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.

Just a couple of quick cards...

I had a busy weekend so I wasn't able to do much in the way of card-making. Here are two that I just made.

The first is with a frog from Uptown Rubber Stamps. They came out with a new line of really cute animal images (but nothing online) and I thought this froggie was really cute. He's holding a flower on the stamp but I punched a small flower and put that over top of the stamped flower. The circle of dots is a stamp from Hero Arts and the "thank you" at the bottom is from Classic Appeals (or whatever it's called). I had to use a green background to scan the card, otherwise I wouldn't know where the edges are. So the green around the edge is not part of the card.



The next card is a birthday card I made. I wanted to use our new Dymo labelmaker so I came up with this card. I guess I didn't press hard enough for the last two letters in "HAPPY", so it just looks like "HAP" birthday. Oh well, live and learn. It's a single-sided card (like a post card) and the envelope is one of those long tie envelopes I've been using lately.

Front:


Back:


Envelope:

Blue Mood.... and Pink. And Brown.

Actually, more aqua than blue. I made two cards this weekend, both in the same color scheme (but not on purpose). I had this first card rattling around in my head last week and put it together when I got home on Friday. I got out my watercolors and free-handed a branch in brown with green leaves on off-white paper. I then outlined the branch with a fine point black marker. I used my mini flower punch to make several pink flowers and painted a dark pink center in all of them. I drew black squiggly lines around the edge, layered it on dark grey paper, and tied a pink ribbon around it; then I mounted it on light aqua cardstock. Finally I cut out a small square of the grey paper and punched a larger cherry blossom in pink with a darker pink mini sun center.



I made this next card to send to my friend Linda, who I haven't heard from in a while. I had this striped paper and have been wanting to use it but just never sat down to work it out. The pink center of the flower is a brad and the "Hi" was done with rub-on letters.



This past weekend I got a few new toys at AC Moore. The first thing I got is a tag maker, which I can use to make my own metal-rimmed tags. I also got one of those old-fashioned label makers. I'd been wanting one for a while and Onil really wanted one too, so we picked it up. I also got this sheet of clear stamps to use on the inside of cards. This was all a great deal -- the tag maker was on sale for 40% off, and I used 40% and 50% coupons for the label maker and the stamps. So everything I got was like half price. AWESOME.

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.