Valentine Card 2014

I have had several people ask me to post about the card I’ve made this year for my hubby, so here it is.

The finished size is A5, and the words spell “Love” in several languages – English, Romanian, Italian (and other Latin languages) and Hebrew. The colour was added using my Derwent Inktense pencils. The design was inspired by a doodled heart I found on Pinterest: http://www.flickr.com/photos/helloangel/9826670843/

Inside:

This is the first time I’ve made him a Zentangle card and he was very pleased with it! When he gets the opportunity, he enjoys kite-flying.

Toilet Roll Mini-Album–Psalm 122, Pt 2

I did a bit more on my mini-album this evening. I drew a menorah (7-branched lampstand) for the second page, and heat embossed it in gold, and cut it out and applied it to the page, as I did with the Hebrew letters on page 1.

I also cut a sheet of small flowers and leaves on Jiminy Cricut, and began inking them. I cut them from the awful garish orange card I posted about a while back – it’s a truly horrible colour, but lovely quality card – it’s got an equally horrible garish turquoise on the reverse side, and in its raw state, not something I’d ever want to use. However, with some inking to tone down the orange, I thought it would do very nicely, because the quality of the card itself is excellent.
Some of the flowers I inked with Tim Holtz’s Distress Ink in Black Soot, rubbing the ink pad onto my craft mat and spritzing it with a bit of water, and painting it on. A bit of the orange shows through, and the colour is nice and dark. I painted all the flowers, including the black ones, with Ranger Perfect Pearls in Gold and Copper, and on some of them, painted it very thinly so they are still quite orange. They all now have a good metallic sheen. I have yet to pick out the details of the petals, emboss them slightly, and think of what to put in the centres. I haven’t touched any of the leaves yet.

I laid some flowers on the first two pages of my album as a mock-up to give an impression of what they will eventually look like, and this is the result.

So far, so good! The flowers will look better when I’ve worked on them a bit, and also incorporated a few leaves.

On page 2 I have yet to make some flames to go on the Menorah.
I’m getting really excited about this project now, and can’t wait to do some more!

Toilet Roll Mini-Album–Psalm 122, Pt 1

Ed.: Five years on, and this project remains a UFO! (UnFinished Object.) Oh dear… Most of the flowers I made for it have been used in other projects. One day I may resurrect it!

I started this project today. It is a Christmas present for a friend, but she has been warned that it is extremely unlikely I shall finish it in time for Christmas! Having flu a few weeks ago put me behind with everything, and I’ve still got a great deal to do.

For those who don’t know, a toilet roll mini-album is made of toilet roll middles squashed flat. These form the pages of the album; they are bound at one end, and tags are put in the open ends. The rolls are covered with paper and decorated how you like.

This album is based on Psalm 122, all about rejoicing to be going up to Jerusalem to worship the LORD; it is a real celebration of Israel’s capital city. I am putting a word or phrase in Hebrew on each page, with a translation, and the accompanying tag will contain the whole verse.

I have always enjoyed using Hebrew in my art work because the letters are so attractive, and they lend themselves very well to calligraphy and design.
I spent most of my session in my ARTHaven today working on sketches for the whole project – I may photograph these and put them on here. I then made a start on the first page, which is still a work in progress. The Hebrew word is “Samachti” – the first word of the Psalm in Hebrew, “I was glad.” The page opposite (inside the front cover) will have a picture of a winding road ascending to Jerusalem, and page 1, and subsequent pages, will be decorated with flowers. This is what I’ve done so far – a work in progress!

I designed the sun (could be used as a sunflower too) in Inkscape and created a cut file which I then cut using Make the Cut software, with my cutting machine, Jiminy Cricut. I used a small piece of yellow card with flecks of darker yellow (this doesn’t show up too well on the photo), and I inked the edges with Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Wild Honey.

I drew the Hebrew letters onto card and heat-embossed them in gold, using my embossing pen. I then cut them out and stuck them onto the page. Unfortunately the gold hasn’t come out very well on the photo, but looks a bit dull, when in reality it is bright, shiny gold. The brown card at the bottom was stamped with darker coloured ink (Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Vintage Photo). The English words were written directly onto the card, and I went over them with a dark brown marker pen and embossed them with clear embossing powder.
I am quite pleased with the dimensional effect of the overlapping Hebrew letters, and I think this effect will be enhanced when I make a “window” of small flowers and leaves in the corners. These will be in bronze and brown colours, probably with a bit of added sparkle in gold or bronze.

