Box for Floral Mini-Album–Completing the Construction

Today I finished making the two boxes, with the exception of the embellishments for the top, and sorting one or two problems.

I began today’s session by cutting the pieces for the front mats.

I had to sleep on it to work out how to get the hole for the clasp in exactly the right place. In the end, I added some Zig 2-way glue on the back and let it dry so it was tacky (temporary adhesive) and lined it up on the box and pressed it into place. Taking my pokey tool, I pierced holes through the mat from inside the box where I’d already made holes, for the brads to attach the clasp.

I then removed the mat. I laid the clasp on top of the mat and lined up its holes with those I’d just pierced, and drew round the clasp. I added 1/4 inch all around and then cut the piece out. I double-distressed all the edges (including the edges of the cut hole) with Vintage Photo and Black Soot Distress Inks.

I attached the clasps to the front of the boxes, filling the concave back surface of them with Pinflair gel glue as I’d done for the other part of the clasp, and attached them firmly to the box with the same antique brass coloured brads.

Now I was ready to attach the front mats, and it was easy to line them up over the clasps and glue them into place.

The lids laid in place, so that I could test that the clasps worked correctly.

I cut the two mats for the backs of the boxes and double-distressed them as before.

The back mats glued in place. I didn’t realise till later that I’d made a mistake here.

Double-distressing the side mats.

The side mats glued in place.

It was now that I realised my mistake – I should not have glued the back mats in place until the hinges had first been glued down, because the mats cover the construction strips.

Fortunately it was easy to remedy. When I was making the Floral Mini-Album I learnt on Youtube that if you glue something with double-sided tape and have made a mistake, all is not lost, because you can soften the glue by heating it with a heat gun, and peel it back. This is what I did here.

Here is the lid in place, with its Tyvek hinge concealed by the re-attached back mat.

Using the cut out piece from the front mat as a pattern, I cut two pieces from an offcut from the front mat and glued them in place inside the box, over the three brads attaching the clasp to the front of the box.

Using a 1-inch punch and cutting from the same offcut, I attached circular pieces over the brads inside the lid flap.

The brads are now all covered, giving a neater finish, and preventing anything catching on them. I used wet glue to attach them.

I decided after all that I would use the metal corners I’d bought. They are only joined on one edge; there is a gap in the other so that you’ve got a bit of flexibility for lining them up. I cut along one of the other two edges so that a flat piece was detached, and filed it smooth, and gently bent it back into shape with pliers.

I did this because if I had put complete corners on the back, the lid would not have opened. I put the flat piece of the corner that I had cut off onto the back of the box, and the remaining piece around the corner of the lid.

I had a bit of trouble with this and it was hard to make them stick, even with hot glue. Opening the box, the two metal pieces collided and tended to knock each other off, so I had to heat it up and move them a bit so that there was a gap. I’m not sure I’m 100 percent satisfied with the result just yet.

Also, opening the box, the inside of the Tyvek hinge is visible, and it’s white. I don’t think the attachment of the Tyvek is strong enough as it’s tending to peel away. I propose adding another strip inside. This will be visible unless I ink it to match the box. I may also have to add a couple of ribbons to prevent the lid opening too far.

I added the metal feet, using hot glue.

Anyway, for now, apart from these final minor problems to sort out, the boxes are complete. Here they are with all the metal embellishments in place.

I have sorted out some remaining flowers from the Floral Mini Album project, and I need to make some more leaves, because these were all used on the album. I shall also die-cut some more gold Moroccan trellis and possibly some other embellishments. These will all go on the top of the boxes, and then the project will be complete. I have just under a week to do it, so I’m not panicking… Yet!

Copper and Sepia Thank You Card

This evening I made a thank you card for a friend. She had seen my Mamhead album and admired one of the sepia tracing pages, so I made her a card based on the same photo and the same technique.

The photo doesn’t really do it justice unfortunately.

Here is the original photo.

I printed out the photo to the size I wanted for the card, and laid some parchment paper over the top and taped it down. I traced some of the outlines using a sepia pen.

I used copper Perfect Pearls from my Perfect Pearls palette to pick out some leaves and stems, with a fine watercolour brush.

I cut the two pieces of paper out with a craft knife, allowing a small amount extra of the parchment down the left side, which I folded under, and stuck to the back of the photo, so that the parchment tracing could be peeled back to reveal the photo, as I had done for the album – the album page was done in gold rather than copper.

