House Move Card and New Envelope Board

Last weekend, my aunt moved into a residential home near my cousin in Somerset, so I made her a “welcome to your new home” card. While Mum was away, my sister took her to see my aunt once she had settled in, and she said the place was very nice, and was on the high street in a country market town. When Mum saw the card I’d made, she said it looked very much like the real thing, which I was pleased about, not having seen it!

I sketched the outline of the houses onto a piece of scrap office printing paper and then went round the outline with a black zig permanent pen. After drawing in the details (roof tiles, chimneys, windows etc.), I accentuated the edges with a thicker Zig pen to create some shadows.

Using Distress Inks as watercolours (smooshing the ink pad on my craft sheet and then picking up the ink on a wet brush), I painted most of the houses with Tea Dye, and used Black Soot for the shadows and for the roof tiles, to create a monochrome effect. I picked out one of the houses in colour (Spiced Marmalade for the roof, and Barn Door for the house itself) to make it pop.

I matted and layered this drawing onto a piece of scrap gold card that was part of a face cream box. To create the background on the base card, I applied circular shapes with an Inkylicious Ink Duster in Tea Dye and Aged Mahogany Distress Inks, and after assembling the card, I wrote the sentiment by hand.

On the inside, I used the same Distress Inks to add a bit of interest to the white card, and again hand-wrote the text.

WeR Memory Keepers Envelope Punch Board

I recently saw this online and was impressed by its ease of use, and the fact that you can use it to create other objects besides envelopes – boxes, gift pouches, etc. I have never had any success with envelope boards in the past and this looked so easy, I decided to give it a try.

I was certainly not disappointed! The board comes with a chart printed on it (inches) and with a separate sheet with metric numbers. It comes with its own bone folder which slots into the semi-circular recess on the right hand side. You can see that there is a scoring line running diagonally from the top on the right, and a central button, from which projects a small pointer. To the left of the button is a ruler, in inches and centimetres.

What you do is to choose the size on the chart which is nearest to your card size, and it tells you how big to cut the paper. It is very clever because the measurements it gives you for cutting and scoring make allowances for the need for there to be a bit of “play” so that the card is not too tight a fit in the envelope.

You line the paper up with edge of the board at the top. The chart also tells you the measurement to line the paper up to, against the ruler. Once you have done this, you press the blue button, which punches out a notch. Without moving the paper, you score down the diagonal groove. You then remove the paper, and turn it counter-clockwise through 90 degrees. There is no longer any need to measure, because all you have to do is line up the scored line to the pointer, and then punch and score again. You repeat this for the other two sides.

The final step is to insert each corner in turn into the back of the button, and punch. This rounds the corners.

Here is how my envelope came out.

You can see that I have lightly inked it in the manner as before, and in the same colours, but keeping it very light.

I turned it over and inked one of the flaps, which will be the opening of the envelope, again using the same colours.

I extended the inking down into the centre of the envelope – this inking would then become the “lining” of the envelope.

Here is the envelope made up.

I folded the envelope along all of the score lines, and ran my ATG gun along the edges of the flap opposite to the opening, and stuck them down, thus holding the envelope secure. If you wanted to, you could run a little envelope glue along the edges of the top flap, but I didn’t bother – I just slipped the flap into the back of the envelope.

Here is the card with its matching envelope.

If you make a long thin envelope, the bottom flap will project upwards in a point. You can always cut this off if you don’t like it. You can also change which flaps go on front and which behind, when making it up, so that you can have a long thin envelope opening at one end, if you so desire.

I suddenly find that I am able to make cards of any size or shape! Before the board, I tended to restrict myself to either A5 or A6 (finished size) cards, because these were the sizes for which I had envelopes. Today I really pushed the boat out, and made a square card! This is such a totally cool tool and it’s so easy to use, to get a good result every time. I can see this becoming a very useful tool indeed, and I’d recommend it to anyone to add to their equipment arsenal.

WOYWW 271

For details of WOYWW and how to join in the most fun nosey fest online, please click the WOYWW logo in my sidebar.

