Calendar Style Birthday Card

I made this card for my BFF a few months back for her birthday but just got around to uploading it. Sorry for being MIA for a while, my studies have been so super busy! I went away to present my research at a conference and although it was probably one of the best experiences of my life, it also left me very little free time for a while.

But I’m back in the game and super excited to share with you all my most recent creations, starting with the least recent haha!

I really wanted to showcase when my BFF’s birthday was which is the 29th of December so I printed out, stained and distressed a calendar that I found online.

I used some glimmer mist in Rouge and Cork using my technique on how to prevent paper from wrinkling after soaking it in wet media and letting it dry. You can find that tutorial here.

Once it dried, I stamped some swirls using Versamark and transparent embossing powder. You can see the glimmer mist underneath of it that way.

Then I just finished up the card by adding a gemstone over the top of the 29th of December because that’s the date of her birthday. And then I just embellished with a flower (I don’t remember what it’s called, an accordion flower? Somebody help!) I cut out with my Silhouette Cameo, but you can also use a Tim Holtz die to do that.

I mounted the calendar onto another piece of cardstock which I punched with a Martha Stewart doily punch just on one edge and then distressed the edges with Vintage Photo. 

Finally I mounted everything onto a card with a pretty pink background I dug out from my scraps stash from DCWV Garden Tea Party Stack.

Share your comments below!

How to prevent wet paper from wrinkling when dried

One of the things that I hate about using wet media when scrapbooking or crafting is that afterwards, the paper dries all wrinkly and ugly. As much as I like the wrinkly look for SOME projects, I don’t necessarily like it for ALL of my projects. So, I’ve adapted one of the techniques I normally use for watercolour painting to prevent my paper from curling, developing ridges and overall looking anything other than smooth.

Measure out a piece of cardstock for your project and add 1/2 inch to each of the four sides. Cut it out.
I’ve printed a picture of a calendar for a birthday card project and cut it down to size.

Tape that piece of cardstock to something hard, like a big fat heavy textbook or encyclopaedia. Or tape it to your craft table.

You can use washi tape or masking tape. Masking tape is better but whatever you have lying around is just fine.

I’m using washi tape in the above photo because I have this really terrible washi tape from K and Company’s Smash album. Terrible Terrible stuff. With a capital T. Thankfully, it won’t go to waste because I can just use it for taping stuff down like when I’m die-cutting for example.

MAKE SURE YOU TAPE DOWN EVERY ONE OF THE FOUR SIDES COMPLETELY.
This is essential to ensuring you have your desired final product free of wrinkles. If you miss even a little bit of the paper, you’ll have an imperfect paper after it dries. But hey, maybe that’s what you were going for?

Spray your favourite glimmer mist or use your distressing inks or water colour pencils, etc. Have fun, go crazy, make a mess, it’s all good!

Mine looks like this after:

Now let it dry completely.

It should look like this!

See how flat it looks?

And this is how it looks after I’ve cut it out!

I’m using a rectangle piece of cardstock for my project, but your project may need a different shape. Just use this method to ink up a larger sheet of cardstock and cut/punch out your desired shape after the paper dries. So simple right?

TROUBLESHOOTING

1. Tape lifts up from page after applying wet media.

Possible reasons why:

– Your tape is probably not suitable for wet media projects. Try masking tape, it’s awesome!
– You didn’t press your tape down firmly and there was a gap somewhere. It’s ok, just remove the piece that became unstuck, try to blot the wet area with a paper towel and then stick another piece of tape over it.

2. The paper dried wrinkly

Possible reasons why:

– Your cardstock was too thin. This technique doesn’t work with paper unfortunately because paper is so thin it’s flexible and can stretch a bit when wet. Try using a thicker cardstock next time like Baziill. I’m using Recollections cardstock here which works ok, not the best but ok…it’s cheap.

– Your tape may have come loose upon applying wet media or during the drying process. See above solutions.

And that’s it! Post a comment below if you have questions, this technique allows me to create vintage yet neat projects which I really love!

Have fun with all your wet media!

vintage christmas card

My tutorial on how to make a vintage style Christmas card!

