I recently received a request for 100 of a particular card in my etsy shop! My customer is the founder of You Matter! which is a monthly subscription box to encourage young people who struggle to find their place in this world. January’s box is music themed and she felt my card would be a nice addition! I haven’t done a large card order in quite some time, so I jumped right in and got busy! Be warned! This post is picture heavy! My first photo shows a number of the black base cards upon which I stamped my logo in white pigment ink. I purchased it from Hello World etsy shop last year and just love it!
Here I’ve gathered my beginning pieces to assemble the card; the larger white stack on the left is 4 X 6 index cards which I trimmed down to 4 X 5 1/4″ and will form the white border around my central image. The second stack of white is card stock cut to a quarter inch smaller than the border panel. This is the piece which I’ll emboss with my Brutus Monroe folder called Petal Lace using Fossilized Amber distress oxide ink. I die-cut my ovals using Gina Marie Designs Stitched Oval dies.
Thankfully I was able to cut two ovals at a time, which saved me some elbow grease with the Cuttlebug! I stamped the sentiment from Brutus Monroe’s set called Break The Rules using Versafine Onyx Black ink.I colored in the little microphone using a gray Copic marker then…
…lightly stamped the music notes onto the ovals.This is the faux Letterpress technique and it’s so pretty! I rubbed my ink pad all over the flat side of the embossing folder then ran it through my Cuttlebug. Unfortunately, this had to be done 100 times as I could only do one at a time! UGH!But look how cool it is!I sure was happy to finish that step and adding more of the musical notes onto 100 panels went fairly quickly! I realized when I was done that the original card in my etsy shop only had the notes inked down one side! Oh well!Back to the ovals! I decided to add a bit of Glossy Accents glue to the microphone for a little additional detail.At this point, I quit for the night and left them to dry!I ran out of my Glue Glider Pro tape so tried using Elmer’s Glue stick to attach the inside panel; I didn’t love it but it was the best I could do at this point!Today I was thrilled to get my tape runner refills in the mail! Thank goodness! 😀 I have a monthly subscription through Amazon and it’s half the price of buying them at a retail store! I love this tape runner because it’s lightweight and the perfect size to work with! Here’s a link to Amazon for them. I zipped right through this step of adhering my embossed panels and ovals to the fronts of the cards!At last!! Finished!! I packed 100 cards and coordinating envelopes into a sturdy card box, stuffed bubble wrap in the gaps and covered with tissue paper to make it look prettier!One of my favorite thank you cards went on the top and expresses my gratitude for the order and her support of my work!And here’s one of the finished cards! I hope that each person who receives this will feel special and sense the love that went into the creating of it! Be sure to check out the You Matter! website and if you know of a young person who would benefit from such a meaningful gift, please subscribe! Thank you for staying with me to the end of this time-worthy project!
Welcome back! This week’s Inspiration Team’s blog hop assignment was to create something other than a card using the new Brutus MonroeDeco Foils! It took me a while to think on it and then remembered how beautifully foil adheres to alcohol ink while it’s still tacky! So I got out my neglected inks and all the paraphernalia and went to town! This particular photo doesn’t really show the accents of foil but don’t worry! I’ll share lots more!This is an 8X8 inch glazed tile from Home Depot and to begin, I wiped it clean with a cotton ball dampened with 70% rubbing alcohol. When it was dry, I went a little crazy with my inks! I created a background which isn’t even visible, using some yellow and brown ink, blowing it around the tile with my air compressor. I then just added drops of color, reds, orange, yellow, pinks, and white, moving each drop with the compressor before adding the next color and layer. I love making flowers this way; I added some greens and a little brown alcohol ink to make the leaves.When I was satisfied with the overall design and the ink was not quite dry, I simply laid the Sunrise Foil Transfer Sheet onto my tile, rubbed it gently then pulled it back to reveal beautiful speckles and sparkles of foil! I think it adds a really cool dimension to my design!The next step was to draw the petals and leaf lines around the patterns, creating more definite blossoms with a black and a white Posca paint pen. That really made the flowers stand out!The center of my tile looked a bit empty so I decided to “break the rules”! I don’t know if you’re supposed to heat-emboss on tile but I went for it! I stamped the sentiment from Brutus Monroe’s Break The Rules stamp set directly onto my tile with white embossing ink and powder and heat-set it. Unfortunately, it didn’t emboss as clearly as I wanted so I heat-embossed it again onto a square of vellum, punched it out with a scalloped circle punch then glued it directly over the sentiment I’d already added to the tile using Crystal Effects.You can really see the bits of Sunrise foil on this photo! This was VERY messy (my arms and hands are covered with splatters of alcohol inks!) but so much fun! I’m going to glaze my tile to seal in all the glorious color and gift it to someone! I think it’d look great as a trivet or hanging on a wall, don’t you?! Just wait until you see what Marie, Berina and Waleska have done!