Not a great deal going on on my desk this week, but you can see the third of the recent cards I’ve been making, embellishing teabag stains with Zentangle drawing. To the left of the card, in the centre of the desk, you can see some of my Zentangle ATC-sized cards with patterns, which normally live in my large Zentangle album. Just above this is my Stamping Up set of sentiment stamps – I have used the “Thank You” one on the card. My usual collection of acrylic paints and gel mediums and gesso at the back of the desk, and on the left, my Inktense pencils and in the red box, my pastel pencils. On top of this is a software CD ready to install on my computer. At the back you can also see a little pile of distress inks and my usual dirty water pot, in front of which is my red Stanley knife – I can’t get on with normal craft/exacto knives and find this is much the best knife! On top of the gesso is some stazon ink and a home-made bubble wrap stamp. I think that about covers it!

I am now feeling a lot better after my recent heart attack, and yesterday I went back to the hospital for my annual gastro-enterology check, and the consultant is pleased with how I am getting on, with my ulcerative colitis responding well to the medication. He wants me to have another colonoscopy in February to check on how things are, and also to screen for bowel cancer as I am more at risk of getting this with the inflamed bowel. Mum’s heart scan results came back yesterday and she’s got atrial fibrillation which is not good news for the potential for causing strokes, so she’s now on warfarin. Last weekend Phoebe, one of our cats, scratched her arm and it was pouring blood everywhere, so off my hubby went with her to A&E again, and it’s now all bound up and needing dressing every couple of days (just like when she bashed her legs) and she’s on antibiotics. Never rains but it pours, eh.

Anyway, things are looking up – I had a perm today so I’ve got nice curls again, and having one’s hair done always gives one a lift!

Have a great week, everyone.

Zentangle Teabag Art–Two Thank You Cards

Now updated with video.

I have a lot to be thankful for, especially all those lovely people who have sent me cards and emails and gifts since my heart attack. Thank you, everyone, who has sent such lovely messages, by email or blog comment, or by phone or card. Today was the first day I managed to get into my ARTHaven and do anything creative for some time. I am still trying to catch up with everything that got neglected while I was in hospital and then resting at home, and as always, my art gets shoved to the bottom of the list! I want to make some cards to send to those who have been especially kind with their gifts, and an invitation out to lunch.

I am still obviously not myself because I had a field day with my video camera today – it was on standby when it should have been recording, and recording nothing when it should have been on standby! I still have to check the clips and edit them, and it may be that there is no useful footage. Also, working on such a small scale, I realised after recording the first one that it might not have been zoomed in enough to see, so I zoomed in good and proper for the second one and then discovered that I hadn’t been recording… Duh.

I also forgot to photograph the original teabag stains that I chose for the backgrounds of the two cards, so if the videos are any use, I may be able to take some stills from them.

Anyway… I do have some photos of the two finished cards. Both were based on the stains left by round teabags this time – I have not worked on these before, and I love the soft outlines. For the first one, I wanted to achieve a more pictorial and representative effect than my usual abstract designs – this card was for someone we visited the other day for lunch, and after being cooped up for so long, I really appreciated an outing, and our drive took us through the beautiful lush green Devon countryside with its gently rolling hills, and this is what I wanted to depict in miniature scale.

The sentiment on this first card was stamped using Tea Dye Distress Ink (which was also used to distress the background card which was a bit too yellow). I have had the stamp for ages and cannot tell you what it is, I am afraid.

I cut out the completed art work and mounted it on a piece of recycled packaging which had attractive striations. Originally I was going to use some torn corrugated cardboard but this was much too heavy and dominated the design.

The second one was more abstract. For the base card I used white card instead of the yellow-ish cream of the first one, and muted it down with Tea Dye Distress Ink, applied with an Inkylicious Ink Duster.

Instead of photographing this one on one of my pieces of scratch paper that I clean my brushes on, I decided to lay it on a diamond pattern sheet of teabag stains. The sentiment on this one was hand-written.

