Saturday, August 28, 2010

Sympathy Cards

Here are some  Sympathy cards that I made in the past.  Most of them are quilled.  These were made before I had my Big Shot  embossing machine. These first ones are some of my early cards.  You'll see a lot of my folded roses on these.  I also like to use punched leaves, and tiny punched flowers as well.
 

This next one was a design team project using black and white... The punched flowers are velvet/suede paper. 
These 2 are similar in design.  I used the Onion Holder to make the cross on them.  I like to use Ornare (paper pricking) to accent the quilling.  Pearl Papers were used for both.


For this next one, I embossed the outside, and  hand embosed the flowers ont he square using a brass template.  Again, pearl papers were used. The Green leaf one was done with peel offs on water color paper, and colored with Tombow markers.  This is a fun technique. The gold leaf on the black card is the inside of the leaf peel off.

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Gilded Papers From Book Pages

A couple of months ago, a friend of mine was going to get rid of some of her old Readers Digest Condensed books. She told me that the edges of the book were gilded in gold. Since she was going to put them in the recycling bin anyhow, I asked if I could have one. After I got it, I other two side's edges with a yellow gold acrylic, which looks not too bad, but it is not nearly as nice as the top metallic edges. The pages are aged, and look like an ivory color now, which is perfect for antique style quilling.

I also came across a small pocket calendar that someone had given to me a few years ago. I kept it, as the pages were bright white, and all of the edges were gilded in a very shiny metallic gold. Again, perfect for quilling! For both the readers Digest, and the calendar booklet, I pull some pages out when I need them, and then just trim either 1/8" or 1/16" wide strips, using my Fiskars Euro Trimmer (pages then go in our recycling bin). The paper is lighter in weight, but it still rolls pretty well. For both, the shine of the gold edges is comparable to the high shine of Jane Jenkins's gilded quilling strips. The following are 2 similar cards I made with both the ivory and the white gilded strips. It's hard to get a great picture, because of the amount of metallic shine from the gold edges. I hope you like them. They are both birthday cards, using the Cuttlebug Happy Birthday folder for the background. Both ovals are from Spellbinders Nestabilities. I did the edges gold using a Krylon 18ct. Gold Leafing pen.  This has me keeping my eye out for old books with gold edges....Enjoy, and as usual, all comments welcome!

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Birthday Cards For a Couple of Sisters

This might be a tad confusing, but I made this first one for a friend of my mom’s (named Bea), who ordered it for her sister’s birthday (Alice), and was going to give it to her when she came here from Ontario to Alberta for Bea’s Birthday which was close to the same time, and saved her mailing it (Confused yet?). I did my usual roses, and added punched butterflies as well. It's nice when Bea orders cards, because she lets me do almost anything I want, and she is always pleased with them.


This next one, my mom asked me to make for her friend Bea who was having her 80th birthday, and her family was having a huge party for her. So, her and her sister both received a quilled card that week :) . Bea’s Card was done in fringed pink flowers and blue teardrop flowers. Once again for both cards I used texture plate from Sizzix set #19.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

I thought I'd show you some of my pieces from April and May....

I made these a few months ago. This first one is a thank you card for one of my quilling friends in Victoria. I used the Spellbinders nestabilities inverted scalloped square to cut out the square in the card. I especially like these dies for cutting out scalloped shapes in the cards. They do an awesome job! I then used a quilled butterfly for inside the square. The texture plate is from Sizzix set # 19. It’s in shades of purples, but my camera doesn’t like purples too much, so it looks an odd color from how it really looked.  I colored the ribbon using one of my Bic markers.


This next card is a birthday card for another quilling friend in Victoria.  It’s my rose splash design. The embossing folder is the Cuttlebug A2 Happy Birthday folder. I cut the strips for the leaves using a 1/8” shredder, I think my fringed flowers were cut ¼” strips of pearl white, and the roses are about ¼” strips  of Paplin's pink pearl accessory sheets that I cut using my Fiskars Euro-trimmer. 

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Wedding Season Means Lots of Cards!

May, June and July were very popular for weddings this year! I had 3 weddings to attend 3 weekends in a row, so needless to say was busy making cards for them. For all of the cards, I used spellbinders nestabilities for cutting out the fancy ovals around the text . I just love the nestabilities, as they give such a clean cut, and add so much to the designs. The printing was all done on my computer.

I also had a couple of special order cards one was for May, and the other was for July. They were being given by a grandmother to her 2 grand daughters, so it was requested that they both be close to the same. This is the design that she wanted, ivory Calla Lilies. They both even had similar verses.  I was told they both loved them and are having them framed.  They were all teary eyed when they told me, which was a good feeling, to see them so happy with them.


My Nephew was married June 19th.  In May I went to his fiancée’s shower, so this is the card I made for it. It is a money /gift certificate holder card. The leaves and scrolls are done in 1/16" narrow strips.  The roses are made with 1/8" wide strips



Their wedding was a medieval theme, so I used the same font as what was on their invitations for their wedding card. She had told me for flowers she was having dried flowers wheat, and peacock feathers. So, this is what I came up with. The wispy tendrils are from peacock feathers (My parents have peacocks on their farm). The picture does not show it well, so I hope to get another picture of it in the near future. The background is the scroll texture plate, from the Sizzix Texture plates #19. I also used touch of gold paper for the bells, and small flowers, and Merlot metallic papers for the fringed flowers. This was not my usual style, but they were thrilled with it. I didn’t like it as I made it, but by the time I finished, I quite liked the result.


The next weekend we had Bill’s sisters wedding. Her theme was colorful summer flowers and butterflies, so I did blue fringed daisies, some small punched flowers, and a metallic looped teardrop butterfly using saphire metallic strips, that I edged with  twinkling H2O's water colors, and  I also used the bright white holographic edged strips from Jane Jenkin's papers. I love those papers!  This is the result. Again, I used a texture plate from set #19.

                                                                                                                              

The 3rd wedding was friends of ours. The silver hearts were on their invitation, so I added them to the top corner. I used pearl papers for all of the quilling. The embossing was done with the Victoria Folder, which as you may have guessed, is one of my favorites.  I especially like how this one turned out.