Cardmaking - Feb - shrink plastic card

These cards feature a handmade shrink plastic leaf!! Love playing with shrink plastic!! These were stamped with permanent ink on the rough side of the Rough and Ready shrink plastic - available at Michaels - and coloured in with colour pencils and chalks. We trimmed them to the edge of the stamped design and heated them with a heat gun. They go a little crazy and then flatten out nicely. To be sure they are flat I just tap them with a wood block just after heating. Give it a try - fun way to make perfect card accents!!
The trees and quote were stamped in bleach and I then thermally embossed one in metallic embossing powder!!
I make a stamp pad for my bleach - a foam tray, a layer of paper towel and a teaspoon or so of bleach. Works well for applying the bleach evenly to the stamp. Layered onto metallic paper and then onto the card front. Added the little leaf with a glue dot!! Done!!
If you have some shrink plastic in your stash, get it out and make a few cute accents for cards!!

Cardmaking - Feb - butterfly cards

Love the way these worked out!! I created some alcohol ink backgrounds using several blues at the top and green at the bottom then stamped on some flowers using black StazOn. I embellished the flowers with watercolour. Layered onto black, onto embossed layer and then the card front. My main cardstock was white and I found it a bit stark so I just added a bit of watercolour in green around the edge of the front of my card which softened it just nicely. Thrifty Tip: Great little technique when you don't have the right colour of cardstock. You can use watercolour, chalks or markers to add the colour you need.
The butteflies were purchased at a local $1 store in the houseware department - they were fridge magnets!! I removed the magnets and glued them to my card using glue dots!!! I love the colours and texture of this card!!

Cardmaking - Feb - Yo Yo card

Yo Yo s!! These used to be popular years ago and here they are again!! We created these from a 4" circle of fabric which was basted all the way around the edge. Draw the top basting thread - be sure not to draw on the bottom one as well as it will cause problems and will not gather properly. Continue to draw on the thread and create gathers until you have a tight center then tie both ends of top thread together. Be careful not to pull the thread right out!! We just flattened the gathering to create the yoyo! Used several punchies (1/2" and 1") to cover the threads and cut edges in the middle in the front, added a punchie on the back to make it easier to attach to our scallop and held it all together with a brad. Added a decorative edge to our strip and layered it onto the front of our card with our trimmed embossed layer (CB).
It is nice to add some handmade accents to your cards and this would be great for any time you have used fabric to create a gift. You can use a scrap to make a yo yo for the card!! Really helps to personalize the greetings you are giving with the gift.

Therese

Cardmaking - Feb - pouffy flower card

Another month has come and gone!! Had my cardmaking session this past week!! Time is flying by!!
We created these cool little pouffy flowers for these cards!! Eight scallop punchies (SU) of tissue paper stapled in the center to a cardstock scallop punchie is all it is!! Scrunch your scallop punchies, flatten, stack and staple. Once stapled you scrunch the first one really hard to the middle and then each subsequent one gets the same scrunch until you have done them all. Makes a nice 3D accent for any crafty item you might be creating. I added little leaves - SU five petal punchie cut apart!! Too easy. I got my inspiration from this posting from Mercy's blog. I layered that onto a metallic silver square and then onto a decorative edged white square. The middle accent is a strip (1.5") of white cardstock punched on both sides with the MS doily border punch. On the first card I added some flowers to the strip and some dimension to the leaves with watercolour. The bottom of the card has a layer of metal tape - heat duct tape from the hardware store - glued to the bottom edge and then embossed with D'vine Swirl (CB) embossing folder.
The flowers flatten fairly easily so they should go through the mail fairly easily. You could add a note to the card that the flower needs a little scrunching to look its best.

Therese