Typewritten Wishes

This is a clean and simple farewell card for one of my co-workers who's working hard at writing a few novels.

I stamped the typewriter and the sentiment, then wanted a bit more pizzaz, so I added the fireworks with 'SUPER' in a typewriter font, and some black lines with a marker.

I cut around the front leg of the typewriter to slip the ribbon behind it.

Best Wishes Rose

This was my second attempt at my complex background.  I used a lace edge stamp for the corners, masked them and the centre label, then used the background stamp.  I edged the label with a gold marker.  I went over the lattice with a red marker to give a hint of shadow, and used some more red marker on the lace.

For the label I did another gold edge, stamped the sentiment and roses and coloured them with markers.

Die Cut Best Wishes

This was a simple card that was surprisingly difficult to get right.  The edge die refused to cut the pieces all the way (even with wax paper and running it through my machine several times in different places).  I finally had to add a shim to force the cut, afraid of the creaking noises as I ran it through.

I stamped and heat embossed the sentiment on the inner circle.

Starry Sky card

I've started making 'best wishes' cards for my co-workers, for when I'm laid off.  This card is for a manager who loves astronomy and camping.

I started out by stamping the fire.  I masked it with an edge to edge post-it note (stamped and fussy cut out).  I then inked in the ground (using beige, brown and black ink and a sponge).  Then I stamped some trees.  I masked around the sky to make the moon, and around the fire to make the yellow glow.   I masked the ground, the moon and the fire/glow and started brayering two shades of blue and some black.  I punched the stars, careful to avoid punching the moon.  Lastly I stamped, coloured, cut and pop-dotted the raccoon.  Oh, and to make the stars yellow I inked some yellow and orange on the inside top of the card (with a mask so the ink stops just below where the stars land.

Best Wishes Homemade Background Card

Sorry for the lack of posts the past few weeks.  The store I work at is closing so I've been busy with other things.

I stamped the background card a while ago.  I saw a background I loved that looked similar and wanted to get it, then realized that since my cards are a little smaller than the stamp, the corners would either get cut off or look odd.  So I tried making my own background.  It's not perfect, but I like how it came out.
I'm using wax paper to hold the masks so I can reuse them in the future, if I want to try this again.

I started by laying the center shape die on two pieces of end to end glued sticky notes (for my mask).  I wanted to add the die cut later, and still have a border, so I traced the edge of the die (which is rounded).  I laid that in the center of the card so the trellis stamp wouldn't affect that area.  I then stamped and masked the 4 corners.  I used a trellis background stamp to fill in the background.  With the trellis shape just stopping around where the mask was it looked a bit odd, so I laid down the die and traced the edge with a black marker for a solid frame.

I was hoping to blend some colour into the shapes, but didn't think to test how it looked first.  My original idea was to use water based markers (as I don't have any bright coloured Copics) and then a water brush to spread the colour.  Luckily I tested that on scrap paper because it didn't work.  I then filled the areas around the darker marker with a lighter one.  I'm not thrilled with it, but it's not as bad as it could have been.

I die cut the center shape and inked it, then stamped the sentiment.  I die cut a TON of hydrangea blossoms, using a tool to round them a bit before gluing them onto the label.  I attached the label with pop-dots and finished the card with a die cut butterfly, inked a bit around the edges and gussied up with some glitter glue.  I didn't like the line the markers made around the edge of the corners, so I added som blossoms along those too.