The 3 photos above show the one that I created last year and sent to one of my friends but since this was such an awesome and lovely card, I wanted to make a bunch more this year too and give them away to other friends as well. It works quite well if you’re looking for a Christmas card to give to one of you guy friends because it’s not too girly haha!

This card has a postcard theme and I specifically bought this stamp from Michaels because I love the look of postcards. For this tutorial, it will take some time to complete but the steps are easy and the final product is beautiful!

I’ve added an extra layer of vintaging to the tutorial by making a crackle effect! I think it looks soooo lovely with the extra details. Whoever receives this card is going to feel truly blessed this Christmas season by all the work you put into this card.

The supplies you’ll need:

1. One 5 1/4 x 3 3/4 inch manilla/cream cardstock

2. On 4 x 5 1/2 inch cream card and envelope (I’m using the Recollections brand of card/envelope)
3. Red and Green Stickles or other glitter glue
4. Fast-drying Tacky Glue (Scotch)
5. ATG gun/tape runner
6. foam dots

7. Archival black ink (StazOn Jet Black)
8. Distress Ink – Vintage Photo and Walnut Stain with foam daubers
9. Red stamp pad – colorbox in red

10. Silver “Merry Christmas” stickers
11. Postcard Stamp – Stampendous Snow Postcard
12. Tim Holtz  French Market Acrylic stamp set – postage stamp piece
13. Acrylic Block – Martha Stewart (the one with foam feet)
14. Ranger Crackle Paint in Rock Candy

Instructions:

1. Place your inset cardstock piece on a craft mat and tack it down with washi tape to avoid dislodging it when stamping.

2. Ink up the postcard stamp with black archival ink and line up the stamp using the guides of the craft mat.

3. Using Scissors or a paper distressing tool, distress the edges of the cardstock.

4. Ink up the foam dauber with Vintage Photo and rub around the edges of the cardstock being careful not to distress the centre of the image too much. I think I may have overdone the centre a bit but you won’t make that mistake! Then ink up a foam dauber with Walnut Stain and distress the edges of the cardstock to make the image pop.
5. Using Rock Candy Crackle Paint and generously layer the cardstock with a layer of the paint. Be careful as some of the vintage photo distress ink will transfer to your paint brush, but only a little bit. Let it dry for about 30 minutes. If you’d like to speed up the drying time, once it’s started to dry and you can clearly see crackles, the bottle says you can use a heat tool to speed it up. Just don’t use your heat tool right off the bat, then you won’t get any crackling. I just let it dry by itself and work on other parts of the project in the meantime. After the crackle paint has COMPLETELY dried (very important this!) put a big text book or dictionary over top of it and let it flatten out since the wet medium has made it crinkle and warp. Let that sit at least an hour to overnight.

6. Ink up the French Market postage stamp acrylic stamp piece with your red stamp pad of choice. I’m using a red colorbox pigment ink. Don’t use distress inks here as the fine details of the stamp will become blurred by the wetness of the distress ink. Then stamp it on some scrap cream cardstock and cut around the edges leaving just a little bit of a border.

7. Use foam dots to attach your red stamp to your now dried piece of cardstock with the stamped postcard and crackled image right over the stamp portion of the postcard image. I found that my foam dots didn’t attach so well the distressed crackle paint so I added a few extra dots of tacky glue to really make a good stick. 

8. Use red Stickles to make holly berries over the stamped postcard image and use the green stickles to fill in the holly leaves. Let dry at least 45 minutes to 1 hour. You can see that my cardstock even sitting under a heavy physics textbook, is still a little warped. Once we glue it to our card, it’ll flatten out.

9. Finally, using your tape runner, adhere your cardstock piece to the card. Since we used the wet crackle paint medium on the cardstock, it’ll be a bit wrinkly and won’t lie flat. Mine had edges that came up after sticking it down to the card with my ATG gun. So I used my tacky glue around the raised edges and pressed for a few seconds and wiped away the excess glue with my finger.

And tada~ the final project all done!

I’d love to hear your comments and suggestions to make this card even better and help out others looking for more efficient techniques!

And please share your vintage style Christmas cards too!