A Notecard Set Featuring Tim Holtz

Brandy and I are such fans of Tim Holtz.  He's one of the folks we've watched and followed over the 15+ years we've been crafting together.  As such, we have quite the stash of supplies and materials that we accumulated through out fandom and attending all three Creative Chemistry classes over at Online Card Classes.

Today I decided to pull out some of the supplies that have languished in the stash and make good use of them.  These cards were made with an assortment of Tim Holz Wildflowers Thinlits and Garden Greens dies die cut from Distress Ink and Distress Oxide backgrounds..  The background paper is Tim Holze Kraft resist paper that I layered with matching Distress Ink and Distress Oxides.  They blend so delightfully.  The flowers are made using Tim Holtz glassine paper, an oldie but a goodie.  Here's some additional inspiration from Tim Holtz Kraft glassine ideas.

While making these cards in the midst of creating for Stamptember which has involved lots of techniques, I'm reminded how very much I enjoy working with my Distress products and what a delightful finish they provide.  I should definitely use them more often!

This pink card is mostly Distress Oxides and I'm pleased with how bright the card turned out in the end.  Again - reminder to use these techniques more often.

I'm going to link this up to the Simon Says Stamp link party for Tim Holtz.  I am also going to link this up with Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday challenge Simon Says Anything Goes.  Check it out.

A Milestone Birthday Card

One of my coworkers celebrated her milestone birthday a few weeks ago.  I whipped up this Gorjuss Girl for her celebration.  A few of the details:

• The young lady is Gorjuss Girl - Ladybird stamp.  Whe was colored with my Inktense pencils and fussy cut out.    This was back when I only owned 12 of these bad boys.  I'm telling you - they are worth it.  Especially now since I have 72 of them!
• The papers are leavings from a previous project using KaiserCraft's Miss Empire collection.  I felt sorry for cutting up most of what was left then I asked myself - why?!  It works wonderfully here.
• The flowers are all from the stash - more leavings from other projects.  The vellum flowers were colored with my Distress Markers on the backside and have prill centers.  The brown flower is a glassine paper flower.

• The twigs and brown cardstock leaves were all cut from the backside of one of the coordinating papers.  
• The inside was a simple sentiment I enhanced with a 40th die cut using some old Quickutz dies.  

I think my coworker enjoyed her celebration.  I know I am grateful for her and was happy to make something special to brighten her day.  I wish you some crafty goodness as these days of December start whizzing by.

Happy Birthday to the Best Bestie Ever!

Brandy and I got together a little bit ago to celebrate our birthdays.  We have birthday's that are about 5 months apart, but for one reason or another hadn't traded presents from my birthday.  Since her birthday was today, I decided she should get her present early if I was going to get my present late.  I decorated the wrapped gift with some of my glassine paper flowers with red die cuts from my Arianna Blooms die set and some Good Earth Elements in the center.  A few random green cardstock leaves and my present was beautiful enough to present.  Here's what's inside:







































We needed another reason to create paper flowers....  I saw this colorful book and just couldn't leave it alone.  Whether the patterns stay put in the book and it is simply inspiration or whether these beautiful flowers are actually made- the book just screamed Brandy to me.

When I think what a precious gift Brandy is to me I just can't begin to ennumerate the flood of memories and feelings that overwhelm me.  Thank God for bringing us together as friends.  May we age with inky fingers, paper everywhere and smiles on our faces.

Happy Birthday, Bestie!

Sending Best Wishes for a Happy Birthday

This card was lost amid a shuffle of Christmas projects.  The card turned out so lovely that I just had to share with you anyway.

The patterned papers all come from MME's Kaleidoscope paper pad.  The framed sentiment an image in the pad and stamped with a Heartfelt Creations sentiment in brown Archival ink.  The flower is a kraft glassine paper flower.   A pearl swirl and this card is simply gorgeous.

I had previously made this card set to have on hand as a gift.  They came in handy here as a small, but thoughtful birthday present.  I just had to add a flower on the tie around the card set.

