Father's Day

Yesterday was Father's Day. Like Mother's Day, not a really big day as far as I'm concerned. I know, I'm selfish. I needed a card for my father and one for Onil's father, so I used two older cards. The first one has been posted here before, the second one hasn't:





I also made two other cards this weekend. The first card is a thank you to my sister, who gave us a strawberry pie the weekend we went to her house for my nephew's graduation party. She's got a Boston terrier and the one in this picture is holding a pie, so I thought it was a good fit. I printed the picture from the internet and mounted it on white card stock. I stamped "THANKS!" with individual letter stamps and the stitches are rub-on.



I made this card for my friend, Kevin. I'd been wanting to drop him a note for a while, and we both just had birthdays recently. I found this picture on the internet and thought of him immediately -- I knew he would totally crack up over it. Because, you know what? Sometimes it really can't. It's a simple card -- I mounted the picture on grey cardstock and layered it on handmade rice paper with silver and gold flecks. I got out the label maker again (yes, I really do love that thing) and attached "WORD" to the side.

A Blast From the Past, Part 4: Spring Is Here!

I'm working on some new stuff to post here, but until I finish everything, enjoy some of my older cards, won't you?

First, we still have a little bit of snow to deal with. I used to run a message board and we had a secret santa. I sent this card with my gift to my santa and she thanked me for the card with drunken snowmen, which totally cracked me up. She turned out to be completely insane, but the observation about the snowmen was right on.



Here's a card I made for Onil a few years ago. He's a boxers guy, so this card is perfect for him. I stamped boxers on red gingham paper in black and little hearts in red, then cut them out and used mini clothespins to affix them to the string. The background was made with blue paper, white pigment ink and a stencil I made myself.



Now that the winter is overwith, let's celebrate Easter and spring with my fluffy little bunnies. I stamped them in black waterproof ink and painted around them with watercolor, a technique which I really love. Inside the card it says "Happy Easter!", although I guess if I wanted to be pithy I could have put "Hoppy Easter!" Ha! Ha!



Continuing in the stamp and watercolor vein, here are two more cards with that technique. They also show off a cool process which I think is called transference or something (maybe I just made that word up). Take a small picture from a magazine and lay a piece of clear packing tape over top, making sure to remove all of the air bubbles. Cut out the picture so there are no exposed edges, just packing tape. Immerse in warm water and gently rub away the paper behind the tape. The picture will remain on the tape but will be transparent. It's difficult to see how transparent the picture looks here, but it turns out looking pretty cool.





This last card was also made with clothespins and is very much like this baby card. The booties are little embellishments from Jolee's.

A Blast from the Past, Part 3: More Asian Cards

Okay, here's another batch of Asian cards that I made a couple of years ago. Fun!

This first card is one of my all-time favorite cards. I love the cherry blossoms behind the lantern. I stamped the lantern on light green mulberry paper, spray mounted it to cardstock and added a wire at the top. I then strung it so it looked like it was hanging in the window. If I were to do it today I probably would not use the sticks and the wire on the side, but otherwise I really love this card.



If I were to send this next card to someone who reads Chinese or Japanese, they would be all WTF? Since I can't tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese characters, it may all be one giant mix of Asian languages. (At least none of the characters are Korean or Thai. I at least can recognize those characters as not being Chinese or Japanese.) Even if they're all the same language, it's still a crazy mix. The background is from a Chinese newspaper that talks about who knows what -- could be the stock market, could be "Giant Seal Tries to Hump Car". The characters on the right stand for sun, moon, stars and sky. And then there's a lucky cat, generally used to invoke monetary blessings, wishing you a happy birthday! So needless to say, this card is meant strictly for my non-Chinese/Japanese-speaking friends, none of whom will say, "So just what are you trying to tell me with this card?!"



This card was made with the same set of stamps I used for this card.



Nothing exciting about this card. The fans were embossed with gold and colored in. The character means... I don't know what, really. I think happiness? Part of the reason I slacked off making Asian cards is because I didn't understand the writing and was always afraid that if someone who did understand the writing got hold of one of my cards they would be mortally offended. I mean, I did one card that had as its center a kind of paper they would burn to commemorate or say prayers for dead relatives, with a lucky cat on top! Which, I didn't know at the time, but when I found out later what that paper was for I felt it was potentially really offensive (which is also why I didn't include it in my collection of cards here). Plus, so much of my Asian card-making was done with rubber stamps, and I had started to move away from that particular medium anyway.



This was one of my first Asian cards ever. It was made in response to an article I read in Rubber Stamper magazine about using up your little scraps of paper.



This card is actually relatively new. I think I made it last year or something.

A Blast from the Past, Part 2: Asian Cards

I found some other older cards this weekend and I thought I'd share them with you. I made some of my favorite cards in 2000 and 2001. In particular, I was fascinated with Asian cards. I wanted to move beyond the standard red, black, white and gold of the typical Asian cards I saw and incorporate some color. A lot of my cards did wind up being red, black, white and gold, but I managed to get some other colors in there as well. Also, all of these cards use rubber stamps, since that was my medium of choice in 2000 and 2001.

A Blast from the Past, Part 1

My first experience with making cards was with rubber stamps. A good friend of mine invited me over another friend's house for a card-making party. They all had rubber stamps and ink pads and paper. I had maybe two stamps and no ink pads, so everyone let me borrow some of their stuff. An obsession was born!

I went through some painful personal stuff for a few years, starting in 2002. I lost my inspiration for card-making and just stopped for a while as I tried to put my life back together. I finally began making cards again in 2005 but was having a hard time with rubber stamping. I found that previously I'd see a stamp and get inspiration to make a card, and then once that card had been made I wouldn't know what to do with the stamp any more. I began to experiment with other things, like punches, stickers, ribbons and brads. I also began incorporating photos with my cards. I feel pretty comfortable with my style right now and I'm happy to be creating again.

Anyway, this is a card I made in 2001, when we were still living in Roslyn. In spite of the bad situation we were in, I feel pretty good about this time in my life. I was at the top of my game in card-making and in my own home with a dedicated craft space. I don't remember where I got the crane stamps; it was a company on the internet which sells unmounted stamps by the sheet. The white feathers are the same ones that I used on my bookmark. I found this card in a drawer as I was cleaning this weekend, and when I find more old cards I'll post them here.