Infusions Mini-Album–Additional Pages

Sorting through my Infusions samples and trying to arrange the pages into a satisfactory order, I realised that I probably needed to add a few. I had decided that I had far too many to make a single book, and divided them into three separate books which will all be bound in the same larger cover, but it was really hard to get them all more or less the same thickness. Some of the pages are simply glued back-to-back, and others are glued either side of a flattened toilet roll centre – these will have a tag inserted, which in turn will make the pages thicker. The middle book is quite a bit thinner than the other two, so I thought the simplest solution would be to add a few more pages, especially if I could add elements to thicken them up a bit!

Also, I needed one or two extra pages to make the pairings work properly, especially as I have to incorporate pages with the title of the next section.

The first additional page was made by dabbing Versamark embossing ink onto the page through a stencil – in this case, I used a piece I’d cut with Sheba, my Cougar electronic cutting machine, ages ago, to file away with my sample pieces with the machine settings I’d need to use for that particular medium. This worked pretty well as a stencil, but I had to be careful with the centres of the spirals which tended to lift a bit. I think I may use this file to cut a stencil from some other material as it’s quite nice, and with care, works well.

After applying the Versamark, I sprinkled some Sunset Beach Infusions from set 1, quite liberally, over the stencil. I spritzed this very lightly, with a fine mist from some distance above, so that it wouldn’t get too wet and flow under the thin sections of the stencil. I held it down as much as possible with my fingers, in addition to taping both the page and the stencil to my craft sheet with masking tape. After spritzing, I left it for several minutes to activate.

Here is the piece immediately after I carefully lifted the stencil away. You can see that the edges are sharply defined, and that it worked well.

After this I dried it with my heat gun, and brushed away any stray crystals that hadn’t activated.

The white background looked a bit stark, so I added some Distress Inks in Spiced Marmalade and Abandoned Coral, using an Inkylicious Ink Duster, and then some Vintage Photo to distress the edges of the sample, using a home-made ink blending pad. I used this particular colour scheme to pair it with another page.

Here is the completed piece.

To bulk up Book Two a bit, I did another page with some gesso, this time stamping into wet gesso. For this, I used some of the stamps from the Stampin’ Up “Mosaic Madness” set, sticking them all onto an acrylic block and stamping them all at once into the wet gesso. I was careful to clean them off immediately after doing this, because gesso dries very quickly and I didn’t want to ruin my stamps.

I dried the sample with my heat gun and once I was satisfied it was dry enough, I sprinkled on some Violetta Infusions from set 2. I spritzed it until it was very wet, and almost immediately blotted it off with kitchen paper to create a pale background, with darker areas where the stamping was.

I spritzed it again, and tilted the card to move the Infusions around, making sure they pooled in the stamped areas, and then I added a very small amount of Infusions, and left this to stand, in order to activate them.

I realised that I hadn’t included my “mask and spray” technique, which I’d be sad to omit, since I think I invented this! I did it first with Dylusions spray inks, but thought it would also work with Infusions, which it did. I made two 12 x 12 sheets and I used nearly all of these when I bound my Mamhead mini-album at the beginning of this year, but I still had a few offcuts left, together with some flowers and leaves that had been used in the masking process, so I decided to use these in the Infusions mini-album.

This is a mock-up I’ve done to show some of the cut leaves and flowers laid onto a page made from the remaining leaf mask and spray offcuts.

Here are the four additional pages together.

All the pages I’ve completed have been flattened under heavy books, and stacked together with elastic bands into their respective three volumes. I need to make a few more pages for Book Two, and then the next step will be to make the title pages for each section, and then start on the tags. Once this is done, and the tags are all inserted into the right pages, I will be able to make the binding, as I will know how thick each page will be. When the three small books are bound, I can begin on the large outer binding. Still a lot to do, but now that the page organisation is pretty much sorted, the end is in sight!

Card Factory 2015–Small Zentangle Cards

Here is a collection of six small Zentangle cards that I assembled today.

These Zentangle designs are some of my early ones, when I first started tangling. I scanned them so I could print them out and use them when I wanted. Some time ago, matted them onto black card in readiness to make into cards, and then never got round to it.

