More Purple Goodies, and a Bad Day

Edited – some photos replaced!

As I wrote on my Cancer Diary page, I have had a bad day today, possibly because I’ve done too much this week. I had a headache all day and felt queasy. I spent a couple of hours in the studio this a.m. and managed to make a bar of lavender soap for our neighbour, and find some bath melts I’d made before (also lavender) and made some labels for them.

I recently got these Tim Holtz Sizzix “Labels” set of dies:

and I cut two from some of the paper that I’d sprayed with Dylusions inks and backed onto card.

I inked both front and back with a combination of Seedless Preserves, Dusty Concord and Chipped Sapphire distress inks, using an Inkylicious Ink Duster for the former two, and my home made blending tool for the Chipped Sapphire as before. It was at this point that my camera started playing up, and the rest of the photos were seriously out of focus! It does this every now and then, and because I was feeling distinctly below par, I didn’t notice until it was too late. (Ed.: Photos from here to end now replaced.)

I hand-wrote the front of the labels using a dark blue Marvy le Plume pen, and stamped the reverse with one of my Stampin’ Up “Butterfly Potpourri” butterfly stamps, using Chipped Sapphire distress ink.

I’m afraid I forgot to photograph the lavender soap that I made, while it was still in the mould. I coloured it with a single drop each of red and blue colouring, hoping to make a pale purple, but because there was only sufficient clear soap for a single bar, it came out quite a bit darker than I’d hoped. I thought I had some purple colouring but I did not. I also sprinkled on some lavender flowers before the soap set.

I found some lavender bath melts that I’d made in the soap making class last year, and also wrapped those up. I used clear cellophane and some silvery-lilac coloured gift ribbon, and tied the labels on with some fancy purple yarn.

Here is the growing collection of gifts.

Not sure what else I am going to do, apart from the lavender sachet to go in the box, and some stalks of fresh lavender flowers to go in, and of course, the little basket to put everything in.

I am hoping to feel considerably better tomorrow. Apart from this brief time in the studio, I have slept most of today, and cannot seem to shift the headache, and I have eaten very little.

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.

Embellishments for Vintage Book-Style Birthday Card

Having got the pages printed, I was able today to start on the embellishments. I made 3 cream roses, two for the card and one for the lid. These were cut from white card, which I then inked with Old Paper Distress Ink, by rubbing the ink pad on my craft mat, spritzing it with water and moving the pieces around until both sides were coated. The card got pretty wet, and I was annoyed that while I was swirling them around, one of the pieces with the slit in it split into two halves, but it was a simple matter to construct the rose as usual, just adding a dab of hot glue to attach the broken part. Anyway, I dried the pieces with my heat gun, and inked the two centre pieces of each rose with Frayed Burlap Distress Ink spritzed with water on my craft mat, and dried them again. These two centre pieces for each rose were darkened at the edges by applying Tea Dye Distress Ink directly from the ink pad. I then proceeded to assemble the roses as with the pink ones, and the black ones for the other card. The final step was to spritz them lightly with pink glimmer mist for added sheen, and to tie them in with the pink theme.

When I printed the page pieces out, they came out rather pink, which was actually rather pretty, but not quite the effect I wanted, so I proceeded to ink the edges of each one with Old Paper Distress Ink (appropriately!), taking care to ink the top piece only very lightly. The bottom piece was inked with Frayed Burlap Distress Ink to make it quite a bit darker, to give a more dimensional feel to the finished project, and the middle piece likewise, only more lightly. I inked carefully down the centre of the top piece with Old Paper Distress Ink to give a bit more shadow where the “binding” of the book would be.

Each of the page pieces needed to be curved to give the impression of an open book, and I did this round my rolling pin. These days I haven’t got the energy for much cooking at all, let alone baking (and anyway, both my hubby and I only have to look at a cake or pastry and several more inches appear out of nowhere around our waistlines!!) so I didn’t think I’d be using my rolling pin any time soon – until I saw someone on Youtube curving their book card pages with one!! So it’s been reprieved…

I decided to make the largest, back, piece flat, and back it with another piece of card to make it stronger, to form the base of the card. This back piece is made of dark brown card, the edges of which I inked with Vintage Photo Distress Ink, and just a touch of Black Soot Distress Ink on the very edge. After this, I hand-embossed (de-bossed) all around the edge onto a piece of funky foam, to form a border, and then hand-painted the pattern with gold Perfect Pearls and water, using my craft mat as a palette and using a fine brush. This was to simulate the tooled leather binding of an old book.

When this was done, I was able to back it with another piece of card to strengthen it. This piece I inked with Old Paper Distress Ink quite a way in, but darker at the edges.

