with the ink blender to finish off the edges.

Next time I shall remember I need to make a separate lining for the envelope if this isn’t going to happen again! I have to use this paper for envelopes because it’s the only paper I’ve got that’s big enough, unless I raid my 12 x 12 in stash, and this paper is rather thick.

Watch this space for more purple goodies to cheer up our poor neighbour! Here’s what I’ve done so far.