Cards featuring beautiful botanical paper

Cards for my stash!!  I created the decorative paper I used on these cards while I was working on this calendar.  I sandwiched pressed flowers and foliage between two layers of tissue paper with matt Modge Podge.  I love the way it turned out so I decided to make some cards with it!!  I trimmed the edges to be square and even then cut the large sheet down to 3.75" squares.  I created some ivory layers (4" x 5.25") with a variety of coloured printed greetings and stitched my

beautiful paper to the top portions of them using ivory thread.  To embellish these layers I used ribbon, bakers twine, seam binding, sequins and brads.  It was fun to make them different and yet very similar.  Once I was finished, I glued these layers to coordinating card fronts to finish off my cards.  I have a few pieces of this decorative paper left and a few long scraps as well.  They may show up in cards in the new year.

Here is how I made this decorative paper. I folded a large sheet of white tissue in half to give me a mark for the middle.  I opened it up, placed it over a silicone sheet and applied Modge Podge to the left half, a few areas at the time adding botanicals (blue hydrangeas, vetch, delphiniums and some yellow flower petals) as I went.  Once the whole half was covered with botanicals and glue I applied Modge Podge to the other half and folded it over to completely cover the left hand side.

I continued to apply Modge Podge to the top surface until everything was well coated and left it to dry over night.  Voila!  Some beautiful botanical paper!!

Therese

Tarot card calendar

 Another calendar for the holiday season!  It is a gift you can give anyone!!  Overnight, I remembered I had these wonderful image in my stash so yesterday morning I went searching and was lucky enough to find them straight away!!  They come from a glossy publication that I purchased years ago at a thrift store.  At the time, I thought they were wonderful images and would certainly work into one of my projects somewhere along the way. They are images of very old tarots cards - from a time when they were all hand painted and used by royalty to play a game. I trimmed the images leaving a slim black border.  I cut kraft cardstock to 3.5" x 8.5" (6 of them) and stamped a flourish background (IO) on the top portion using black ink then mounted my image.  I punched a ribbon border (SU) out of black cardstock and mounted it below the stamping using a glue stick.  I adhered my trimmed 2015 calendar page (12 to page from calendarlabs.com) which I sponged lightly around the edges below that using a glue stick.  This is a double sided calendar - January to June are on one side and July to December on the other.  I did the one side first and then when I was doing the back sides I positioned the ribbon borders back to back.  I pierced through a hole on each end so I could align them exactly over each other.  Once they were dry, I pierced all the holes with a push pin over foam and used gold embroidery thread to add stitching to the ribbon border. Love the way it turned out!!!  I created straight stitches on one side and diagonal ones on the other.

Thinking they needed just a bit more texture I added gold coins using large glue dots.

Just enough embellishment!!  Here are all the pages I created!!  I do have a few images left over for another project!!

You can check out the other calendars I have created here and here!

 One uses handmade paper and pressed botanicals and the other, little blue bird collage photos  

reused from a 2014 calendar.  

These are quick and easy!!  You

can use themed paper, printed digital images, printed clipart or old calendar images as 

  your focal elements.  Just work out your cardstock size by laying out your images, calendar pages and any 

other elements you would like to add for texture and interest. 

I hope you are well on your way in preparing for the holiday season!!  

I am very happy with the calendars I have created and am looking forward to getting my Christmas cards out the door!!

Therese