Welcome back to our Wednesday Inspiration Team’s blog hop! This week we’re so excited to feature Brutus Monroe‘s new line of Deco Foil products made especially for us! We all received a box of goodies last week to play with and I admit, I was a bit intimidated at first! I’ve only worked with the foil on my alcohol ink prints and loved it, but didn’t use Transfer Gel for those. I had the mistaken idea that I need a heat laminator to use these products together, but thankfully, I was wrong! Let me tell you about my project!I started with a card base of Brutus Monroe’s heavy Lunchbag cardstock, and my Tim Holtz Numbers stencil which I taped to my card front. I “painted” the Tranfer Gel right over the stencil, being sure to work it into the grooves and then removed my stencil and hit the gel on my card with the heat tool for a minute or so till it was dried but still a bit tacky. I chose to use the gorgeous red/gold/black foil and laid it over the gelled design, then pressed and rubbed and pressed some more to transfer the foil. I turned the foil around and did it again, making the lines of the foil go in the opposite direction just for the visual interest. Next I inked up a sponge with Suede Surface Ink and sponged it all over the card front, then did the same with Wagon ink around the edges, and topped the edges off with a sponging of Raven Detail ink. I added a light covering of the Raven over the card front to make the stenciled design stand out even more.I heat-embossed the sentiment from Break The Rules onto a piece of die-cut cardstock, over-stamped with a Tim Holtz script stamp and sponged a little Suede in the center and Raven around the edges. The pointing finger stamp is by Stampabilities. A layer of die-cut black went beneath to make it stand out.I just love how the shiny foil and embossing contrast so well with the grunge! I popped onto the Brutus Monroe website to see what other foiling items they carry and was shocked to see FOUR pages of all the supplies for this medium!! I can’t wait to learn more techniques for using it! Perhaps you’ll discover something new to try or just add to your stash! Thanks for stopping by! And be sure to check out the other team members projects! You’ll find Aletha’s here and Berina’s here , Waleska’s is here and Marie’s is here!
Confession time! My last post entitled Altenew Academy + Brutus Monroe = Awesome! was mistakenly published too soon! We went camping again this past weekend, but it was my turn to share a post on Brutus Monroe’s blog on Saturday! I intended to schedule the publishing of it for then but hit the wrong button!! GAH! So, I scrambled to create another card and came up with this! Brutus Monroe just had a fabulous Retirement Sale and I snagged this great embossing folder called Petal Lace and decided to ink it up today! I’m really loving their Surface Inks and rubbed Zest on the flatter side of the folder then ran it through my Cuttlebug. The color is just so RICH!!I found a music stamp in my stash and inked it up with Raven Surface Ink and stamped it down the left side of my panel. After trimming my panel down with a Stitched Rectangle die, I mounted it to a layer of white, then to a black card base. This fun sentiment is from a set called Break The Rules and I stamped it with Raven onto a scrap of white card stock, then die-cut it with a Stitched Oval die. I used Sidewalk ink on the music stamp and loosely stamped that onto the oval then smudged more Sidewalk around the edges. Another oval in black beneath it makes it pop!Finally, a layer of fun foam lifts the oval and completes my card! I hope you like it as much as I do!
CopyCatCards 