Vellum Obelisk

My childhood best friend's father is turning 72 this week, and, for probably the first time in the 29 years I've known him, I made a card in time! I'm not very good at keeping up relationships, so I love being able to make & send cards to people; it helps me say much more than I ever could in words.

The birthday boy was also the High School art teacher. I took some lessons with him, but we both understood that I was much more inclined to concept than production; I remember him saying once: the perspective in this piece is interesting; everything is coming from a different perspective! He is a very talented and generous artist in his own right, and when I look back I realize that between him & my mom, we always had the best art supplies. Coincidentally, he's going to be visiting my parents this week as well. I really need to call his daughter!

I learned a lot about art from him, mostly by example. He had some gorgeous pieces in their home, including a wonderful collection of Obelisks, which is what inspired this card.

This was my first attempt at the Faux Silk technique. Right after making my card for the Gingersnap Creations' Faux Technique Challenge, I saw this technique on the Annabelle Stamps blog. Please do check it out, especially if you have a sticker machine, which makes the whole process much easier!

This is the second time I've entered this Color Combo challenge at Chocolate, Coffee & Cards; I just love it! What can I say, I love working with brown. My first card is here.

For the "silks", I stamped a Ditto pattern stamp with teal Versamark chalk and watermark inks.

For the Obelisk pieces, I stamped the same pattern in brown Memento ink onto Recollections Transparent paper (vellum), cut it into strips, and pieced them together and onto the white piece with vellum tape. I colored-in the pattern with a Copic marker.

Inspiration/Challenges:

Annabelle Stamps Challenge: Background stamps

Chocolate, Coffee & Cards Challenge #6: Brown, Orange, Teal

Stampin' Royalty Challenge #111: Sketch (right; missed the deadline garshdarnit!)

Flowery Shrink-Plastic Buttons

So how did I manage without knowing about Feline Playful until now?! It's such a wonderful resource for challenges, and I love all the info that's included. It's also really handy when you want to make a card for a challenge, but know you want to include something specific. For example, I wanted to participate in a challenge, but I wanted to include buttons and flowers on whatever I made, so I did a quick search on Feline Playful and ta da I discovered MelJen's Buttons & Bows challenge, as well as Scrappy Frogs and their Summer Flowers challenge. I was also able to find the perfect sketch, at Stampin' Royalty, thanks to their pictorial list!

The reason I was so keen on using buttons was because I saw a great tutorial on How to Make Buttons from Shrink Plastic at scissors.paper.wok yesterday, and finally pulled out the shrink plastic Mom sent me. I was really surprised how easy these were.

To make the daisy buttons, I started by making a template on plain white paper: I punched a 2-inch circle, folded it in half, and made the eye-holes with a 3/16 punch. Then I punched circles out of the shrink plastic and used the template to make the smaller holes. I stamped this lovely Daisy from SP & Company onto the plastic circles, using StazOn ink. To shrink the circles into buttons, I used my heat tool. That thing is amazing. It all happens really fast: the plastic crumples up & then suddenly flattens out into a circle (or, in my case, an oval, which was fine with me). I highly recommend using a surface with a lip (I used the top of a metal gift can) and something long to keep the plastic in place (used my reverse-action tweezers; just don't touch the hot metal!). To make sure it stays flat after melting, I used a tip from Mom: put a wooden stamp on it (wood-side down) immediately after shrinking. I used Copics to color the buttons after shrinking.

I made a tiny flower using the same process but smaller punches, and made a plain button that I then covered in yellow flocking.

I went ahead and chose my own color combo. I couldn't help making the daisies Black-eyed Susans, as they're blooming here and are so beautiful.

Inspiration:
Scrappy Frogs Challenge: Summer Flowers
MelJen's Designs Challenge #67: Buttons and Bows
Stampin' Royalty Challenge #81: Sketch


Tutorial: How to Make Buttons from Shrink Plastic at scissors.paper.wok

Stamps: Dandelion Mouse digi by MelJen's Designs, For all Mothers set by SP & Company, Happiness Ticket by When the Scrap Hits the Fun
Paper: Hammermill, Recollections, pre-embossed paper from stash, shrink plastic from stash
Tools: InDesign, HP printer & ink, needle, awl, Fiskars papercutter, Recollections punches, Crop-O-Dile, Tim Holtz paper distresser & scissors
Other: ZipDry glue, ZIG glue pen, Offray & Bargain ribbon, Recollections flocking powder, Copic markers, Versamark ink