May cards...

Did you miss me, all two of you (or sometimes 3!)?  I participated in a mail art project for the first 4 weeks in May and essentially stopped making cards and blogging about them.  It's taken me a few days to get back into the card-making swing of things, but I'm glad to be back!!!  I'll write more about the mail art experience soon, but I wanted to share the cards I did make this month.

I had to send not one, but two sympathy cards this month.  In the spirit of my overarching card-making goal of using the bits I have lying around, I used a panel made with a Tim Holtz Floral stencil and Mother of Pearl Nuvo Mousse I'd made forever ago and a sympathy sentiment from Altenew's Wildflower Garden set mounted on a piece of text paper I've had for ages.

This card accompanied a packet of much-beloved-but-never-used teapot postcards I sent to a friend who is posting pictures of her daily themed tea parties on Facebook.  I borrowed an idea I used a couple of months ago, but this time set the tea party in a garden.  The die is the Tea Party die from Hero Arts, the background stamp is Country Road from Impression Obsession, and the potted plants and flowers courtesy of various peg stamps from Rubber Stamp Tapestry.

Out of the blue, a friend sent me a jigsaw puzzle!  Like so many, I've re-kindled my love of puzzles during this time at home, so I've started rebuilding my collection.  For my thank you card, I added a Mama Elephant thank you sentiment to a background made with a stencil watercolor technique using the same Tim Holtz stencil as above and Distress inks.  I adhered the panel to another sheet of cardstock to make it a little sturdier and cut the whole piece with a jigsaw die from Impression Obsession.  I took the puzzle apart and sent the pieces in a small envelope.

Hopefully I'll make a few more cards on these last days of May, but this card is my entry into the Spring/Summer 2020 Coffee Loving Cardmakers extravaganza.  CLC does these events twice a year, and every single time I swear to myself I'm going to make so many cards because I have so very many tea- and coffee-related stamps.  In the end, if I make and enter one card, it's a miracle.

I recently got a whole bunch of coffee stamps from Impression Obsession, including this one called Coffee Talk, and I've had this coffee sentiment from Rubbernecker for a few years (This is half of the sentiment.  The other half says, "I said, honey, it's Monday, don't even play."  These two stamps together suit me to a tee and continue my tradition of sassy women and snarky things to say - yup, still not tired of it. 

I couldn't face the idea of coloring the image - coloring is not my forté - so I decided to watercolor the background - also not my forté.  This card is my fourth attempt.  First I tried to color the background without masking the image and it was okay, but not great.  Then I fussy cut a paper mask (I have no masking paper - failure) and tried again because I wanted a different shade of blue and an ombré effect going from light to dark.  The ombré was great on try #2 but some of the paint seeped under the mask leaving the women with blue faces - artful, but not ideal.  For attempt #3, I fussy cut another mask out of plastic.  But I warped the plastic when I tried to heat it a bit to dry the ink, but I forged ahead and not surprisingly, the painting was a disaster.  So I went back to the first idea of just painting carefully around the image.  Because I was able to paint without tears, I decided to quit while I was ahead and give up the ombré effect, though it would have been better with.

In the end, I like the card, but it's not in any way exciting - rather typical of my work.  I might do another version with a painted background and the image mounted on top.  I don't know why I was fixated on a single layer, but I was.  Or I could try coloring the image with pencils or markers.  Or I could get masking paper and make a grown-up mask.  Or I could throw lots of money at the problem and get some kind of Scan-n-Cut and make a mask and stencil at the same time (throwing money at craft problems is always the best solution, right?????)!  Or I could move on.  Stay tuned...

Anyway, it's fun running on about cards again.  What are you making this weekend??

CoronaCrafts - Day 7

I started working on one card over the weekend, got stymied by something, got excited about something else, and ended up with a card I didn't expect.  This card is all about a thing I love doing, and which someday, we'll get to do again: meet friends for coffee.  Or tea.  Or dinner.  Or drinks.  You get the idea.  In the topsy turvy vein, here's the front of the card, which is the last thing I made...

