A dear friend of mine recently celebrated a milestone birthday, and I wanted to make a special card for her. Since books and writing are special passions of hers, I thought this cut file from Paige Evans was perfect!
In my stash of embellishments, I have some really pretty dimensional birthday stickers. I love how dainty they are — and they have a bit of sparkle! I decided to use one on this card and base my color scheme around it.
I got out my watercolors and, carefully holding my cut file above my paper every so often, added dabs of color to abstractly correspond to the flowers and leaves.
After the larger areas of color were dry, I added some tiny splashes of blue and green watercolor to add some texture and mounted the watercolor paper panel to yellow cardstock for a border.
I’ve had these photos out on my desk, shuffling them around as I worked on other projects, ever since I made the Dragon Boats layout (another adventure on the same day). When I saw the SCT 2021 Fall Issue recipe challenge (use a journaling card or die cut, patterned paper, an alphabet sticker and any kind of stamp), I knew it would be the perfect motivation to get this layout into my scrapbook.
I started out trying to use my “typical” grid-type arrangement of photos, and it just wasn’t working. I changed gears entirely and decided to use a fish-filled background cut file from Paige Evans, and I used watercolors on the background. This is out of my comfort zone in two ways: I don’t often do mixed media at all, let alone the whole background; also, I don’t often use themed/on-the-nose supplies for my layouts.
I made two little clusters on the page, framed by the fish. At the top, I used my two tiny photos (tiny due to the image quality) on a block of patterned paper and embellished with my stamp “ingredient”– I heat embossed cameras from two different stamp sets with white on a scrap of purple striped paper, then cut them out to add in three places around the layout.
After this particular day of adventuring, I had asked my husband to write a bit of journaling, and I gave him a couple of my leftover Project Life cards so that it would be in his own handwriting. I love that it’s his words telling the story of the fun he had with our children.
I did a bit of tricky work with the title: this is an old set of chipboard Thickers, and I didn’t have enough “A” or “U” letters to spell “aquarium.” I ended up using two “V” alphas to replace them: can you tell? 😉 I love this pop of orange as a complement to the blue/purple/teal background. It picks up on my daughter’s dress color, and it ties the color scheme with the companion Dragon Boats page.
In all honesty, I’m not loving this page right now. But I am so glad to have this story in my album, and I think it might grow on me with time!
Supplies: cardstock: American Crafts white textured patterned paper: Damask Love “Wild Card- Spirit Animal;” bits from my stash alphas: American Crafts Thickers “Dots” (chipboard), Glitz Designs “Color Me Happy” Teeny Alphas (rainbow) stamps: Shimelle “Head in the Clouds” acrylic stamps, Hampton Art “Vintologie,” cut file: Paige Evans “Fish Background” journal card: Project Life “Jade” edition wood veneer: Studio Calico other: watercolor, Liquitex clear matte gesso, print-and-cut labels, Scotch ATG, US ArtQuest PPA Matte adhesive, craft foam, Ranger Big&Bossy embossing ink, Zing embossing powder
Almost five years ago now, my husband and kids went on a little adventure together while I was off having a craft day with some friends at church. They first went to the aquarium in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, and afterward, they rode the dragon boats! My husband took photos and I asked him to write some journaling on some cards. For all this time, the cards and ticket stubs have sat in my archive, and these photos have been printed for a while, too! I am so happy that I’ve finally put them together on a layout (the aquarium layout will face this one– I haven’t made it yet!)
I mentally arranged and re-arranged the photos until I was looking through some of my completed layouts the other day. I really loved how THIS layout turned out, and I decided to scraplift myself. I used watercolors on a gesso’d sheet of white cardstock to coordinate with the colors in the photos.
I didn’t have nearly as many photos this time, so I added patterned paper to fill out the grid.
I added stitching around the patterned paper blocks for texture and interest!
I have to say, I was stumped for a bit when I was looking for embellishments, and then I remembered the adorable dragons in the Head in the Clouds project pad– and they are just the right colors!! I was especially excited when I realized that this purple dragon’s tail curled perfectly around the top of the journaling that my husband had written long before I even had these products!
I added the teal camera at the base of the journaling (stamped and embossed on patterned paper, then carefully cut out and popped up on foam) because while the camera illustration on the card was very cute, it just wasn’t standing out enough. I didn’t have patterned paper in a saturated color to match, so I used a more muted paper and blended some aqua ink to intensify the color.
It felt a little “risky” to be using products from the collections I’ve purchased to use for my Disney 2016 album project! However, I didn’t have any specific place in mind to use the dragons, so I’m glad that I used them here. They really are a perfect match… I also used the aqua glitter Fitzgerald alphas for my title (also from the supplies I purchased for that album project). Again, they were just right, and after all, products are meant to be used, right? I don’t want to be so stingy with my things that they don’t get used– there are always more to buy!
After I created the grid and added the dragons, it was looking a little bare, even with the bold watercolors underneath! I decided to add layers around the the top section, especially around the main photo.
This turned out to be the perfect place to add a pull-out where I can keep the ticket!
In the end, I have to admit that this isn’t my favorite layout. I actually like the original layout upon which this is based so much better. However, I wonder if my opinion will change. What is interesting to me is that when was looking at my old layouts for inspiration, I came across another, much older layout that I considered scraplifting for this project. I looked up my blog post for it, and I wrote that I didn’t really like it! Yet here I was, five(!) years after I made it, viewing it as inspirational!
The important thing is that the story is there. The memories are preserved, and I can look back and enjoy them (and laugh that my kids were less impressed by the dragon boats than we’d hoped)!
Sometimes I have a hard time knowing what words to send to a friend, and in those cases, I hope that the handmade card helps to express what I’m trying to say.
For these cards, I cut a Paige Evans flower bouquet from white textured cardstock and used it to inspire the loose watercolor. After the paint had dried, I adhered the die cut over the watercolor with a sentiment strip.
These cards were made with heartfelt love and prayers.
I wanted to hand-make a special wedding card for my cousin and his new wife, and believe it or not, this one was inspired by the ampersand card in this blog post. I didn’t have the same cut file, but as I was looking through my collection of Paige Evans cut files, I came across this floral spray… and the wheels started turning in my brain. The couple’s wedding invitation had a lovely floral design, and so I “inverted” the ampersand card a bit– I made the floral element the focal design and the ampersand into the accent piece. I used watercolors to paint an abstract background for the cut file– using colors to match the invitation.
The ampersand is four layers of white cardstock, and I painted the top layer with Heidi Swapp gold ColorShine since I didn’t have any metallic paper on hand. I added some gold droplets and gold sequins as a finishing touch.
I adhered the cut file only in the center bits so that the edges would be free and show a bit of dimensionality.
Recently, a friend from church gave me a big box of lovely wooden, red-rubber stamps that she was clearing out of her house. In particular, there were two of these stained-glass style stamps that really caught my eye.
When a need came up this past week for an encouragement/get well card, I knew that I had to try this stamp out.
I stamped the image onto watercolor paper with a black pigment ink pad that wasn’t as juicy as I expected, so the lines came out a softer grey color. I heat-embossed them with clear powder to give the image the look of leaded glass.
After the heat-embossing was cool, I spent some relaxing time painting each space with watercolors. I love how the transparency and varying intensity of the color gives a glass look!
I have done very little watercoloring (besides playing as a kid), so this might be a new medium for me to look into!
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