I decided to add stamped sentiments to each of these cards, and used a selection from the Stamin’ Up sets that I have.

Here they are individually.

All the cards have the identical sentiment stamped inside, apart from the “Thank you for caring” one which has a simple “Thank You” inside. Each one has the Zentangle explanation stuck to the back as well.

Most of these will probably go to the chemo unit for sale.

This was a relatively quick project to make, because the designs were already matted, and all I had to do was cut and score the card bases and stick the designs down, and do the stamping. They are all A6 size, when folded.

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.

Quadruple-Embossed Birthday Card

The second of two posts today.

After making my triple-embossed purple get-well card the other day, I thought I’d take this one one stage further and make it quadruple-embossed! This is a sort of embossing sampler: embossing with an embossing folder; embossing with a die; heat embossing, and finally, hand-embossing! I’m pretty much embossed out after that lot.

It is my aunt’s birthday on 28th September and I needed to get on with this before my next chemo session on Friday because after that I won’t feel like doing anything for a week to ten days.

I began in exactly the same way as with the previous triple-embossed card, with the same sized card base and matting and layering, and the same Cuttlebug embossing folder because this is the only one (except for a gearwheels one that wasn’t appropriate) that is wide enough for this size of card.

I inked the blank area with Spun Sugar distress ink, and heat-embossed the Cuttlebug-embossed part with clear embossing powder (this time I applied the Versamark with my brayer which worked better, and it was certainly improved by my remembering to use my anti-static bag this time!). I inked it using more Spun Sugar, using an Inkylicious Ink Duster, so that the clear embossing acted as a resist.

Then I began work on the embellishments. I had intended to stamp some flowers and cut them out, but my few flower stamps are all rather solid and don’t give much scope for colouring in, so I decided to draw some flowers. I outlined them in pencil first and then used a Ranger Brush Tip in its holder with my new Hickory Smoke distress ink. I love this new colour – a lovely soft grey which tones very well with the Wendy Vecchi archival ink pad called Watering Can.

After I had drawn them all with the Hickory Smoke, I coloured them in using two shades of pink coloured pencils, blending the colour with a paper stump.

After cutting out the flowers, I hand-embossed them with two sizes of ball-ended embossing tools onto a piece of fun foam.

Here are the flowers, all embossed and ready to go.

I could not stick them down until the end because the glue would still be wet. I moved on to stamping the sentiment on the front of the card, using said Wendy Vecchi archival ink in Watering Can. I used stamps from the Stampin’ Up set “Memorable Moments.” This is a lovely set because it can be used for anniversaries too, and comes with a set of numbers. I used my stamp lining up tool to get it in the right place.

Now time to start matting and layering. The first matt layer was done with Hickory Smoke distress ink and was 1/16 in larger than the card topper.

I found an excellent tip a while back for lining up the matt layers accurately – with such a small difference in size, the slightest inaccuracy would show. I ran my ATG glue gun over the back of the card topper and then went over the DS tape with a glue stick, which makes it slick and moveable for a short period, giving you the chance to get it just right.

The second matt layer, again 1/16 in larger than the previous one, was done with Forest Moss distress ink.

To complete the card assembly, I inked the edges of the card base with Spun Sugar distress ink and matted and layered the rest on top.

I then stamped the sentiment on the inside of the card, using the same Stampin’ Up stamps from the “Memorable Moments” set. I inked around the edges with Spun Sugar distress ink.

Now for the embellishments on the front of the card. I found some small leaf trails from my stash, that I’d cut with Sheba, my Cougar cutting machine, ages ago. I stuck them down with Crafter’s Companion Stick & Stay spray adhesive.

I stuck the flowers down with Pinflair gel glue. I always use a cocktail stick for this – I find it a lot easier to control than a syringe, and I find that if you put this glue in a syringe, it is not long before it dries out and sets, wasting glue and ruining a good syringe!

The final step was to add some holly Stickles (glitter glue) to the centre of each flower.

The completed card. Nice and pretty for an elderly lady, I think!

Left out on the desk overnight to give the Pinflair glue and the Stickles time to set.

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.