The other day on Create and Craft on TV, someone had emailed in to ask if they had any suggestions as to how to use peel-offs more imaginatively. I suppose many crafters start off with peel-offs and then graduate to more interesting stuff, and I am sure I am not alone in having quite a stash of them which never get used, so I was interested in what they had to say. One suggestion was to apply the peel-off and use it as a mask, to ink or spray over, and then remove, and this is what I did on the back of this card. I placed the “Happy Birthday” peel-off onto the centre of the card and inked over it – having experimented on some scrap card first, I discovered that if you rub with a felt pad, the peel-off tends to lift, which isn’t very satisfactory, so I used my stencil brush instead, tapping ink onto it from the pad, and stippling over the peel-off. I started with Spun Sugar Distress Ink which is a very pale pink colour, and then graduated through Milled Lavender and Victorian Velvet, gradually taking the colour outwards to meet the Old Paper Distress Ink. Finally, I used a tiny amount of Black Soot Distress Ink, which is very strong and needs to be used with caution, on my stencil brush, stippling off the excess onto a piece of scrap card first, and then applying it gently just over the peel-off to give a tiny bit more definition to my sentiment. The final step was to remove the peel-off with a fine pair of tweezers, and it was ready to have a personal message written. I had to do this at this stage, because it would be very difficult to write on the back of the card when it was complete.

I decided it was high time I used my Spellbinders dyes again after a long time. I’ve only got two sets of nestabilities – a scalloped oval set and a plain rectangular set – I shall probably use this latter one on the other book-style card. I bought them shortly after I started doing this sort of thing in earnest, and then after I got Jiminy Cricut they became a bit redundant, but I thought it would be fun to use them again. I cut a frame from my boring gold card - remember my boring gold card? This is where it makes its first appearance:

http://shoshiplatypus.blogspot.com/2010/07/hand-made-cards-boring-gold-card.html

Back last year, I decided to try and pep it up a bit and found loads of interesting things to do with it, and remembering that it takes embossing very well, I dye-cut and embossed the frame to great effect – it looks like metal! The piece cut out of the middle also got embossed in the process, and I decided to use that for a smaller frame for the other “page” of the book, adding a piece of decorative paper also cut and embossed with the spellbinders oval.

The following pictures show a mock-up of the card so far. The left-hand “page” is complete but I still have some work to do on the right-hand page.

I found a rubber stamp with a cluster of roses, and stamped this using Versamark, and heat embossed it with one of the new embossing powders I’d bought at the craft show – a nice pinky colour with a bit of iridescence. I coloured this image with some Marvy le Plume water-based markers, cut it out, and stuck it with spray photo mount onto the decorative paper, and added a bit more heat embossing. I matted this onto the gold oval, curving the piece as I went, to match the curve of the page, and then glued it down with photo mount as before.

Unfortunately the decorative paper in the frame hasn’t come out too well on this photo, which makes it look like a solid bright turquoise colour, when it is actually darker, and a lot more subtle, and tones with the rest of the project quite well.

I stamped a couple of rose leaves with green dye ink and cut them out, picking out the veins and adding a bit of shadow with a Marvy le Plume marker. One of them I hand-embossed from the back, onto funky foam, and glued onto the card with Pinflair glue, and the other one I left flat. Finally I glued three roses, one cream and the other two pink, along the bottom of the frame.

To make the bookmark, I cut a length of pretty pink ribbon, and attached the end to the underside of the bottom page, so that it will be sandwiched between that page and the base piece. When the card is finished, I shall probably twist the ribbon and attach it down in a couple of places.

The main gold frame is not attached yet. I shall curve it to match the curve of the other page and before I stick it down, I shall have to decide what’s going in it – it’s crying out for a nice big “90” but my mum has said she doesn’t want a fuss made of this birthday and wants it treated like any other, although we are all saying that it’s a great achievement to reach 90, especially in such good health as she enjoys, and it should be celebrated, but she’s adamant, and says she doesn’t want everyone to know she’s 90! If I put “90” on the card, she’ll end up not showing it to anybody!! So what am I going to put in the frame? I haven’t a clue. Mulling time, I think. I shall sleep on it.

So that’s as far as I’ve got. Still to do: finish the embellishments, stick the edges of the curved pages down to the ones underneath, mount the whole thing on the base piece, and finally, make the box. I was planning to make the box from a sheet of A4 card, but the roses on the card make it rather thick, so I shall probably make the box slightly deeper, which will mean I shall have to cut it from a sheet of 12 x 12, or perhaps A3. I’m going to make an acetate window in the top, and decorate it with more roses. Then I need to make a stand for the card for when it’s not in its box.

Boring Gold Card

Several years ago, when I was dabbling in card making and before I got obsessed - sorry, I mean serious - about it, I ordered some gold inkjet card which I thought might be useful. I never really used it because it was boring - somewhat dull rather than shiny, and not a very nice colour of gold either, so along with various other things, it lay around gathering dust. Now I am getting hold of some decent stuff, I've been thinking about getting rid of things that haven't been used for years, but as I am learning more, I realise that there is endless potential in even horrible stuff, with a bit of imagination, and "altering" skills!

So today I thought I'd have a go at improving this awful card so that it can become useful and not useless.

Here it is straight out of the pack (the colour didn't come out quite right on this photo):

I cut the sheet into 4 and started embossing with my Cuttlebug.

Already a vast improvement! Then I got busy and came up with this on the other two pieces:

Before colouring, I inked the raised embossing on the paisley one with a black ink pad, and then heat embossed it with clear embossing powder. I then filled in the paisleys with my Marvy Le Plume Pens. On the other one, I coloured in the background, to enhance the embossing.

I probably won't consign the Boring Gold Card to the bin after all. What do you think?