It's your birthday...

Hello everyone, this is Astrid here and as this is my first post for 2014, I'll start by wishing you all a Happy and Creative New Year.

Now, it has to be said, I am not a card maker, but I needed a card for a friend's special birthday, so a card it was going to be.

Now this person is definitely not into over the top creations, so I had to keep it all quite simple (well for me anyway)...
I started by creating the background to the main panel of my card by covering a piece of card stock with Gesso to give it some tooth. I then added some colour with the help of Salty Ocean and Brushed Pewter Distress Stains. I just splatted them on, let it drip a bit and then wiped around a bit with a baby wipe.

Next it was time for some background stamping. I used the Smudge Background and the Calligraphic Mat 12 for that and stamped them in Watering Can Archival.

Now to complete the front panel, I first stamped the Butterflies from the Tim Holtz Papillon plate directly onto my background, but this time in Jet Black Archival Ink. I then stamped the largest of the butterflies again, cut it out and mounted it onto the panel on top of a bit of died cheese cloth. I also added some faux stitching around the edges and created a sentiment panel with one of the phrases from the Journaling Words 3 plate. Below you can see how I put it together with some inking round the edges and some wired garden twine from my stash.

Finally I mounted the panel on a piece of corrugated card and then some dark blue and some Kraftcard, Distressed with some Vintage Photo Distress Ink.

Now for the inside of the card: I cut a piece of the Tim Holtz French Industrial paper to size and glued it to the inside of my card. I then stamped further phrases from the Journaling Words 3 set in random places.

Finally I added the words Happy Birthday with the help of the little Ideaology Label Letters.

Love these, they are so versatile (you get several sheets of them) and are great for journaling and all sorts of projects.

Well, hope you like it and thanks for visiting like always!!

Happy Memories

Hello everyone, Astrid here with my first post for 2013. So let me start with wishing you all the most wonderful, happy and creative New Year!!
For my first post this month I decided to make a little tag book, that can be used to keep some happy memories of a journey or other special occasion.

These are the stamps and products I used:
Stamps:
Travelling Words
Labels
Postage No 1
Crowning Glory
Journaling Words 2
Ephemera 1
Tim Holtz Papillon
Other Products:
Distress Stains Variety of colours
Distress Inks in colours to match the stains
Claudine Hellmuth Multi Medium Matte
From my stash:
Smooth white paper
scrap book paper
Kraft Card
Dies
Flowers
Vintage Ephemera
Postage Stamps
Seam binding

The booklet is made up out of 5 different tags, each made in a very similar way:
1. Squeeze some Distress Stains onto your craft mat, include either some Picket Fence or a Metallic Stain as these are more opaque and give some "body" to your background.
2. Once you are happy add some further depth of colour by blending Distress Inks in matching colours over the stains.
3. Stamp a background stamp in a matching colour of Distress Inks. I used the Ephemera 1 stamp for each of mine.
4. Stamp some of the other label and postage stamps on white paper (I used matte photo paper), cut out and colour with distress inks.
5. Collage your cut out images, other ephemera and postage stamps onto your tags using the matte medium
Here are my 5 tags:

I kept the back of my tags quite plain, just covering them with scrapbook papers and creating a pocket here and there to keep notes and other bits and bobs picked up during travel.

One of the backs with a little pocket and journaling tag

Two further pockets made out of mini envelopes covered with paper and then coloured and stamped like the tags.

The covers were made in a very similar way.  I cut two pieces of vanilla coloured card, slightly larger than the tags, I then added some Kraft card between the stamped front and the scrapbook paper back. I used the Tim Holtz Papillon stamp as vocal image after creating my background like on the tags.

Front cover

Back Cover

 Here are some of the pages still after I bound them together:

Well, I hope you liked this project and sorry for all the many photos, but I hope you have enjoyed it and feel inspired to make something similar yourself. I love making little books like this, they are small enough to fit in a hand bag and great to keep memories of a journey!