Vintage Inspired Cards

First of all I want tell you that I'm so happy it's Friday!
Here are a couple birthday cards I made recently, I couldn't show them until now because the birthday girls had not received them yet....

 This first one was made around this Lilly of the Valley image from The Graphics Fairy. The birthday girl adores these flowers so of course that's what I had to do! I added some old lace and buttons from my stash, did some stitching, and there you have it! Can you tell what her favorite color is???? Hmmmmmm.... All the pink, lavender and green paper is an old collection of Ann Griffin paper, I picked this stuff up years ago and I was so happy to find a good use for it.

This second card was inspired by this antique sewing machine image once again from The Graphics Fairy-love her! The birthday girl loves sewing and has one of our grandmother's original foot powered Singer sewing machines. This time the colors for the card were more fall-ish which is a lot more challenging for me. The base of this card was made with a piece of pre-embossed Core'dinations paper, this stuff is so much fun! I dyed some of my seam binding green and pleated it to the front of the card. The dark purple flower was cut from natural muslin and dyed by me once again. I just cut out 4 circles and made a box flower with them.

Here you can see the embossed card stock on the inside of the card. I found a nice Irish blessing and printed it off on my printer and there ya go! Of course I had to add one of my "book flowers" and some vintage buttons I picked up at a local antique store.

These cards were such fun to make and to challenge myself to get out of my usual rut. The hardest part of all this was just picking out paper....it took me days!

Hope you have a fun and restful weekend!

Paper Flower Fun

Today I made my first box top paper flower and I'm hooked! I saw this tutorial last night and just had to try it! It's so easy! I didn't have double sided paper that I wanted to use for the flower so I used some single sided paper and sprayed the white side with a mixture of water, alcohol ink and pearl powder, I love how that turned out, and I will be doing this more often.

The paper I used is a collection called "Melody Ross" by GCD Studios This paper is so me! The alcohol ink colors were pink sherbert and watermellon. I cut my scalloped circles at 4" and then 3.5 inches.

A couple of weeks ago I also watched this tutorial on how to make a paper rose, so I gave it a try and loved it as well. Roses are my favorite flower after all! I used some flowers I'd cut from an old book. I didn't ink the flower until it was put together, which I will not do next time. Ink / color your layers first....

Ignore the red ribbon in the background please. I am now officially hooked on making paper flowers, it's so easy and fun! I imagine my craft room will be covered in paper flowers very very soon!

Thank you Lasting Memories for the awesome videos!

Have a very blessed day!

Playing with alcohol ink

In my bix box 'o goodies I got last week were four bottles of Tim Holtz Alcohol Inks...I've been itching to play with these for a while now. Today I got myself a big piece of freezer paper (who needs those pricey craft mats anyhow?!), my ink, some metal do-dads, plastic buttons, and flowers I cut with my dear Love Bug. Yes, I cut some flowers from a book page or two. This was a book that had fallen apart and I wanted to give this a go too. Cutting up book pages is a little fickle to say the least.  I know I've seen people on the internet coloring paper flowers with this ink, but for the life of me, I can't find them now. So I resorted to experimenting myself. I ended up spraying the freezer paper with some water, added a few drops of the ink and then swirling my flowers in said concoction. The more compact flowers were much easier to work with, they didn't tear like the ones with long petals. I crumpled the flowers as I dried them with my heat gun and then I added a spritz or two of my homemade glitter mist. I dried the flowers again. I'm pretty happy with my outcome. I'm not thrilled with how my buttons turned out, sure that will take more practice. I'm loving the way my silver brads were colored to match my flowers, so pretty and vibrant. To make the brads work I put them in a little foam brad holder I had (the ones the fancy brads come in from the store) and I dropped one drop of ink on to each brad then let them dry, easy! I tried other methods too, but this seemed to work the best for me.

Yes, I know my brads are off center...that is common with me unfortunately!

Sorry I've been MIA latley, I work on my nieces mini books this past weekend, they are almost done and I'm thrilled with them! Pictures will follow soon!

Have a blessed day!