In both designs, I outlined much of the staining detail left by the drying teabag on the watercolour paper, and then added a few patterns, trying to leave a little white space. To do the drawing I used a Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pen (super fine) in sepia, which is my preferred pen for Zentangle teabag art. These pens are archival, water- and light-fast, and lovely to work with. I also tried using my ancient pastel pencils for shading, which was a first. It didn’t require much, and then I smudged it with a paper stump. Before I did the shading I thought the designs looked very flat and the patterns were not differentiated sufficiently from one another. In the Devon Hills one, I also added a touch of blue, and a touch of teal, to indicate the sky and the sea and river. Finally, I gave both designs a light spray with fixative. I hope I have achieved a good representation of our beautiful local countryside with all its variety, not to mention the changeable weather!

I have several more to do, and to prepare for a bit of a production line, I designed a back piece with Serif PagePlus, my desktop publishing software, giving details of how the technique was done, and a short explanation of Zentangle. This was printed on the left half of a landscape piece of A5 card, which was then folded in readiness for the front embellishment.

Watch this space – if I haven’t made a complete pig’s dinner of the videos, I’ll upload them in due course!

“Bejewelled” Card Inspired by Helen Allen

Now updated with videos.

My blogging and Youtube buddy, Helen, has again inspired me to make a card after she’d uploaded one. This time it is her “Bejewelled Card” – this is not really my style at all, but I decided to try it because I needed to make a birthday card fairly quickly, and it’s always good to stretch the envelope occasionally (no pun intended!), to think outside the box, and to make something one wouldn’t usually make.

As Helen says, this card design is easily adapted to different styles, with different colours, for different occasions. I decided to make a pretty girlie version.

The first picture shows the materials I used for this card – I forgot to put in the titanium white acrylic paint.

Following Helen’s instructions, I spattered the base card and the piece for the topper (far right and centre in the following photo) to create an interesting background. I didn’t have the iridescent paints that she used, but I mixed some acrylics with iridescent medium.

The result wasn’t all that shimmery, but once the card was finished it was fine. I didn’t find the spattering as easy as Helen – I didn’t have a nice long-bristled soft paint brush, and I think my paint might have been a bit too thick. When I’d finished, I found a lot of spattering all over the stuff at the back of the work surface – I hadn’t realised I was missing the card altogether a lot of the time!! I think I definitely need more practice at this.

On the left in the photo above is a piece of the purple card, that I used to clean off all the excess paint from my palette and brush. The blue was a very strong colour so there’s very little purple in it, but I like the waves, or clouds, that the pattern has generated, and this piece will go into my backgrounds folder for future use.

The following is a closer shot of the topper piece, with its spatters.

This is the spattering on the base card.

Here’s a close-up of the waves/clouds background piece – I’m really pleased with how this turned out!

As well as creating that piece, I cleaned off the brush on my scratch paper, which is now looking like this.

It needs a few more layers before I’ll be satisfied with it!

In my stash, I have quite a collection of used gift wrapping paper – I keep this if it’s interesting, or has motifs that can be cut out. This is one of my favourite sheets, which you can see I’ve already used – it is slightly shimmery and has lots of gorgeous cut-out-able butterflies! I decided to cut some out for this project.

Here is the topper piece, complete with its sparkles – a mixture of tiny cup sequins, little silver stars, magenta-coloured gems, and Stickles. It really is very sparkly indeed, and of course this doesn’t show up properly on the photograph!

Here’s a detail of the sparkles, and they do look slightly more sparkly here.

Ages ago when I was having some fun with my Dylusions sprays, I saved some scraps of kitchen paper which were gloriously coloured with these inks, and I decided to use some of this on this project. Some of the pieces were quite stiff, as I think they have got some gel medium on them. Also in this photo, you can see the butterflies that I cut out of the wrapping paper.

Before cutting the butterflies out, I stuck them down onto a piece of scrap card to give them a bit more body, using regular matt gel medium. I painted some iridescent gel medium over the top for some extra pearliness, and then cut them out.

Before attaching these embellishments, I matted and layered the topper onto some greenish-grey shiny card. I didn’t want to use mirror card or anything to dominating, but just wanted a subtle border for the topper.

Here is the finished outside of the card, with the butterflies and Dylusions papers attached. I stuck all of these down with hot glue. I flipped the butterfly wings up off the surface, and I then added a good blob of Pinflair gel glue under each butterfly wing, to stop them getting flattened, and left the whole thing to dry overnight. (By this time the birthday was over, so I sent her an e-card and promised the “real” card would be on its way soon!)

