Cardmaking - May - Used postage stamps as backgrounds and focal elements

I decided to use a resource I had previously created for a Pen Pal Girl Guide project for my grand daughter.  You can see the details here.  My daughter recently returned to me the remaining supplies from this project so I went about seeing how I could use them for a card for this evening.  It seems appropriate to feature Canadian postage on cards this year considering that in less than a month we will be celebrating our 150th anniversary as a country.  I trimmed the front off my sample card and it so very nicely was just the right size to layer evenly on an A2 card!!  I simply added a green layer to it and then glued this large element to a black card front.  So I combined the postage backgrounds with appropriate postage stamp focal elements along with a coordinating decorative paper background and black card fronts.  They look pretty cool!!  I did provide layered punchie greetings but most people chose to leave the cards without greetings.  It does allow this card to be used for any occasion!! Those little postage stamps are such great little works of art!!

If you are inspired to create cards with used postage stamps please leave me a link in the comments section so I can go check them out!!!

Therese

Cardmaking - May - Glossy photo paper watercolour backgrounds combined with colour inkjet printed digital images

We recently acquired an inkjet printer after being without for a number of years so I wanted to see what I could do with this new tool for this month's cardmaking class.  

I chose to make some dye ink backgrounds using glossy photo paper using this common technique - apply colour to non stick mat, spritz with water and lay the photo paper glossy side down and twist a little.  It worked very well and I ended up using old dried water based markers for the blue/green and green/purple ones.  I used empty inkjet ink cartridges for the yellow and pink ones.  You can check out a tutorial at Crafting a Green World. that explains how to use dried out markers to make watercolour ink.  The sponges in the ink cartridges worked pretty much the same way.  You can check what I did with them in this blog post.  Once all the backgrounds were dry I used my new printer to print digital stamps on them (candles and cupcake - Melonheadz). I used Corel Draw to layout three different images for each 4" x 6" background and printed the images in black onto the colourful backgrounds though I could have converted my images and printed them in colour instead.  It was easy to highlight some of the details in the images with watercolour by simply applying it with a small paint brush.  I expect I could have added any colour of watercolour that I wanted to but I applied those I had used in the backgrounds. So there remains quite a few options I would like to explore with this technique.  I cut the images apart and set out to create greeting layers.   I chose light coloured coordinating cardstock and designed a layer that was 2.75" x 4.25" and added a greeting on the right hand side the colour laser printed them.  The landscape images created landscape cards with the greeting below the image.  For portrait images, it created portrait cards with a greeting running up the side.  Next, I needed card fronts!!  I chose to use rubber stamps and ink to embellish my card fronts.  That was less successful in that I had difficulty getting non muddy prints from stamps that have been used and stained with dark colours in the past when I applied light coloured inks.  So I have a pile of discards which will have to be repurposed!!  I did finally get all the card fronts ready to go.  I will consider colour inkjet printing my card fronts next time though I will have to acquire a few more vector digital background stamps that can be changed to different colours before I can do that.  It will be a process.  The card making process was fast and easy!  Glue the image to the greeting layer and then glue this large element to the card front!!  

These two cards were created while I was preparing kits for this class.  

For the yellow one, I ended up trimming the overall stamped background to allow an even margin and gluing the whole layer to a dark blue card front.  This worked very well too!!  

For the butterfly card, I used bleach for the background and then realized that it would not work well for the other cards being as they were too light for the bleaching to show up well.  I am very happy with the results of this experiment and I look forward to exploring the other options available to me in his process at a later date.  

Therese

Cardmaking - May - Watercoloured tags featuring digital stamps and laser printed greetings

Our last cardmaking night before the summer was this week and this is the first set of cards we made.
I had cut these tags for a different card for a previous class and eventually decided that it was too involved for the time frame so I had put the supplies aside.  I decided to see if I could change up the sketch and supplies to make a card for this class. Worked out quite well though I did trim the tags a bit so they had a square top instead of a pointy one!!
I adhered two pieces of decorative paper - a 4"x 4" or so with a 1.25" x 4" or so for a coordinating card front.  I changed the proportions a bit to suit the pieces I found in my stash.  There were a couple that I could not convince myself to cut because they were so perfect so we used them whole but we worked from the sketch anyway. The small piece went on the bottom for the first card and on the top for second card.

I embellished a strip of coordinating cardstock with decorative scissors and added some paper piercing using a push pin and a small piece of foam.  It was trimmed to length and adhered over where the papers joined.  Next, I watercoloured the tags ( Lighthouse - Arthurs Clipart , daisies in a jar - Paper Garden Projects).  Once they were dry I slipped the length of seam binding into the hole of the tag and used two little pieces of double sided tape to hold the two pieces in place.  I added the trimmed and embellished laser printed greeting to the tag using double sided tape and then glued this large element to my card front.  In some cases we had to trim the seambinding/ribbon to ensure the ends would tuck neatly into the envelope.  The greeting could have been added to the bottom or the other side for a bit of a different look.  
Really happy with how these turned out!  The spare kits will show up here over time!!

Therese