30 Days has September........why don't I remember?

BROTHERS BIRTHDAY

I do this every year!!!  It starts nearing the end of February, e.g. 25th and I start thinking oh must make a card for Peter (my brother) and then realisation sets in and I remember there are only 28 days in February , his birthday is in a couple of days time and have a big panic on to get his card to him ON TIME......lo and behold it happened again this year............... just when am I going to learn?

I seem to have men to make cards for lately and as usual stumped for a theme.  I wanted to do something a bit different, so have made him a wooden card come wall hanging.

I have used some material saved from packaging of pressed flowers, which is very like Grungepaper or Grungeboard, sponged it with colour from ink pads spritzed with water, stamped, distressed the edges and stuck onto a piece of decorated Balsa wood firstly painted with a cream emulsion (old match pot from the 1829 range), this has a chalky matt finish - I happened to have it  left over from decorating.  The wood was then stamped with Ranger Lettuce and edged in gold gilt cream.  The Balsa wood has taken the paint really well and it is still light, so okay for putting a first class large stamp on.

It is not perfect, a bit out of square and I didn't mat it very well either as I was rushing and the thing is that my Brother is a tiler where everything is straight and square, hope he doesn't notice too much!

RECYCLING MATERIALS - TWO CARDS TODAY

Although I absolutely LOVE spending money on new craft items that come onto the market I also like to think that I can use a little imagination and recycle items that you would usually throw in the re-cycling bin and one big area that I find that I use frequently is packaging. The first card that I show here was for Andy's birthday, which was yesterday and although I haven't taken a great photo of it am pleased with how it turned out. Earlier this year I made Jon & Emer's wedding invitations and they had dried pressed roses on them, they were well packed as you can imagine, but I kept back some of the padding which I thought was very like Grungeboard. I inked up the background using normal inks (not distress) with a spritz of water and stamped images & matted onto gold card before attaching to my card. It feels lovely to the touch, rather like suede. I took the second photo with a flash as the first one came out a bit too dark.

The tiles on the second card were made from a piece of plastic that backed some paper to stop it bending during transport. I inked these up with alcohol inks and stamped over the top with Staze-On.

I do apologise to all of those blogs owners that may be promoting products, but I would rather spend my money on new inks, stamps or lovely backing papers.