This is a lovely technique because both layers enhance each other, and it makes the page (or card) interactive.

To finish the card I matted and layered the picture onto some copper metallic paper and some mottled brown paper from my stash, and mounted the whole thing onto a tent-folded piece of A5 pale yellow card.

I thought it needed something extra, so I found some silvery-grey “Thank You” sentiments in my stash box which I’d cut with my Cougar electronic cutting machine some time back – they tone really well with the parchment paper – and stuck them down using Scotch Quick-Dry Adhesive, and outlined them with the sepia pen. Using a home-made ink blending tool, I also sponged on some Tea Dye distress ink around the edges because the card base was showing a bit, and this definitely improves the appearance.

I added a tiny spot of two-way glue pen onto the top right corner of the photo – if you apply this glue and allow it to dry, it becomes like the glue on post-it notes. I did this to keep the tracing in place and to stop it flopping forwards. It can be peeled back to reveal the photo, and then repositioned. It did occur to me later that it might have been more sensible to attach the parchment piece at the top rather than at the side but I’ve been feeling pretty exhausted and brainfogged lately so put it down to that!

Earlier today I continued to work on my Infusions album, sticking the samples onto the flattened toilet rolls – I didn’t bother to photograph this because it really wasn’t very interesting – just a rather tedious, messy job! You can see when I started this the other day. This is my least favourite part of making an album. I seem to be making an awful lot of pages and I think there are too many for a single album and I am thinking about binding two or three separate ones into one large cover, which could be quite intriguing.

The latest pages are now under a stack of heavy books to flatten them.

Diamond Wedding Anniversary Card

My hubby reminded me we were invited to a diamond wedding tea party today. When we were invited some time ago I wasn’t sure I’d be well enough to go, because it would be less than a week after a chemo treatment, but because I am doing so much better on the reduced dose, I felt just about able to go.

I had forgotten about it in the meantime, and suddenly realised I needed to make a card! This is one of the reasons for wanting to start my card factory – to avoid having to make cards at such short notice as this.

Even though I am feeling better than usual at this stage in a cycle, I am far from 100 percent, and this morning I was suffering badly from chemo brain and made soooo many mistakes, it was driving me nuts! I did succeed in making a card, but managed to leave out one bit which I found after I’d finished! Also, recently I bought some circle dies which I simply cannot find, and I thought I had a music embossing folder, which I didn’t, so I had to rethink the thing on the fly! It was rather a frustrating morning all round, but I got there in the end.

It was rather difficult to photograph because it is white and sparkly. The glitter and silver don’t show up as much as in real life.

This card is not my usual style, but I wanted to do something silvery and sparkly for a diamond wedding. The couple are retired musicians, so I decided to add something to give a musical theme. The wife later said, when she opened the card, “Oh! It’s a record!” I hadn’t thought of it like that, but it does look a bit like a CD!

I began by creating some mat layers, using silver mirror card and some white card which I inked around the edges with Hickory Smoke distress ink, using a home-made ink blending tool. I got this distress ink quite recently (one of the new ones for this year) and am surprised how much I am using it already – it’s a lovely soft grey, and a very useful colour.

Not being able to find my circle dies, I had to resort to my Martha Stewart circle cutter, a tool I really don’t much like. The die would have produced a nice embossed edge, which of course this does not.

I cut a 4-inch circle and stamped and heat-embossed it using the “Music Background” stamp from the Artistic Stamper, using Cosmic Shimmer glitter embossing powder, which came out slightly pink from one direction, and a shimmery green the other way – very pretty! I haven’t used this for ages and had forgotten how nice it was.

Here is the circle mount. Rather difficult to see but you can just see the pinkness of it!

I made a circle with “60” in it to go in the centre. I used stamps from the Stampin’ Up set “Memorable Moments” – a very useful set because it has separate words for the sentiments, and numbers, and “rd,” “nd” etc. so that you can mix and match, and a nice little scalloped oval shape to stamp them in as well. I chose the number 60 for the front of the card, stamped it on white card and heat embossed it with silver embossing powder. I then went over it with a glue pen and added some Hunkydory Diamond Sparkles Angel Whispers fine glitter. I cut out the circle using a plain 2-inch circle punch.

I find the best way to make sure that glitter is well stuck down is to put a piece of paper over the top, and then run a brayer over it several times. I find very little loose glitter falls off that way.

