Hand made cards

One of my friends always makes lovely hand made cards for me for birthdays and Christmas.  So when her Mum passed away within a week of my friend's birthday, I wanted to make two special cards for her.  This Sympathy card is based on something I saw on Pinterest, using paint sample cards.  I used black marker pen to black out the names of the colours on the card, and the flower was on a sheet of decoupage images that I had in my stash.  I glued the paint card on to a plain white card, and added the thin brown line around it.

For her birthday, I made this one, also based on something I'd seen on Pinterest.  Yeah I know, I am a copycat, but there are such great things out there, and I don't have much imagination :-(
I folded a piece of light cardstock, glued some Japanese paper at the top and bottom of the front.  Drew the snails in green marker pen, and glued the buttons over the snail image.  Added the words on a separate piece of decorative paper, and circled that in black marker pen.

Hand made cards

I try not to get too involved in making cards, as like a lot of crafts, it can become addictive, and you can end up with dozens/hundreds of cards that you don't know what to do with!  So I only make them when I have a specific reason, or person to send it to.
On the Down to Earth forum, the moderators recently organised a swap, where the participants exchanged three recipes, plus a hand made card or a photo of your home town.  I decided to do the hand made card because I'd seen something on Pinterest that I was keen to try.  We crafters all know how important it is to have all kinds of paper and/or fabric to play with, and two item that can be used to make lovely cards or collages, whatever you are in to - are sheet music, and Asian printed newspapers or books.  I have bought both at opshops in the past, and have found many uses for the pages.  Such as this:

Mystery origami!

A friend was playing with this when I visited her a few days ago.  She was looking on the internet for ideas for kids papercrafts and found this on a site called Grandma's Toys, or something similar.  She remembered making them at school when she was a child in the 1950's but can't remember what they were called.  I remember having them too; we used to sit around and wiggle the paper with our fingers in the pockets underneath!  There were numbers or letters written on the paper and we used to count or spell, but I can't remember exactly what it was.

I don't think many people read this blog, but if you do, and you remember this game, please let me know, either by leaving a comment, or emailing me!

Mail art workshop with the Calligraphy Society.

Last month I attended a one day workshop with my paperlovin' friend Val.  We had done workshops with this particular tutor before, and she (Marg) is a lot of fun to work with.  She has a large studio in her back yard with every imaginable pen, paper, and ink that you could think of, and she is very generous in sharing it with her pupils.

She started out showing us how to make our own envelopes, origami style.

Then we went on to decorate them, using various mediums and styles of lettering.

The above photo shows bits of sponge that we cut into shapes like hearts, starts, fish, etc. then dipped into inks and used to decorate envelopes.  Who would have thought?!

Crafts with used stamps.

I used to collect stamps.  From when I was about 10 years old, up until a few years ago, but by then I had long lost interest in saving, soaking, peeling, and putting them in albums.  So I sold most of the albums to a stamp dealer, and hung on to the few albums that I wished to keep.  Old habits die hard, and I still tear stamps off envelopes and toss them into a tin for some future purpose.

I have seen this technique before, but I saw it again on Pinterest recently, and decided to play :-)
The idea is that you glue stamps close together on a sheet of paper, then cut out a shape.
So I glued stamps on to paper last night, giving them time to dry.

I don't know what other people do, but I figured the best way to get a good shape is to draw an outline on the reverse side of the paper, and cut it out from there.  I chose to draw a rooster.

I will do this again, but first I'll look for a different glue, as I only had Modge Podge, Napkin Glue, Glue sticks and white craft glue.  I tried all of them, but none were really suitable, and the best of the lot was Modge Podge.