Vintage Paris Card

I was looking through my old cards and came across a few of my favourite ones that I never got a chance to share. So I thought I’d share them here today.

I am exceedingly fond of vintage cards and scrapbooking ideas and there’s no one who does this better than Tim Holtz. So using his stamp set “I see Paris” by Stampers Anonymous, I created a set of cards as gifts for my friends. I’m sad to say that I actually don’t have a physical copy of any of the cards I make because I give them away to friends for birthdays and gifts. But I feel that creativity should be shared and not hoarded for oneself. So when I think about how happy my friend will be to receive a card from me, it really inspires me to create for them.

So here is a card I made for my friend who have always wanted to visit Paris but never got the chance to. So to encourage and motivate them to realize their dreams, I gave them this card:

I embossed a piece of black cardstock with Tim Holtz’s splatter embossing folder…I couldn’t find the name of this one, I don’t remember it and I couldn’t find it when I searched for it. But on the sizzix website, they have a new texture fade splatter set. That one will likely work too. But if you find out the name, please let me know!

I went over the raised parts with a brush dipped in gold acrylic paint.

I was really into mixed media back in the day.

Using my Silhouette Cameo, I cut out a shape of the Eiffel Tower and embossed it using one of Tim Holtz’s grid emobssing folders and then I went over the raised parts with gold acrylic paint. 

To give the Carte Postale (post card) a vintage look, I tore the corners and distressed with a combination of vintage photo and walnut stain. I then brushed the top with a layer of clear crackle paint so that when it dried, it would have that lovely vintage cracked look.

To finish everything off, I embellished the card with flower punch outs and I used like blue pearls in the centre to accent.

So I hope you enjoyed looking at this project as much as I enjoyed making it.

Until next time!

Scary Halloween Invite beckons my ghoulish presence

My BFF, Alice, who’s also an avid scrapper, sent me this gorgeous scary invitation to a halloween party. I was so pleased and amazed at the detail and work she put into it that I just had to showcase it here and show everyone else.

She picked up all the supplies from Michaels. Using a stamp with diamonds she made the background of the envelope and then embossed it. The invitation itself was stamped with different colours and then also embossed.

She even made a few red paint splatters on the front of the envelope to make it look like someone’s blood spilled on it while she was busy working away. Very creepy indeed…I love it!

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!

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!