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.

Another Thank You Card

I wanted to make a special card for one lady who helped me while my hubby was away, who also took me out for a drive and for lunch – she really went the extra mile, and I had such a lovely afternoon, made all the more special because I’d just heard the disappointing news that my hubby’s return was being delayed by a day.

When she arrived, she brought me a little potted miniature rose, which I am enjoying very much – the flowers are really opening up now in the warmth of the room. It came wrapped in the prettiest paper:

and was tied around with multi-coloured raffia to co-ordinate with the paper – I’m afraid I forgot to put this in the photos! I thought it would be fun to make her a card which used some of this paper, and I made this today.

I cut the frames using Penny Duncan’s 4-point sloped shaplie mat:

http://cid-599a4ab7197c18bb.office.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/PDC%20SVG%20Files/Penny%5E4s%20Shaplies/PDC%204%20Point%20Sloped%20Shaplie%20Mat%202-16-2010.svg

and embossed the larger one in the Cuttlebug, cutting 3 layers of scrap cardstock in the same shape, slightly larger than the opening, and using my new “No More Shims Embossing Mat” to great effect. (Cuttlebug Sandwich recipe: A Plate, embossing piece made of scrap cardstock, card frame face up, No More Shims Mat, 2 B Plates.) The papers I used were from a gorgeous pack of scrapbooking papers and embellishments I got on Ebay a few weeks ago. I inked the edges with Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Victorian Velvet.

On the back of the frames, I stuck some of the transparent wrapping paper, selecting areas that had the smaller flowers printed on them. The larger one was filled from behind with several layers of the pink tissue paper, so that it had a cushioned effect. The smaller one was stuck over a solid shape cut from the scrapbooking paper. These frames were glued to the front of the card, the smaller one being left open at the top to hold the tag.

The tag was one of the die-cut embellishments which came with the scrapbooking papers, and the raffia was from the miniature rose gift wrapping, tied and then frayed. The Thank You sentiment was one that I cut for my other thank you cards (on the previous Hand-Made Cards post), as were the flowers, only this time I coloured them differently.

I swiped my Dried Marigold Distress Ink pad onto my craft mat and spritzed it with water, and coloured the flowers by swirling them in the ink, and dried them with my heat gun. I then swiped my Victorian Velvet Distress Ink pad onto the craft mat and used this as a palette to watercolour the markings on the flower petals, and I then spritzed them with DIY glimmer mist made from Spun Sugar Distress Ink re-inker mixed with Perfect Pearls (in Perfect Pearl colour) and water, and again dried them with my heat gun. I re-did the detail with the Victorian Velvet, using my paintbrush as before, as this needed re-defining after the glimmer mist had been applied. Finally, I edged the petals with Victorian Velvet Distress Ink.

The flowers, and some leaf trails the same as those I used on the previous thank you cards, were attached to the top of the larger frame, and the tag inserted into the top of the smaller frame. I inked the edges of the white base card with Victorian Velvet Distress Ink and then attached the card front.

Thank You Cards

Well, I’ve finished my cards! I made 15, which I thought was a huge amount, but Celeste on the Creative Inspirations group makes 45 and more at a time and would blink and miss 15!! Anyway, this is a big production run by my standards!
I am so grateful to Penny Duncan of
http://pennyduncancreations.blogspot.com
for her free downloadable .svg cut files, which I used to create the flowers for these cards – a doddle, using SCAL 2, to cut them on Jiminy, my new Cricut machine! The flowers on my previous post were made for these cards, and also the embossed gold card. They have all been sent off now, and I hope the recipients really enjoy receiving them. I so enjoyed making them, and while I was doing it, thinking of all these lovely ladies who came in and helped me while my hubby was away, and also I sent one to my GP to thank her for her support in my recent DLA application – without her support, I am sure I would not have been awarded it, and it’s such a weight off my mind.

So – if any of you are reading this – a Big Thank You to you all!