Here is the completed “60” layered onto a slightly larger piece of silver mirror card punched out with a scalloped circle punch.

Turning back to the background again, I found some ice sparkly silver and organza ribbon in my stash and stuck this down vertically across the mat with double sided tape.

Using two sizes of butterfly stamps from the Stamping’ Up “Papillon Potpourri” set, I heat-embossed two of each, using the same glitter embossing powder as before, and silver embossing powder respectively, and then fussy-cut them out with fine scissors.

I added the Diamond Sparkles glitter with the glue pen as before, to the silver-embossed butterflies.

To stamp the inside of the card, I used stamps from the Stampin’ Up “Memorable Moments” set, using Wendy Vecchi Archival Ink in Watering Can, which tones very well with Hickory Smoke distress ink.

I stuck down the two glitter-embossed butterflies using Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive in the centres so that the wings were loose, and attached the antennae using the glue pen.

The finished card, showing the glittered silver-embossed butterflies, attached in the same way.

We got to the party OK and it was great. I was so glad I went – the couple were surprised and delighted to see me as they didn’t think I’d be able to come. It was lovely seeing lots of other old friends too, and catching up. A very happy time. The card went down well, too!

I felt a lot better when we got home, and spent the evening relaxing on the recliner. We’d had plenty of gorgeous canapes at the party so we just had some stewed apple and cream later in the evening. I’m hoping to feel better again tomorrow, but I am not pushing it. I intend to rest and get over the busy day I had today.

Anniversary Card for Marlene

Today is my friend Marlene’s wedding anniversary so I have made her and her hubby a card. I wrote this post on Wednesday but had to hold it in reserve until I knew she’d received it so I didn’t spoil it for her! This is the sneak peek on my previous post, and I can also reveal what the “funny stuff” is too!

This card is made from part of the masterboard I made recently with the gold embossed seahorses on it.

The layout of the card and its basic design were inspired by a gorgeous birthday card I received from my friend Shaz a couple of months ago – she had made a fabulous background using the new dragonfly stamps we both recently got, with a fresh green colour scheme, also using the water droplets stamp from Designs by Ryn which I have used in my masterboard. (I love this stamp!) She stuck the stamped strip onto the base card and ran a scored line down either side of it which really set it off, and placed her stamped sentiment on the bottom right of the card. I thought this was a really cool layout.

I cut my base card from two-thirds of a sheet of A4 white cardstock folded in half vertically. Before sticking down the strip of masterboard, I scored my lines from behind and then inked the base card with Peacock Feathers distress ink which exactly matched the colour of the masterboard. I like the way the scored lines pick up the colour more boldly.

These are my two sets of shell stamps that I used for the masterboard and for this card.

I stamped the seahorse to the right of the design using sepia archival ink.

Here is a detail of the embellishments on the card.

I lightly coloured a scrap of white cardstock with Tea Dye distress ink, using an Inkylicious Ink Duster, and stamped several shells on it, using sepia archival ink. Using my glue pen I picked out the highlights on these shells and heat embossed them with gold. After fussy-cutting them out, I hand-embossed them from behind into a piece of fun foam, using a ball embossing tool, to give them a bit of dimension.

Now for the “funny stuff.” Despite what one or two people may have thought, this has nothing to do with angels! Years ago we were given some pot-pourri which used to be in a large bowl on our sitting room table. It consisted of quite large lumps of stuff (shell fragments, bark, pumice, wooden fish etc.) and once the smell had gone, I recycled some of it for other purposes, and included in it was this tangle of red dyed twiggy stuff which I thought was too good to throw away and could be used for embellishments.

I teased out a small quantity of this to represent either coral or red seaweed on my card.

Last Christmas my hubby bought me several small panettone loaves from Lidl. Each one came in a box with a little ribbon handle and I saved all these ribbons! (I do love recycling stuff to use in my projects.)

They are not very long, but ideal for embellishing once the plastic tags are cut off. I stuck this down around the masterboard strip with double sided tape, using it to anchor the funny stuff, and was delighted that the two colours in the ribbon co-ordinated so well with my card design. The sentiment was from the Memorable Moments set by Stampin’ Up, stamped onto a small oval die-cut from my stash that somebody had sent to me. I embellished the edge of this by rubbing it with my Versamark pad and gold heat-embossing it.

To cover the lump in the ribbon over the funny stuff, I stuck down the embossed shells using Pinflair gel glue.

