Thank you cards

Even though I still have a few cards left in my stash, today I made a few specific thank you cards using some new techniques I either just learned or had never tried. Last night, when I was puttering in my scrapbooking room playing video games, surfing blogs and watching YouTube, I watched Creations with Christina's Stampin' on Friday video and was very inspired by the cute vintage newspaper card she made. Well, of course, I didn't have the newspaper stamp, the twine, the tiny tags die or stamp, but I figured I could still make it work. Hmmm... thinking about it now, that was a pretty strange assumption - I don't have anything she uses in the card except card stock and yet I still thought I could do it. Fortunately, I have Google. So I searched Google images to find a suitable newspaper image. I substituted embroidery thread for the twine. It isn't quite as cute, but it works:

A few months ago, I was shopping at Paper Zone and bought a little spray bottle of Tsukineko Sheer Shimmer Spritz in a shade called Sparkle. I've never really tried spraying on my layouts or cards but I've really liked when I've seen others using it or similar products. So the little spray bottle has languished in the top drawer of tool cart for probably about three months now. But today I decided it was time to give it a try. First I ran my background paper through the Sizzix with an embossing folder and then sprayed the background (I used my garbage can to contain the spray. It was surprisingly simply and dried quickly. I used some of my stash of flowers, some Irock gems and a little Offray ribbon to finish it off. Yeah for using my stash!

So after Christina's video ended, I started watching videos by 2stampis2b.com. I saw this wonderful video using embossing folders that left a void in the embossing so that you can stamp an image without having the texture where your image is. It's really hard to see, but in this picture, the card stock under the bunch of flowers is flat and all the rest has the texture from the embossing plate. It's a really amazing technique. The video demonstrating it is available here. I just had to try it. So I made my stamping void using a recycled part of an old box that held page protectors. It worked perfectly. Although next time I will probably make the void a little bit bigger. I then colored in the flowers with my Stampin' Up pens and sprayed the whole thing with Sheer Shimmer Spritz in Sparkle (and since that little bottle is running out quickly, I'm definitely going to try her spray that she shows how to make here). I then used Inkscape to make the ribbon slide and imported it into SCAL. I added the words "Thanks a bunch" and used my metallic Cri-kits pen to write it then cut it out. Then just layer the pieces and it was done. The picture shows the shimmer mist really well and the light really reflects off the writing much more in the picture. The shimmer mist is really much more subtle in person and the writing is in much starker contrast.

So now I just have to make a sympathy card and I can get back to my layouts. Oh, and I have to actually mail a whole bunch of cards that I'm behind in mailing out too... Oh well, better late than never I guess.