Celebrating 65 Wonderful Years

It seems that big birthday's always come together.  This is the year that my grandfather celebrated 90 years and his daughter, my mom, celebrated 65 years.  Momentous, milestone birthdays call for a fun, pretty card.  This one is my tribute to my mom- delayed in the giving and, thus, in the posting of this picture.  Here's the details:

• The patterned papers come from MME's Kaleidoscope.  I used the background patterned paper, the frame piece and fussy cut the butterflies from a page.  The border piece comes from a pre-cut page in the paper pad.  Brilliant!
• The kraft glassine flowers were in the stash and I simplyshapped to add here.  They work beautifully to blend the various colors in the background and the kraft sentiment.
• The greenery is die cut from green cardstock using my Our Daily Bread Designs Fancy Foliage.
• The sentiment is a wood stamp I've had for years stamped on frame from the pre-cut die page of the paper pad.
• A tiny 65 was die cut with my Quickutz dies- also from the stash and well used after a decade of ownership.
• No mom card is complete without a fair bit of pearl accents in the flowers and on the butterflies.  

The inside begged for a bit of fancy sentiment cut using my Our Daily Bread Designs Elegant Ovals.  The sentiment stamped in brown Archival Ink is from the Simon Says Stamp Tilted Banners Sentiments.    Some more greenery and a butterfly and I think this card is ready for the big day.

My mom really enjoyed the card and her party.  We're hoping for many more celebrations to come.

Wedding Celebration Card

I, ultimately, made this card for one purpose and used it for another.  It is a retread of a card made earlier this year, but I thought it worked so well, I made it for a wedding this fall too.  

The flower is made out of kraft glassine paper.  This paper creates a wonderful texture when wadded up into a ball.  The flowers were cut using my Vintage Floret dies. The panel is an embossed piece of shiny vellum paper.  It really stuns in person and is raised from the cardstock base with foam squares.  A piece of purple ribbon is glued to the edge so you don't see how it doesn't end well.  The sentiment is from my Simon Says Stamp Friendship Messages stamp set.  

Wishing the happy couple a wonderful, bliss-filled marriage.

A Very Happy Birthday

I needed a very special birthday card for my close friend Keri.  You've seen some pictures of her kid birthday parties where she occasionally has asked for a little crafty help and in turn I've been able to post her crafty ideas here on the blog.  Needless to say, this crafty one and I celebrate our friendship each month with a night out and I just new I wanted to do something special for her birthday.

I went shopping in the stash for something on the red side.  Keri just seems red to me.  Even though she's totally remade her entire house this past year with a decidedly deep mustard yellow, modern turn.  Still, once a color has been assigned, the great and wonderful introvert is unlikely to change, so Keri still seems red to me.  I found this piece of rusty pink that seemed a little more girlish and went to town.  The front face of the card is simply a Vintage Photo Distress Ink edged piece of patterned paper.  The paper created the look on the front of the card almost by itself.  I had some glassine paper flowers on hand and layered two inside a circle cut from a piece of coordinating patterned paper.  The sentiment was printed to a scrap of tan-creamish linen textured cardstock and trimmed to look a little like ribbon.  A few small pearls, covered with Scattered Straw Distress Ink to change their color, were placed to balance the card design.  Don't know if that worked, but I like it.

The inside was where I needed a trick.  Keri recently picked up a Silhouette.  She's been borrowing cuts off and on for a couple of years and I think she finally decided this was a tool for all seasons.  Since she has a little 3 year old, her kid crafting days are not over.  I just couldn't resist a little birthday celebration and purchased a gift certificate for the Silhouette store.  I made this handy layered sentiment inside complete with a pocket and the gift pull out.




The Gift Card from Silhouette is purchasable online.  I snagged a screen image of the card and adjusted the color to match my scheme in Word.  Its a real simple way to jazz up something as hum-drum as a gift card (not my favorite gift, but in this case it works wonderfully).

Happy Birthday, Keri!  This is well deserved and I know will be put to good use.

