Hello Friend

This card/stamping took so many tries that I almost gave up.

My artistic point-of-view takes a turn when I set about making a card. I try to be very precise so it looks "store-bought" but if it were a tag or mixed media project, I'd embrace the imperfection.

Eventually, I come around and remember that the hand-made qualities are what makes card-making superior to those that are mass-produced and machine-made. I will be bookmarking this post so I can remind myself of this point for the next time!

In this close-up, I'll point out that I stamped the image (Tim Holtz Flower Jar) on scrapbook paper using archival ink and tinted it with gel pens. For the water in the jar and the table-top, I spread the ink using a water brush (same as with the tops of the purple flowers).

The submerged stems were hand-drawn and smudged and it was tricky to get it to look right. I should have practiced on some scrap before attempting it on my card and I wouldn't have had so many do-overs (duh!).

The oval frame was machine-stitched but needed something else so I used a white Gelly Roll pen to highlight the edges.

Some of my readers know that I often use dimensional products like Scribbles or Liquid Pearls to make dots. I recently discovered a new product called Nuvo Crystal Drops (which I really like) and went kind of crazy with them here.

Mounting all of this on kraft cardstock helped convey the old-fashioned feel of the card.

I'm linking up to Simon, this week's Monday challenge is Beautiful Blooms and then I'm tossing this card in the post. 

BTW, the sentiment is from a new stamp set by Simon called Delicate Flowers. I splurged and bought the May card kit and am excited about using it.  Stay tuned!

Maurice Crooks

My Great Aunt Esther took a photo of a neighbor whose family was homesteading in Newcastle, Wyoming. She wrote his name and the date on the back--Maurice Crooks, August, 1921.

I made a copy of that photo and used gel medium to transfer the image onto a manila tag.

Then I used gesso to white-out some areas, blending the edges of the photo into the background.

Then I went about stamping and tinting and embellishing and came up with what you see here.

I know it's best not to put the focal point of a composition directly in the middle, but in this case, I threw caution to the wind since Maurice seemed to stand so proudly right in the middle of his family's meager garden.

I'm linking to Simon, the Monday challenge is "Down on the Farm."

Automatic

Lyrics from a song by Miranda Lambert is the text typed on this tag that features wildflowers in canning jars.

It's my first time working with a stamp set (Tim Holtz Flower Jar) that has matching dies and I cut the images out of tissue paper so I could layer the arrangement without adding bulk.

The background is a page from the Tim Holtz Etcetera paper stash.

I used sepia archival ink on the flowers but in hindsight, I probably should have used black.

I tinted the flowers with dilute acrylic paint so it would be waterproof during the pasting process.

I like the scale of this set (it's tiny) but that does make it more tedious to use. And there are also some design challenges like a solution for the flower stems that appear inside the jar.

I penciled-in the lower stems but they would have looked better with more defined edges (less blurry). I'll work on my technique for the next time!

I think it would be very hard to arrange the flowers just by stamping so it's good that the coordinating die-cut set is available.

But I plan to give it a try--a clean white background with a delicate stamping would be nice on a greeting card. (I'll keep you posted.)

I'm linking to Simon's Monday challenge, this week's theme is Play with Paint.