The background paper was taken from a 12 x 12 pack of scrapbooking papers that I bought from Ebay a few months ago – I’ve already used bits and pieces in some of my other projects. The quality is lovely – it has a nice smooth finish, and the blend of colours is gorgeous – lovely random effects.

The colour scheme for the whole album is going to be quite dark – browns, bronze and gold. I have been looking forward to trying this, as it’s a new departure from my normal style and I want a nice rich, vintage effect.
Watch this space! I’ve got six toilet rolls to cover and decorate (12 pages in all) and the cover to do, and also 6 tags to go inside the rolls.

I was hoping to be able to bind the pages together using a Cinch machine, but I haven’t got one yet. If I haven’t finished this project before the New Year, I may yet do this, as I am planning on buying a Cinch binder then. If I finish it in time for Christmas, I shall probably bind the pages together with ribbons, but haven’t yet decided on the final format.

Explosion Box Pt 5

Over the past few days I've made good progress and have pretty well finished the inside of the explosion box. Here's a general view of it:

and here it is, looking straight down on it:

You will see that I've completed the waving flowers. Each one is double-sided, and stuck onto a strip of clear acetate which is quite springy, so that when the box is "exploded," they wave about in a jaunty fashion! The strips were cut from the packaging around an Easter egg. (Not much gets thrown out in this house, I can tell you!!!)

Also you will see that on each flap of the box, there is a small pocket. I have made tiny cards to go into each of these. Whenever my friend and I email each other, we always send "Shalom" (Hebrew for "Peace") to each other, in abundance, so I decided to make this "a box of Shaloms" - there are seven altogether, and it will be her task to find them all!

Here are pictures of some of these little cards. The lines on my cutting mat visible in each picture are one inch apart, to give you some scale.

This, and several of the cards, have been given a bit more dimension by the addition of some shading - in some cases being lightly brushed across with a stamp pad, and others with some chalks, and the edges touched with a little "Rub-and-Buff" which is a metalic paste in a tube which you apply and then buff to a shine when dry.

This one is a photograph of an embroidered plaque I did several years ago, with the Hebrew and English letters spelling "Shalom," with the "L" letter combining in both - I really enjoyed mixing the embroidery threads on the needle to give the graduated rainbow effect:

This one has a number of small red hearts suspended inside from gold thread. These hearts are like sequins but without holes - I think they are called table confetti, and they are available in lots of different shapes, and are very useful for embellishments. I stuck them together in pairs with the end of the thread trapped between, and the other ends go through a slit in the crease of the card and are glued between the two layers so they don't show.

This one is a graphic I've got of a triptich of lilies, again greatly reduced to fit on the tiny card. Inside are strips of card decorated with chalk and gold, with Bible verses on them, and some cut out and applied flowers from some decorative paper I have.

My friend will have to look hard for this "Shalom" - a butterfly has landed on it! The inside has a seven-flower popup, but I made the flowers out of card rather than paper, which has made them a bit stiff, so it doesn't open very easily, hence my fingers holding it! Card would be fine for a larger card, but for such a small one, if I did it again, I'd use paper.

I did quite a bit of the text on the computer first - on my desktop publishing software, printing out a sheet of card with several frames containing text with different fonts and styles, measuring each frame carefully so that it was the right size for the project, and then cut them out and embellished them. I do this quite a lot with my cards - you get lovely results with the fonts, and I quite often emboss them with gold, too.

Work still to do: The lid, and some panels on the outside of the outer box, to strengthen it and also for decoration. I've found a marvellous Youtube video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEbGqao5Gcw - giving instructions on how to use a Cuttlebug embossing folder for the background, and a Spellbinders Nestability die to make a plain oval with an embossed surround in the centre - it's quite complicated and has to go through the Cuttlebug machine several times to complete it, but it's exactly the effect I want, so I'm longing to try it. I can't do the panels until I've completed the lid, though, as I won't know how far down the sides of the lid will come. More pictures to follow!

We are hoping to see my friend on Thursday, to take her out for a meal for a belated celebration of "our" birthday, and I shall give it to her then - always assuming, of course, that I finish it in time!!