The next day I completed the inside of the card and the envelope. For the sentiment, I chose one of the Stampin’ Up “Perfectly Penned” sentiment stamps.

After inking the edges of the inside of the card with Picked Raspberry Distress Ink, I stamped the sentiment using the same ink.

I chose three butterfly stamps from the Stampin’ Up “Papillon Potpouri” set.

I used the Picked Raspberry Distress Ink to stamp a couple of these inside the card.

I inked the edges of the envelope and stamped some more butterflies into the corners. After this I sprayed the envelope with some fixative just in case it got rained on in the post.

I made an envelope liner from some more of the butterfly wrapping paper.

Here is the finished card and envelope.

Helen – I hope you like my interpretation of your “Bejewelled Card” – I was pleased with how it turned out, and who knows, I might do this again! It was fun to do, and the result is beautifully girlie!

I have made two videos on the making of this card:

Recycled Mini-Album Pages–Circles

I’ve completed another page in my recycled mini-album. For the background I used a piece of kitchen paper which I’d been using for mopping up and cleaning brushes, with a predominantly black and white colour scheme with a touch of blue. I love the randomness of these papers, and also the large scratch sheets I use to work on, cleaning my brushes and rubber stamps on them and generating layers that build up in to unique background sheets.

Here is the black and white kitchen paper. Kitchen paper is 2-ply, and the layers can be pulled apart so you get twice as much for your money!

Here’s another one with a different colour scheme.

Sometimes the paint causes the layers to stick together, and they have to be gently teased apart. Sometimes this is not possible without tearing the paper, but I love the holes that result! It all adds to the texture.

I shall probably be using some of this one in the Recycled Mini-Album too.

Here are some newer pieces of kitchen paper at the beginning of their creative life:

Who knows what they will end up looking like? Top left in the picture are some used baby wipes. They are now dry, of course, but I can still use them for mopping up. They have the added advantage that they do interesting things when heated, shrinking up and eventually breaking into holes, so definitely useful for mixed media projects.

This is the scratch paper I’m creating at the moment – as it was just after I finished my current page. I have been concentrating on circles and swirls. You can generate interesting patterns by thinking about how to move the brush as you clean it, rather than just scrubbing randomly.

There was quite a bit of black and white paint left on the palette at the end of the project, and I lifted this off with a large foam brush and added it to the scratch paper, resulting in this:

I find this all very intriguing and adventurous, and it goes along with my current recycling ethos! Perhaps to be truly recycling, I should use newspaper as my scratch papers… or cardboard packaging? Certainly ideas worth considering.

I also found a couple of background sheets I made several years ago, which may come in for this album too. I can’t remember exactly what I did, but there is definitely some distress embossing powder on them. They were embossed using a Cuttlebug embossing folder (Iron Works). They are wonderfully rough and textured.

However, to return to my Recycled Mini-Album pages, here is the page with the kitchen paper stuck down with regular matt gel medium.

You can see the borders from the larger pages underneath. Laid on the page are some circles cut from silver tissue paper. My hubby brought home some wedding service sheets one day – people always leave them behind and he knows I can often make use of the materials. These sheets had been hand-made by the couple and weren’t anything to write home about, but they had these tissue paper circles glued on not very firmly, so it was easy to pull them off and keep them for future use. I thought they’d fit in well with this page, and they also dictated the theme of the page which is circles.

I lightly distressed the two photos using a combination of Weathered Wood (fast becoming one of my favourites!) and Black Soot Distress Inks. I am finding that the photos seem to be developing a green tinge when I use them in the album – I am not sure what is causing this, but it could be a combination of factors, or maybe some substances reacting against each other. I have to spray the scanned and printed photos with fixative because I have an inkjet printer, and it may be this that is reacting with the gel medium used to adhere the photos to the page, or it may be a reaction between the inkjet ink and any of the products I am using.

I have made a video of the process of creating the page but as usual I am behind with my video editing and the video is not yet ready to be included with this post, but watch this space and it will appear in due course. Here is the completed page. I wasn’t sure to start with whether I liked it, but it’s beginning to grow on me!