Here is a digital montage of the card resting on the masterboard.

Happy Anniversary Marlene! I am glad you like your card!!

New Stash, and Gold Seahorse Masterboard

Today I did some art in my studio for the first time for ages! I have several occasions coming up which require cards, and I need to make some fairly quick ones without too much work involved, because energy is in short supply, and I shall be having my third chemo treatment on Friday and who knows how I’m going to feel after that!!

So I thought I would make a masterboard and cut it up and make several cards from it.

I got some very exciting new stash today! First of all, I’d ordered some thin metal angels’ wings from Etsy, along with some vintage mini-bouquets, and they arrived this morning.

I am intending to make moulds from some of these wings, so that I can replicate them in different materials (polymer clay, Friendly Plastic, etc.) depending on how well the moulds go – the metal is very thin and it might be hard to press it down evenly into the moulding putty. Notice the attached haloes on the larger wings! You can bend the halo forwards so that it hovers above the angel’s head! The mini-bouquets are very pretty and I thought I could split these apart and use them for angel embellishments.

Later in the day, the most exciting parcel arrived. I decided not long ago to get the complete set of Dylusions paints. I am so fed up with ruining decent pens by writing with them over acrylic paint – there’s something that reacts and causes the ink in the pen to stop working, and once that happens there’s nothing to be done – the pen is ruined and just has to be thrown away. I read a review of these new paints and was pleased to learn that they are designed specifically for art journaling and of course writing is an essential part of that discipline, and the paints do not cause the pens to clog. I have watched a number of Youtube videos over the past few days and can see how versatile these paints are, and how you can blend them, and create great backgrounds with them. The colours are identical to the Dylusions sprays but their usage is different, and you an get quite a bit more control with them.

I began my masterboard by creating a background from several of these paints. These are some of the materials I used for this masterboard.

I applied the paints using a baby wipe, picking up the smallest amount of paint each time, from inside the lid of the jar. The card I have used for the masterboard isn’t very good quality – it’s A3 office grade card, so I would probably have got better results with the blending if I’d used better quality card. Layer 1 was done with London Blue.

Layer 2 was created with Vibrant Turquoise. With the blending not going quite as well as I’d hoped, I decided to go for a swirling pattern.

Layer 3: Cut Grass.

Layer 4: Squeezed Orange – just a little, between the swirls where there wasn’t so much colour.

Layer 5: Lemon Zest – a very small amount, just to highlight the Squeezed Orange.

For layer 6, I mixed together some Vibrant Turquoise and some White Linen to produce a paler shade.

Creating Layer 6:

Time for some stamping. I used the water droplets stamp from Designs by Ryn, with Ranger Cobalt Archival Ink.

At this point I felt that the whole thing was much too bright and the water droplets were too dark, so I decided to apply a wash with some White Linen paint mixed with some water.

I applied this with a foam brush over the entire surface of the masterboard, but it left quite a lot of streaks, so I took a fan brush and made swirling brush strokes through the wash, which gave a better effect.

The wash completed. I am much happier with this result. The colour is much more subtle and the water droplets not so obvious.

Time to stamp the shells. I used Distress Inks for this, but they didn’t go down onto the acrylic surface very well, and took quite a bit of drying with my heat gun, but in the end I was quite pleased with the result.

I began with the little starfish from the Seven Gypsies set, using Tea Dye Distress Ink, but this came out quite pale with a slightly greenish cast over the turquoise background.

For the scallop shell I used Gathered Twigs Distress Ink:

and for the other shell, Rusty Hinge.

The shell stamping completed.

Time to add the heat-embossed seahorses. The seahorse stamp came from the same Seven Gypsies set as the shells.

The gold embossed seahorses complete. I completed four at a time.

I think you can see how nice and shiny they are in the photograph. I wanted to add a bit more sparkle, so I applied some variegated copper gilding flakes in small patches, using a glue pen, and stippling them on with a brush, and then brushing off the excess.

Here is the completed masterboard, showing the shiny seahorses and gilding flakes.

I am very pleased with the new paints. If the quality of the card had been better I think the blending might have gone better, but I like the way the colours go together, and how you can control them, and lighten or darken the effect with the addition of white or black, and other colour mixing, giving you the full range of colours. In their raw state the colours are very vibrant and not a bit subtle, and I think for most of the time I shall be mixing them for a gentler, more subtle effect. The addition of a white colour wash certainly improved this piece, I think.