Sewn Tear Card

This was an interesting card to make.

The green marble looking paper is

the polished stone technique.

That is alcohol inks on glossy paper.

It can also be done with rubbing alcohol and

dye ink re-inkers.

Metallic gold, silver, bonze and copper are available

in Krylon Leafing Pens.

The Ranger Alcohol Inks with the accompanying

blender is by far the easiest product that I have

found to use.

Talc your polished stone before stamping. You will

have to use embossing powder if you have used metallics

in your polished stone as the they "float" over the inks.

When you are done heating the embossing powder

and it has had ample time to cool, lightly buff the paper

with a soft cloth to bring back

the lovely glossy polished stone look.

A fine metallic thread was used to sew the "tear".

When less is more

Sometimes less is more.

This sympathy card uses two stamps

and two embossing powders.

It is a very simple card to make,

but has a definite elegance.

The "With Sympathy" stamp is an unmounted stamp.

I have no clue who is the manufacturerer.

The leafy vine border is by Art Impression.

1. Talc the whole card to avoid strays of embossing powder.

2. Stamp the leafy vine border across the bottom and the right

side, apply green embossing powder

and cook it with the heat gun.

3. Stamp the sympathy phrase, apply gold embossing powder

and cook it with the heat gun.

This is a plain white card base.

To get the scanner to show the whole card I had to put

it on a colored background paper, so this explains

the goldy brown border.

Never knew I would be doing a blog when I scanned this. LOL

I scan or take pictures of all my cards and

when I get nine new ones I print them all

up on one sheet of inexpensive photo paper

as wallet sized pictures. This is big

enough for me to see exactly what I have done.

I no longer live in that fantasy land where

"I'll remember how I did that".

It has also helped me see how my stamping

has changed over the last 5 years.

Flourish Background

This card began on a 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 inch piece

of white card stock.

The background flourishes have been stamped

with VersaMark and embossed

with clear embossing powder.

The next step was to lightly sponge several shades

of blue dye ink all over the whole thing until

the flourishes are a little easier to see.

Now lightly talc to avoid strays.

Flick paper to get off excess talc.

With a dark pigment ink, stamp a border

flouish and the a phrase.

I used dark blue embossing powder with this design.

The design is now ready to glue to your card base.

Basic Stamping Tip:

Talc is easiest to find in the baby section

of your local discount store.

Look for the cheapest brand they have.

The ingredients should say something like: talc, fragrance.

I keep mine in a little votive candle cup

and spread it with part of an old washcloth.

Use whatever is handy and is small enough to

leave in the votive cup.

I talc everything I use embossing powder on

EXCEPT the dark cardstocks.

Vintage photo card

It all began with an old vintage photo from the internet.

The couple looked so romantic.

I wanted to create a romantic vintage card to use

for weddings.

The card base is from DCWV's 12x12 Old World Stack

cut to 8.5x11 then cut in half to become an A2 card base.

(A2 = 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 inches)

The edges of the card are heavily distressed with

brown ink.

The image is printed on tracing paper.

I used temporary double sided tape to adhere

the tracing paper to a piece of light weight card stock

and ran it through the printer. If you try this make sure

that the leading edge of your papers are taped as

close as possible to the edge.

I did a little distressing of the tracing paper printed photo,

then mounted it on gold gift wrap, followed by dark

brown paper that was then cut with

a decorative scissors.

On medium tan cardstock a

piercing template was carefully positioned

at each corner to frame the picture.

It was carefully cut out and distressed.

The last touch was the button with the shank cut off.

If you use a lot of buttons with shanks in your crafting,

there are special shank cutting plyers that

can give you a very close smooth cut.

Vintage Christmas

Have you every gotten a card all done,

only to have the last thing you stamp be

a BIG mistake.

Well, here is my mistake.

The Noel in red embossing powder is dreadful.

I didn't toss it, but looked for a way to salvage the card.

Here is the fix!

The Noel by Artistic Impressions was stamped and embossed

in fine line black on another piece of

Vintage Flourishes paper that I had made.

Then it was torn out, the edges were distressed and

"burned" with Ranger's Distressed Inks.

This was layered on a piece of bronze

mirror paper that has the corners rounded.

I toned down mirror paper

by sponging some brown ink on the whole

and just a touch of black lightly around the outside edge.

The inks refused to dry on the mirror card stock

so I hit it with Krylon's Workable Fixatif,

then glued it to the card base

over the ugly and very out of place red Noel.

Magic!!! another mess up saved.

Basic Stamping Tip -

Krylon Workable Fixatif is wonderful to prevent

smearing of certain color treatments, such as

chalks, mica powders, PearlEx, etc.

Simply apply the color treatment to

your project, lightly spray with the Fixatif,

let dry and THEN it is possible to add more

layers of color treatment if desired.

This allows one to add layer after layer

of color for more depth and shading.

It also prevents accidental smearing of your

artistic endeavours by the recipient.