In addition to the tissue paper circles, I have created smaller circles using the lid of a pen dipped in silver metallic acrylic paint, and also done some bubble wrap printing using the same paint. Here are the bubble wrap printing blocks I made this afternoon:

The white is the Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive which is still wet. It will dry crystal clear. I stuck the bubble wrap onto some wooden blocks I’d saved from when I unmounted all my wooden block rubber stamps and remounted them on EZ Mount foam. I got this idea watching a Youtube video this afternoon, and it certainly makes the bubble wrap easier to handle. For this project, I just used the smaller one.

The border of the page was done with the same black and white acrylics that I’ve been using for all the page borders. This time I used a circular foam applicator for the larger circles, and stencil brushes for the smaller ones, wrapping an elastic band around the bristles to keep them in a tight circular formation. I tidied up the border with black and white pens afterwards.

As a result of the position of this particular page in the signature, this border will not be visible underneath other pages.

Recycled Mini-Album Pages–Childhood

Because this album contains personal family information I am unable to share fully all the pages with you, but I can show you what I’ve been working on recently – pages concentrating on a childhood in the 1920s.

For this first page, I took three pictures (scanned and printed from the original photos) and ripped the edges to soften them. They were lightly distressed with Weathered Wood and Tea Dye Distress Inks. I created a deeply textured background from scrunched up tissue paper laid down with regular matt gel medium which was then painted with a mixture of Payne’s Grey and white acrylic paints, with a final light application of silver gilding wax on the high points of the texture. The pictures were applied with more gel medium, as were the card strips with the hand-written text. The irregular border was added at the end, following the edges of the textured background.

An important feature of this album is the arrangement of the pages throughout. All the pages were made from recycled Christmas cards painted with black gesso, and I have trimmed them so that they decrease in size to the centre of each signature, with the smallest, central one having its sides glued together to form a pocket into which a tag can be placed, which will probably be the only interactive aspect of this particular album. I am creating a different black and white border for each page so that the further into each signature you move, the more of these compound borders will be revealed.

The next picture shows some plastic packaging from some chicken pieces I bought recently. Once I spotted the gorgeous texture on the bottom, I couldn’t throw these little plastic trays away! You can see that I have cut out some pieces from the base of another identical tray.

These pieces are resting on a piece of kitchen paper that I’ve been using for mopping up – it has developed into a gorgeous grungey background which is definitely going to find its way into the album at some point. The complete chicken tray is resting on a new scratch paper which is developing well into a nice background piece, too.

Now for the transformation of the chicken packaging! Unrecognisable, isn’t it!!

I cut the border off the lozenge-shaped textured pieces, and with three of these these border pieces I created a frame for the journaling by gluing them down onto a piece of card which has previously been painted with a mixture of blue, green and crimson acrylic paints. Onto this I wrote the text, and then glued the whole thing in place onto the page. The lozenge-shaped pieces were painted and then glued direct to the page after the photo had been applied. I added a touch of gold gilding wax to the raised texture of all the pieces. (I think gilding wax is becoming my signature material as I simply can’t resist using it!)

For the background of the page, I took my Decreasing Circles stencil and applied Versamark embossing ink through it with a small piece of Cut’n’Dry foam. I added some strencilling over the edge of the photo as well, to make it blend into the page. After this I painted on some Perfect Pearls in Cappuccino and (I think) Green Patina.

I made a small tag from scrap card which I painted black, and embellished in the same way with the stencil and Perfect Pearls. Onto this, with my white Sigma pen, I wrote some journaling about the two older generations depicted in the photo. I made two circles from card stamped with archival black ink using a flower stamp and inked with three shades of Distress Inks – Tea Dye, Victorian Velvet and Weathered Wood, and these were glued either side of the tag. Using a 1 1/2 in circle punch, I cut a semi-circle from the edge of the tag pocket so that when the tag was inserted, the tag puller would completely fill the semi-circle.

A black and white heart border completed the page, softened a little with some curves on the right hand page.

Some detail:

I added a little Perfect Gold Perfect Pearl from my Perfect Pearls palette, to outline the chicken packaging pieces and add a bit of definition.

A detail shot of the tag, slightly pulled out, revealing how the tag puller fits into the semi-circular hole, and showing a little of the white jorunaling inside, and the stencilled background.

