• Blog - Crafts - Creativity

    Building a card stash

    As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been sending more cards. This, in turn, depletes my stash. Over the past week, I’ve been having fun creating some new designs using some scraps as well as previously created card bases.

    I have an index card box full of precut layering pieces for cards. This comes in handy for quick card making. I also have a wooden cigar box filled with mini collages for cards or journal pages. Doing some of the mindless prep work ahead of time leaves more time for the creative process and doesn’t interrupt the flow of ideas.

    I am also starting to pre-make some sentiment pieces. I grabbed my tag and mason jar punches to start. The mason jar is so darn cute. The punch itself is a bit finicky. It jams almost every single time. UGH!!!!

    I am willing to put up with it though because…look how cute this is!!!! After I stamped the pale seafoam green I realized that it was beginning to look like an old-fashioned blue mason. I used a cosmetic sponge to shade in two colors of blue dye-based ink. Then rubbed the top of the jar on a gray pigment ink pad to act as the zinc lid.

    I used foam tape to lift it off the page so I could add some sticker flowers to the jar. So fun!

    I can 100% guarantee that you’ll be seeing more cards and postcards. They are really quite addictive to create.

  • Art - Blog - Creativity

    Butterflies everywhere

    I’ve been sending so many more cards and little care packages since the stay-at-home order began. I had to order more stamps and really needed to make some new cards to replenish my stash.

    These are my favorite type of cards. Little bits of scraps, snippets from magazines and whatever else finds its way into my scrap bin.

    In 2015, I wrote an article for Sew Somerset describing my process for mini-collages such as these. I now see them all over YouTube in the junk journal community. They call them clusters.

    Without even realizing it, most of my recent creations featured butterflies.

    collage postcard collection

    Even most of these collage postcards I made for my MIL.

    One even found its way onto one of the tags I made from the off cuts of the postcards.

    Maybe I just have mom on my mind. She was nuts about butterflies. They always make me think of her.

  • Art - Blog - Creativity

    Old image, new page

    I can’t even begin to count how many times I have used this particular image. When I was first learning how photoshop and my printer played together I inadvertently printed multiple copies of the same sheet of images…which happened to be all the same image. Since I don’t like to waste and printer ink costs a small fortune, I have become very fond of this odd foursome.foursome art journal page

    I always wonder what the story is behind this photo. Siblings, extended family, sister wives? I decided to play on the latter with a bit of printed vellum.printed vellum loves me loves me not

    The background of this page is simply a book page.  After adhering a piece of Tim Holtz tissue paper over the entire page, I added color with gelatos. I softened and blended the color with baby wipes.

    More instances of this image: