Back to Cards

Back in October, I went with Michelle to a big paper craft weekend. We had a great time and the following are my results. Funny thing is, I took off right out of the gate and had heaps of cards on Michelle, but in the end, at the last day, she had me, of course, just like always, she made double what I did, and hers are always a lot more intricate than mine. I wish I had some of hers to show you.

So here we go. This isn't all of them, and the pictures are mostly blurry, so sorry about that, but you still can get the idea of what they looked like. I PhotoShopped the heck out of them just to get something I could use... got a new camera in the US, too bad I didn't have it in October!

I used Michelle's Cuttle Bug to create this beautiful textured background paper. I have to get one of these things.














This stamp was so cute, but I overworked the auqwash pen on the cake and ended up buckling the card stock, so to fix it, we made the buckling more pronounced and put foam tape on the back of it so cake stayed uniformly puffy. I also used Kindy Glitz to shiny it up a bit. The Happy Birthday is stamped in black, then over stamped with VersaMark and embossed with clear embossing powder. You'll notice there's also some handmade pink paper in a strip behind the stamped part, and little pink flowers stamped all over.

My favorite card I made, all weekend, was the one on the left. The card stock was a very light green and I put it through Michelle's Cuttle Bug for the embossed look. Then I stamped the tree and the greeting in a deep garden green. When it was dry, I Kindy Glitzed the tiny leaves on the tree. I love the tree, and it was an inexpensive stamp!

The card on the right, I had the flower brad and was lucky enough to find paper to match in my box.














Another couple of stamps I bought just for that weekend. The Birthday stamp and the cute little bird.















The card on the left was the first one I made, followed closely by the one on the right. The one on the right has acetate fastened on with the flower brad. The Happy Birthday is stamped on the acetate. I thought it was a cool idea. Unfortunately it was the only card that worked that way, proving that once you have a good idea, it might not work again the second time around!










These two cards were simple and quick as. The lavender one was just card stock ran through the Cuttle Bug for the embossing. I put a little Kindy Glitz on it and hand wrote Happy Birthay, and added the gross grain ribbon. The one on the right was even quicker. Patterned paper with Kindy Glitz and a chiffon ribbon. Simple.

Another simple, quick card. Again, patterned paper, a bit of glitz, a bit of ribbon and a couple of brads.

Gotta love that Cuttle Bug!

Starfish Shshshaker!

I was commissioned again to make a couple of special cards.

As you all must know by now, my favorite types of cards are shaker cards. Even though they are a pain in the rear, I just love the interactive-ness of them, and the surprise of the recipient is enough to make these cards worth the time spent.

This first card was made for an 18th birthday, for a girl who loves the beach. I had these cute little starfish laying around for a while and felt this was the appropriate time to pull them out. I think these could have been some of the very first embellishments I bought when I started paper crafting almost 8 years ago. The sand is real sand from a beach near our home. How authentic! lol


















I started out with white Bazzil Basics cardstock. The frame is a sandwich of Bazzil ribbed cardstock, then a piece of Jac paper, a piece of acetate, another piece of Jac paper, then a piece of thin foam core board to make it a bit stiffer. I only had thin foam tape so there's a couple layers of that.

A shaker secret I learned from a pro (Michelle), is to use Dimensional Magic in the corners on the inside, so just in case you didn't get the tape in the right places, all of the filler won't fall out. I love Dimentional Magic. Its almost a good as super glue!

So after the DM dried, I very carefully flipped the frame over, being careful to leave the top tape paper on so I could funnel the sand in, and placed it. Unfortunately, and this is where I get very real and admit that things don't always work the way they're supposed to... after I had put most of the sand in, for some reason, the frame had gotten stuck down crooked. Grr, I hate crooked and pride myself on things always measuring up, almost perfectly. So instead of being able to just pull it off and replace it, the tape was so sticky it took half the cardstock with it, and some of the tape actually stuck to the card. (rolleyes) So I had to go on a search through my paper box looking for another sheet of this cardstock, come back to the table, clean all the spilled sand off my work space, and give it another try.

The Happy Birthday is stamped with a dark blue Brilliance ink on matching cardstock, which has the edges distressed, then layered on dark blue Bazzil Basics. Then to kinda tie into the Nautical theme, I tied it all together with the red and white ribbon. I have to admit, I did play with it for a bit after it was done. ;-)

The next card was a wedding card. A few years ago I had found this gorgeous pack of scrapbooking paper that I always felt was just too pretty to use for just anything. I had to wait and use it for something special. I KNOW that all serious paper crafters can relate to this. Come on now, admit it, you all have that special piece of paper or card that you can't bare to use...

there, now didn't that feel good to admit that?! lol
















Again, I started with Bazzil Basics cardstock, this has the crosshatch design, I think its so elegant. The paper I wrote about above, is the paper on the left side. It's some of the most gorgeous, textured stuff I've seen. It was also matched in the package, with other equally gorgeous papers, this was just my favourite.

