Hello there
Two days ago on Facebook, I put this as my status:
'A commission. Make a card for a 50 year old man, whom you've never met. Cues are model railways/trains and or physics. Wow! Why isn't my mojo kicking in I wonder?!!'
Well thankfully I did get some inspiration and have ended up making two cards, so 'him indoors' i.e commissioner Chris, can decide which card he wants to give to his friend.
I've gone for steampunk, as I tend to do when faced with such male recipients. I've done two 'different to usual' cards, as I figure men like to quickly work out how a card works.
The first one is a stepper card.
I used the MyCraftStudio Tinkering with Steampunk cdrom again. I'm really quite happy with the result, other than the 'not particularly clear' Happy Birthday tag.
This is a fancy fold card which I quite like. I do love doing the matching envelopes, although they are a bit of a faff to make with the cdrom if you need to adjust sizes.
I've still got some leftover bits on my desk but I'm not sure if they're enough to make another card out of and besides, I think I've done enough with this for now.
Take care out there
Hello there
Since Chris bought me red roses over the weekend (yes, I know, I did wonder what he might've done wrong for me to get them, as it's not something he does routinely or even bi-annually really), he left me with no choice but to rush to make him a card for Valentines. One of the awkward things is that he's away working, so I had to post it to him on Monday.
It wasn't difficult for me to decide that fluffy bunnies, gushy love hearts and such like weren't going to happen. I went straight to thinking steampunk, as he used to love trains and planes. I had a look through Sarah Hurley's steampunk digikit with Craftartist and my Tinkering with Steampunk cd-rom by MyCraftStudio and came up with some ideas. I found the black wheels paper in a pad I had. The worst bits were cutting out the train shape and those circular letters, as they're rather small.
On the whole, I really like the way the card turned out, other than the word journey which I printed onto Safmat, and it only dawned on me at the last minute that it blended into the background rather too well. It was too late by then to do anything else, so I had to leave it. Everything was distressed with Vintage photo - that's such a life saver thing to do, as with printed items which need cutting out; the inking covers any white bits you may have left. Not that I did anything as poor as that of course though, I'm sure my cutting out was perfect! ;-) I also used a glossy medium on the tags, just to help them look more realistic/solid.
Some basically coordinating paper, from the same pad as the black wheels, was used for the insert (Chris loves birds too).
A suitable stamping and inking for the envelope and hey presto. I'm sorted for Valentine's Day.
It's a far from traditional type card but I hope he'll like it and be really surprised by getting it handed to him by the lady behind reception where he'll be working.
Take care and hope you can find love, in whatever form, at sometime today.
p.s I haven't found out about anything bad he may have done to feel guilty enough to get me flowers. He spent all weekend cooking allsorts of stuff, so I gotta love him :-)
p.s.s the heart placemats I made last year are on the table too, as are the paper rose, tealight holders I showed you last week.
Hello there
I've ventured into the world of Steampunk again for my cousin. I used my Tinkering with Steampunk cd-rom again. It's a great cd-rom in many respects but I had real trouble with the printer options. In the software I selected A5 paper size but when I went to print it, I selected A4 as that is what I was printing with, as that meant that I could use it as an A5 card. Unfortunately I tried a couple of times, wasting much ink but it kept printing it as A6, so I had to stick to that. Next time I must just take the items I want into Craft Artist and work from there, as that software is so much more intuitive and logical.
Incase you're reading this and hoping for details on what I used. Here's a list of the things I can remember.
Background consists of background 78. I shrunk it down and then copied several times (placed next to each other)to get the bubble wrap print effect into the other background, which is number 27.
The clock is image 14.
The cog is image
The tag is from the tag folder and is number 7. I changed the colour to suit what I wanted and added the text in 'English 157 BT' font.
The phrase 'Time is a great storyteller' is image 134.
The arm is image 146.
The train is image 3.
I printed the clock and the cog separately. The clock just went on as it was, raised by the glue but I inked the cog with vintage photo and then embossed it to give that proper metal finish and raised that with Pinflair glue as well.
My original inspiration came from Cazz in her blog.
Take care out there and Paul, hope that you did have a great day and we must organise a dog walk together soon x
Hello there
I've finally got round to getting some lace, so I can show this card I made using my MCS cd-rom 'Tinkering with steampunk'. My first one in fact, if memory serves me right. I've designed it too, so I'm happy about that.
You will notice a few errors though I have to admit. The first one is that I forgot to print double-sided on the card base, so the inside of the card is white rather than the 'mucky' paper look of the front. I rectified that with the envelope though, I have to say in my defence. I love the envelope almost as much as the card really. I created the actual stamp shape myself with a Gelly Roll pen;red star which is great when it shimmers in the light in contrast to the grungy look of the rest of the envelope.
The second error was the 'soutien-gorge' label on the top right hand side; I didn't print it in the right location to show fully on the card. I'm not worrying about this though as the card will go to one of my daughter's friends and I highly doubt they'll even notice. You could argue that it adds to the querkiness of it.
The flowers on the front were printed separately and once glued on, I put glossy accents on them and the way it makes the card react is great, as it shapes them for you and of course makes card come to life.
I was so pleased about the ribbon find in my stash, as the colour is perfect to match the swirly pattern on the top left hand side.It's American Crafts- Spring and Summer beetle.
I'm going to make more of these but learn from the lessons learnt. I'll enjoy making something that isn't being created from fresh.
Take care out there
P.S I've just checked and I lied! I have infact done another Steampunk card - I posted about it on November 4th last year. It's a good job I have this blog to keep me on my toes!
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