Celebrate!

 

I'm always looking for a way to make a birthday card a little different-looking.  With Valentine's Day in February and my dad's birthday on the 25th (he's 96 this year-wow!) I thought I'd try to do something in red and gold.

I decided on an ivory card base with a heart border.  I knew I wanted some gold matting and added some pink patterned paper (Bo Bunny) and some plain red also.  I used several Frantic stamper dies to decorate and the Perfect Layers rulers to make my mats quickly and ...well, perfectly ( no lie, these are great).

I'm a blingy kind of person and I used red glitter card.  I wanted a really nice flower so I layered green suede paper for the stem.  I really love crepe ribbon with its wrinkly texture.  I use it on a lot of my projects and I did here. I wanted to add something to fill up the right side of my card and thought it would be fun to have a set of goblets - to toast his birthday.

Now, guess what he material is that I used for a background mat - you know that bright gold, wrinkly paper?  It's crepe paper!  Yup!  Just like the kind we used as kids - except this kind is has a metal coating on it to give it that gold look.  I found this special crepe paper (and tons of colors as well as Desden Foil or German scrap) at Castle In The Air.  I like it so much that Ive added it to my favorites!

Thanks for stopping by!

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Products used:

• Frantic Stamper Precision Dies
• Oval Nested Frames (flower die included)
• Love Filled Heart
• Wine Bottle and Glass (set of two dies)
• Heart on my Sleeve Edger
• One inch base - Square die

Wine Country Bracelet

I've had the Frantic Stamper Bottle die for a while and have been thinking of creating a piece of jewelry.  I like shrink plastic and have been experimenting lately with it again.  Each new die I use with shrink plastic does have it's own challenge.  This time I have learned that not all die cuts are created equal and each one has to be heated carefully if I want the finished product to come out right.
 

The bottle was easy to cut out of shrink plastic and heat shrink it.  To start I sanded the piece of shrink plastic so that it would hold color from chalk.  I then colored four sections, each representing a different kind of wine.  Then I cut out each bottle.  When I was heating each piece separately, I held my heat gun about 3-4 inches above my die cut so that the heat would go to the piece evenly.  I held my piece with some scissors (I really need to get a better tool for this!) As each piece shrinks, the color darkens.

I added some rub ons to decorate my bottles. Then I just added them to a chain for a bracelet.  I coiled some gold tone wire around the neck which does look pretty.

Notice that I used white rub ons for the purple bottle. I thought the color was too dark for black rub ons. I think this worked out perfectly.

I hope that you try this out with some of your dies!

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La Mode - an Arty Tag

Today I received a box from Fran!  And in that box was a set of new paints by Paper Artsy called Fresco Paints.  I had seen these on the site and really wanted them.  I think the word "fresco" drew me in...LOL.  

So, how to try out my new paints? I decided to make a tag with a paint background.  I chose some of the colors - some blues and a pretty cream color, got out my cosmetic wedges and pulled out some card stock.  I made my own tag (6 x 3 1/2 inches) this time because I wanted a larger size to work with.

I chose a few Frantic Stamper stamps to work with including a tag stamp.  Before I started painting I stamped my tag stamp onto some paper and made a mask and placed that on the bigger tag.

This paint is so nice!  It's creamy and covers really well.  The colors mix well also. I was able to blend while wet easily.

After I got my color background done, I stamped the shoe stamp randomly onto my tag.  I used the new Tim Holtz colors in Distress Markers to color my stamped shoe images.  I wasn't sure if this would work but it worked really well. The distress markers were transparent but you could easily see the colors over top of the paint which was very cool.  As my final step, I used the Pearl Glaze from the Fresco paints and applied a thin layer over my entire tag.  It was gorgeous!  The paint went on very smoothly and dried quickly. It left a really nice pearly shimmer.

To complete my tag: I removed the mask from the tag.  I cut some washi papers and added them onto my card with glue stick.  I had an old post card which I added to the bottom of my tag and then trimmed off.  I added some crochet ribbon to cover the seam.  I stamped La Mode (also Frantic Stamper) at the bottom on the post card.  I added Viva Decor Pearl Pen pearls to the smaller tag.  I added two colors of ribbon to the larger tag and fastened them with a small brad.

That was fun! 

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