I wanted to try something different and used some of the netting I used on the gift I wrapped a couple of posts ago... and I tied it over the left side. I could have used ribbon but didn't want to take anything away from the paper. This netting added a bit of interest.

You can't see it in this picture, and you have to really look for it in person, but I used a stamp that says "love" with VersaMark ink, which provides a bit of a watermark. Just a little detail I like to add. The stamp was big enough that I only stamped it, at an angle, three times.

The hearts are embossed gold on the same colour card and carefully cut out. They are attached with foam tape to give it a bit of dimention.

For the Congratulations, I used my Marvy Marker in red and coloured onto my stamp, stamped it on the same card stock, layered it on a hairline bit of red cardstock, then on some of my favourite gold paper. This is also attached with foam tape for dimension.

Both cards are fully lined with plain paper, and have custom made envelopes.

2 50th Birthday cards and a NOT 50th birthday card

One day I got a phone call from a friend of mine telling me he had a meeting with a business mentor. During this meeting he was discussing a plan of attack for a new business venture, somehow my name and my card making abilities came up. This woman told my friend that she had a couple of very special friends who were turning 50 in the following couple of weeks and she had been looking for nice cards but had no luck finding what she wanted.

So Josh called me and gave me the story and her email address. I wrote a quick email introducing myself and asking her to tell me what she was looking for.

She wanted something gold and blingy with the birthday girls names on them. Normally, I don't do blingy, just too tizzy for me, but I struck a happy medium with these two.

I adore, adore, adore shaker cards and felt this was a perfect opportunity to make a special one.

I did this on creamy (although it looks white here) Bazzil cardstock.











I first figured out how to print the name on the front of the cardstock using Publisher and my laser printer. When I finally got that right...

I used an aquwash brush to "cut" a square from some silk paper, then I frayed it up a bit.

I then printed out a big 50 on copy paper and cut it out making a template, then traced it onto another piece of cardstock. I thought it looked a bit plain so I found a curly q stamp and used Gold Brilliance ink to do a bit of stamping, and I also applied the stamp pad directly to the edges.

Next, I attached a piece of acetate on the back of that, then the foam tape. I left a bit open at the top, folded a piece of copy paper into a funnel and carefully poured the seed beads in before removing the tape backing to seal the whole thing shut. One last thing I did before sealing it, just for something extra special, I added a tiny dark pink metallic heart in with the beads... which promptly got stuck under a piece of tape. Hmph.

I sat and played with this card for a while, very theraputic.

The next one was done on the same type and colour of cardstock...

but only this time I found this really cool ribbon type stuff that's a lot stiffer than normal ribbon. You can see that it's mounted on the left side of the card.

I dotted Dimensional Magic to the back of this ribbon stuff very carefully so it wouldn't come through the holes and look all shiny.

The gold beads are on a string and again are attached with Dimensional Magic.

The 50 is the same 50 I used on that other card. (killed two 50's with one template!) I did the next step kinda backwards, but in the end it turned out. I first traced it onto some foam core board then cut it out with my x-acto knife (gotta love those things!) I found my last sheet of Jac paper and put the numbers face down on it and traced around them, then cut the Jac paper, peeled off one side and attached it to the foam core numbers. Then I flipped them over again onto the back of this beautiful gold Japanese paper and traced them again. I removed the other backing from the Jac paper and carefully attached the Japanese paper. Yeah, in some places it wasn't perfect, but the next step took care of that. I took my trusty dusty nail file and gently filed down the paper so it both aged the edges and made them all uniform. In the end they looked professionally made.

I attached them with just regular double sided tape. The card was also printed the same time the first one was.

And who could forget the liner?!

The copy paper I used for the liner, matched the cardstock perfectly, and I just used my Fiskars edger to make this pretty leafy edge.

The last card I made was for someone very special.

You can see the cardstock is the same creamy Bazzil, I used the same cool ribbon stuff.

I found a nice piece of black ribbed cardstock (I really love this textured stuff).

The stamp is one that I brough back from the US in May. I used my Marvy Markers to colour the bits the colours I wanted, and stamped it on some cream shimmer card. I then found some tiny little pink gems and attached them with my old friend Dimensional Magic. It's attached with foam tape.

As you can see, I love my leafy Fiskars punch! I just did the front of the card.