Turning the page, the second childhood page is revealed.

This picture shows the reverse side of the tag puller. I embellished the pages with some clear heat embossing to create some texture – the stamps were from the Tim Holtz Bitty Grunge set by Stampers Anonymous. The photos were stuck down with gel medium. Over the bottom of the left hand photo, I stamped with Versamark, using another stamp from the same set, and then heat embossed with Distress Embossing Powder to give a raised, rough texture.  I went over the entire page with Versamark, using the small piece of Cut’n’Dry foam dabbed randomly over the page, and then I applied some Perfect Pearls with a soft brush – the colours were as before, but using Interference Green instead of Green Patina. This treatment was extended over the photos too.

Over the right hand photo, I stuck down a die cut vintage bicycle, one of several which Julia, our WOYWW hostess, sent me some time ago – this particular one was lime green to start with, but I distressed it with Tea Die Distress Ink and then applied it with gel medium, some of which ended up on the surface, creating a nice random texture, which was highlighted by the application of some copper gilding wax, giving the bicycle a lovely vintage, rusty look. I did not add further borders to this particular page.

Videos will follow in due course – I’m still in the process of editing them.

The next page will concentrate on student days and young manhood.

Altered Pizza Box

Edited – now with video.

A mixed media project. I am giving away one of my flower painted Ikea mirrors as a house-warming present, and recently discovered that it fits exactly inside a 10-inch pizza box. I thought the box needed a bit of decoration to make it a slightly more acceptable wrapping, and I ended up making a full mixed media project out of it!

I got a bit carried away and forgot to take any photos during the making, but I did video the whole process.

I started by covering the whole of the outside of the box with gesso, and then had a rummage in my Tim Holtz papers – they’ve all got a bit muddled up and I’m not sure which stack they come from – either Crowded Attic or Lost and Found, but it doesn’t really matter – they’re all nice and vintage. I found some nice faces and tore them out and distressed the edges with my distressing tool, and stuck them down onto the box with PVA adhesive.

I also stuck down some ripped up corrugated cardboard with some of the surface paper torn away, which gives a gorgeous texture. Once the PVA was dry, I painted these pieces with gesso, and then began painting the whole surface with acrylics.

I chose a blue and green palette, and did some dry brushing with white acrylic, and once I’d got the effect I wanted, I added some iridescent gel medium which gives a gorgeous shimmery surface, and then some pearlised acrylic ink, concentrating on the textured corrugated parts. The whole thing was extremely shimmery by this time.

I created some text, “Home is where the heart is” by cutting out some words and letters from scrap printed paper in my stash, and stuck these down onto a further piece of scrap paper with regular matt gel medium, which I also used to stick the pieces down onto the surface. Before this I coloured them with Victorian Velvet Distress Ink.

Once they were laid down, I took an old credit card and added some crimson acrylic paint with the edge of the card dipped in the paint, creating frames around the words and around the face pictures. I then added some more lines using my white marker pen.

To form a border, I used more of the crimson acrylic paint, and also some dark blue, and once the border design was laid down, I went round the edges and embellished the border with the white marker pen, and finally added some shadows with a mixture of Payne’s Grey and white acrylic paint.

The final touch was to add some Treasure Gold gilding wax to the raised texture. A really shiny, shimmery effect!

Once the outside was dry, I painted the whole of the inside roughly with gesso. This will be fine once there is tissue paper inside the box, wrapping the mirror.

Here is the finished box, propped up with the edges of the lid showing. I painted these with a mixture of green acrylics.

The box closed:

The sides of the lid go inside the box, and I painted the sides of the base with rich blue acrylic paint.

Now for some details. This is the bottom left corner. You can see one of the pictures I laid down, and also some of the corrugated cardboard. I love the effect of the top surface layer of paper being partially ripped away.

One of the face pictures. They are pretty subtle with the iridescent gel medium, and they also reflect the light so it’s a bit difficult to see them in the photos.

Finally a detailed shot of the text.

I think you can see how shiny and shimmery the surface is in this photo.

A fun project to do, and I completed it in an afternoon. One day I would like to paint and embellish the rest of my pizza boxes, which are used to store various materials in my ARTHaven.