Paper Crafting Assistance from the Dead

I was in a making mood the other day. A nice change for me.

Tag with recycled items

I pulled out a stamp set from TPC Studio called Sewing. I stamped some images on a bit of watercolor paper laying on my table. You need to use water colors or watered down ink on watercolor paper. Right? So that's what I used. I didn't think I could get the color, control, look I wanted on the sewing machine so I used Copic markers. I know it's a sin but I like the results.

I decided they would look good on a tag. But I wanted the tag to look like it was fabric. I looked in my patterned paper scrap drawer and found a card I had inherited from a volunteer job I had last year at a senior living facility. They would get bags of greeting cards for the residents to use. One day I was asked to sort them by holiday. There were several that had been used. The ones with images large enough to use in craft projects were set aside. What didn't fit in the storage they were willing to offer paper crafting were given to me or tossed. The flowered pattern was the back side of one of those cards.

The sentiment was intentionally stamped off center so I could add a button or three. It was late and I was extremely lazy tired and didn't want to get out the thread and needle to make the buttons look like they had been sewn on. I could hear Sarah Moore ranting that buttons on paper crafts must always have thread, this seemed especially important for a tag about sewing. I inherited this jar of buttons and brought it home last month from my dad's house. These buttons were cut off of old clothes when my dad was growing up. In our family when times are tough you make your own clothes if you can and you never let buttons go when the rest of the clothes are ready for the rag bin.  Luckily for me several of the buttons still had thread through them. I wonder if my aunt or grandmother know they helped with this little project.

I didn't set out to make this card for the
Focal Point Challenge in the Moxie Fab World
but it works so well I decided to enter it. Go see others here.

Card using scraps

This card was created in the "let's throw it up there and see what sticks" method. I didn't set out to make this particular card. I don't use sketches. I didn't think about color families, brand names, or trends. I pulled bits of paper out of my patterned paper scrap drawer and laid them on the card until something sang. I think, given it's origins, that this is a pretty darned good card.

The large yellow rectangle is a tag I had laying on my table that I had run through the Cuttlebug using a new embossing folder from Hobby Lobby that features a lower case alpha in typewriter font. I ran Versamark over the top and embossed with clear embossing powder, then spritzed with Mister Huey Lemonade. I never thought I'd use it because it just didn't work the way I wanted it to. I guess I should never say never.
The scalloped bit under the pin cushion is from a book I keep handy for crafting with. The page was just too white so I colored it with Distress Ink. The polka dot paper is from K & Company, the striped paper is from the first stack I ever bought from DCWV, neither is available any longer as far as I know.

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Happy Crafting,

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