Background Stamp:  Love of Coffee by Picket Fence Studios; Sentiment:  Coffee Talk by Joy Clair

This card front makes me think that I've learned a thing or two from all of the cardmakers out there, and all of those hours I spend watching card-making videos.  I made an A2 card base, and cut an A2 panel.  I stamped the background image in gold on the panel  (I should have embossed it, but as this was the last stamping step of a long card-making session, I was happy this bit turned out as well as it did.).  I used my MISTI to stamp the sentiment on the card base, and then again on the panel so I would know exactly where to cut the window in the center so the sentiment would show through.  Then I was able to trim a bit off of all four sides of the panel before mounting it with foam tape on the card base. 

Here's what happens when you open the card...

Both of these dies are from Hero Arts as part of their My Monthly Hero release in 8/2018.  I didn't want the whole kit - I really only wanted the café die (on the right), but as it wasn't sold separately, I contented myself with the Tea Party die, which I bought at some point, and promptly never used.  Recently, I got to thinking about that café die, and wondered if maybe, by accident, I could find it on Ebay for a not-exorbitant amount of money.  I could!  I did!  It came on Saturday, and this card idea was born:

Contrasting scenes - one coffee, one tea, different color schemes, and different backgrounds, seen side-by-side on the inside of the card. 

The dies are the perfect size for A2 panels, and cut beautifully.  The hard part for me was deciding on the background.  I looked on Pinterest to see how other had used these dies and didn't find a ton of examples.  I was about to go for just a colored background when I remembered two cityscape stamps I have from Technique Junkies:  Watercolor NY (retired, on the L) and City Watercolors (on the R).  Perfect!  I stamped each city image with light ink on a white panel, added color with blending brushes, roughly following the lines of the image, and then stamped the image again in black.  The tea scene uses Aged Mahogany, Tattered Rose, and Spun Sugar inks; the coffee scene Vintage Photo, Tea Dye, and Sea Glass inks.

Once the backgrounds were done, I adhered a diecut over each, and then glued them to the inside of the card.  To write my message, I slipped in a plain, white card.

I love how this card came out!  I kept holding my breath waiting for something to go horribly wrong, or for me to spill something on one of the panels, but that just didn't happen, for once.  These dies make me so happy!!  I'm so glad I now have both of them!!

Tomorrow:  Woodblock Wednesday, and an unexpected, timely find!

CoronaCrafts - Day 6

Of all the Tim Holtz Distress Oxide combos, there's one I return to over and over:  Antique Linen, Victorian Velvet, and Seedless Preserves (okay, anything with Seedless Preserves works for me.  You see the background color of this blog, right?).  Here are a few different cards I've made in the past few years with that set of colors:

Image:  Tim Holtz Cityscapes

Tim Holtz Floral Layering Stencil; Sentiment:  Altenew Signature Words

Images:  Oxford Impressions Jane Austen Collection

Today's card using that color combo came out of a day of exploration with watercolor block printing.  I love this technique for simple one-layer cards, and often stamp botanical silhouette images over the color blocks.  This card is a little more involved.

I'd made the print, stamped Hero Arts' Small Newspaper Skyline (retired), and trimmed it down to size a long time ago.   I loved it mounted on black, but wanted to add some interest to the background.  I thought about adding a background stamp to the back panel for a subtle tone-on-tone look, but instead went for Cuttlebug's Old Paris embossing folder (also retired) to add some texture. But when I put the two pieces together, something was still off.  I had a scrap of glitter paper lying around that was in the right color family, so I added that to the bottom.  I liked how the glitter paper broke up the monotony of black in the background, but adding it threw the balance off.  But, like magic, adding the sentiment from Miss Ink's Decaf Background set, fixed everything.

Tomorrow we stay in the city and celebrate café life, which we'll someday be allowed to have again.