I've linked this card up to the Inspiration Journal's  July Monthly Challenge:  Happy Birthday America & Other Birthday Celebrating.  Come join the fun!

Glassine Paper Flowers

When recently shopping with Brandy, we happened across a pad of Tim Holtz Kraft Glassine Paper.  Don't ask me why I felt like I needed a pad of this paper.  Don't ask me what I thought I was going to do with it.  I can't explain these things any more.  I find that sometimes it is just about how cheap it is (you better bet that I used a 40% off coupon and the cost was just north of $5).  Sometimes it is because I like it (the texture that is inherent to this paper is fabulous).  Sometimes it is just that you don't want to walk out of the store empty handed (this is particularly true when shopping with friends). 

Either way, I did have occasion to use the paper in a couple of recent cards.  We had the misfortune of losing a close friend earlier this year and a good friend lost her mother in December.  The memorials happened to occur within days of each other and these adorable flowers came in handy for a monochromatic looking sympathy card.

These flowers were cut using Cricut's Mother's Day Bouquet cart.  I worked the ends of the flowers around a thin paint brush handle to curl the edges back and create more of a 3D effect.  The pearl brads were punched through the center of the flower to finish the look.  Although I considered inking the flower, I ultimately decided that the cracking and "wear" of the flowers from the curling provided enough texture and I didn't want the color difference.

The background is the Walnut Stain Distress Re-inker made into a mist (similar to the layered misting technique in my Creative Chemistry 101 class).  The mask is a Tattered Angels snowflake mask I've had for a while.  The cream card was lightly misted creating much variation in color (and adding to the monochromatic color scheme).  The flowers are adhered with a glue dot and the waxed twine tied around the inside of the card.  The tiny flower on the tag was cut with my Quickutz die, shaped and layered with a tiny pearl brad.  The tag is a 1 1/2 inch cut of <tag1> from Cricut's Plantin Schoolbook that was cut from a preprinted sheet of tan cardstock I ran through my printer to print the "In Sympathy" sentiment.  A tiny Tim Holtz bronze paper clip holds the sentiment in place by anchoring the tag to the twine.

This card expressed heartfelt sympathy to our good friend who lost her husband (whom my husband was close with) to ALS earlier this year.  ALS is a devastating disease and as we watched our friend approach the loss of his ability to talk and walk around, he never lost his deep and abiding faith in the God who made all things, including this horrible disease.  His peace at knowing he was still in the hands of a loving God who has wisdom beyond our understand will stand as a testament to me and many others.  Although I still feel sorry for his wife and family (and truly myself), I am comforted by the thought that all his questions can be asked and answered as he spends eternity with his Lord and Savior. 

This next card used many of the same techniques, but the flower was made slightly differently.  The inner 3d portion of the flower was cur from Cricut's Flower Shoppe cart.  The cut was then twisted and adhered to the layered petals cut from Cricut's Mother's Day Bouquet cart.  The petals of the larger flowers were folded in half and then curled around a thin paint brush handle.  The flower was then mounted to the card base with a glue dot. 

This card was given to a friend who lost her mother suddenly and tragically in December.  Although my friend has faced this loss with deep sadness, she has been able to begin the process of working through the layers of grief.  My sympathy is genuine and deep for this friend.  When they held the memorial service in March, my thought was to try to encompass this sympathy and express it to her.  I love how this card turned out.  Even though I love it, I can hardly see how a simple piece of paper can express how my heartfelt sorrow is mixed with encouragement and admiration.  My prayer has been and continues to be that my friend may know how tender and supportive I might feel and that she knows her comfort is on my mind even now.

I really would like to close this post with some deep and comforting wisdom on loss.  As I am middle aged (how in the world did that happen?), I know that the number of losses ahead of me will far outstrip the number behind me.  This is true for both me and for most of the people in my life.  I consider that I am unable to think of anything profound because I am so humbled by loss and sorrow.  So, I will continue to cling to what I know to be true. 

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

Psalm 46:1

Andie