Tea Time Cards

Hello all!  Alison (butterfly) here with some more flowery cards - yes, cards!  This time rather than blues and greens, we're living in neutrals land with kraft card and tea/coffee stained tags.

I soaked my manila tags in a mixture of tea and coffee, and then did my stamping in Sepia Archival ink.  I stamped a medium tag and a tiny matching one with each stamp, and then inked and spritzed and flicked them.

There wasn't a fixed plan at this point... maybe cards and matching gift tags?

The flowers come from various Katy Leitch sets...

Encyclopaedia Botanica:

Botanical 2:

Jumbo Flowering Branch:

Jumbo Bouvardia:

I did like the earthy kraft card bases on my simple watercolour cards a few weeks back, so I decided to go that way again.  And I can never resist book pages, torn and inked, layered into the look.

I used the Tim Holtz Simple Sayings to create my greetings.  I stamped them onto a page from the same book, so that they would match.

They're backed onto more kraft card to make them a little more sturdy,

and mounted on padded tape for a pop of dimension.

Rustic twine through the top of the tags adds extra texture and dimension too.  I added lots of delicate splatter...

...and some stencilling through the Tim Holtz Lattice Layering Stencil.

And in the end, I decided the tiny tags would be quite cool inside the cards...

... so you get an immediate echo when you open the card to read the greeting.

So, some more simple cards for you - this is starting to become a habit!  I hope you like them.

There's still plenty of time to come along and play in our Anything Goes August Challenge - no need to use Artistic Stamper stamps, but if you do you get two entries into the prize draw - hope to see you there!  Thanks so much for stopping by.

Ingredients used:
Artistic Stamps - various Katy Leitch sets: Encyclopaedia Botanica, Botanical 2, Jumbo Flowering Branch, Jumbo Bouvardia
Tim Holtz Simple Sayings - the Hashtags would also work really well
Kraft Card
Manila Tags
Book Pages
Tim Holtz Layering Stencils - Lattice
Twine
Distress Ink - Vintage Photo, Gathered Twigs
Archival Ink - Sepia
Padded Tape

Simple Cards

Yes, it is Alison (butterfly) here and yes, you did read that right...  Not only is today's project very simple, it also consists of a pair of cards.  Regulars at Words and Pictures will know that's a very strange double whammy indeed!  Still, it should mean a shorter post than usual!!

I wanted to play with the magnificent giant flower stamps, new from Katy Leitch.  I started by applying Distress Inks to the stamps, graduating the colours roughly from top to bottom.  I used Faded Jeans, Broken China, Iced Spruce and Peeled Paint.

Once it was inked, I gave the stamp a light spritzing of water and stamped onto watercolour cardstock.

I tapped Archival ink onto the little words at the bottom, just to keep those sharp and fresh whatever came next...

With that done, I then borrowed some techniques from one of last year's Tim Holtz tags - the June 2013 tag... I inked around the edges with a blending tool and then used a water brush to draw the ink in towards the image.

And I also put some ink onto the craft mat from Distress Markers in those same colours (except the Iced Spruce - don't have that as a DM as yet), and then let them soak into the nib of the brush.  Then you splatter delicate little ink droplets over your image.

I grabbed a couple of sheets of thick kraft card in A4 and, using the paler side, cut them to size to fit the watercolour panels I'd created.  I used the leftover cardstock to stamp my two sentiments - selected from various Tim Holtz sentiment sets - in Coffee Archival.

Obviously they were chosen partly because the font is similar on each, but also specifically for the shaping of the words - a long tall one, and a wide flat one!

I inked both the sentiment panels and the borders of the card with the Coffee Archival ink pad, just brushing the pad against the card edges.

And inside each card, there's just a little echo of the image on the front.

This time they're stamped in Coffee Archival.

It's nice to get both versions of the stamping - the sharp clarity of the Archival, and the delicate softness of the "watercolour" Distress Ink.

Two cards, and they really hardly took any time at all...  I could get into this simple thing!!

Though it seems the post isn't that much shorter than usual.  I just like having lots of pictures, that's the trouble.

But that really is that for today!  Thanks so much for dropping by.  There's still nearly a week to play in our Colour It Red challenge for June... Hope to see you there.

Ingredients used:
Artistic Stamper stamps: Katy Leitch stamps - Jumbo Bouvardia and Jumbo Flowering Branch
Distress Watercolour Cardstock
Distress Inks - Faded Jeans, Broken China, Iced Spruce, Peeled Paint
Distress Markers - Faded Jeans, Broken China, Peeled Paint
Archival Ink - Coffee
Kraft Card A4 sheet
From my stash: Stampers Anonymous sentiment stamps