Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

I used to make cards all the time in high school and college.  When I had less money and more time it was a great way to give personalized gifts.  Well, I'm out of school for the summer--so I have less money and more time :).  I just happened to have two different small sized star paper punches, so I thought that would be a good place to start.  I layered the white card stock over striped paper, but any brightly colored paper--solid or with a small pattern--would work great.  Since I was just using cheap little paper punches, I got around not being able to punch the middle, by putting the card's message there (which I stamped). Everything got layered together using double stick tape. The other card I made using this method was made with circle punches and circle paper.  I wish I had had a circle punch in between those two sizes, but it still turned out pretty well.  I tried to make them looked randomly placed--I'm not so sure how successful I was with that. :)

The first time I saw projects done with alcohol ink, I was amazed.  I knew I had to try this stuff out.  I'm still a newbie though.  This was my very first project.  I had some extra tiles leftover from my scrapbook paper tile coaster projects , so I thought that would be a good place to start.  You can use alcohol ink on any smooth surface.  It is alcohol soluble as long as it isn't dry--so you can start over or clean up with a bit of rubbing alcohol. I had the " Farmer's Market " color collection of Adirondack Inks.  They are bright green, dark red, and indigo in color--the actual names are all named after food, but you get the idea. I started out by wetting the tiles with rubbing alcohol (they do sell a special blending solution that I haven't purchased yet to see how it works). Then I dropped colors on. As the colors were added, they started to bleed and mix.  I just kept on trying to cover the whole coaster and still end up with somethin

When I started to make my own cards again, I realized I had quite a few stamps just collecting dust in a plastic bin in my crafting closet.  I put some of them to good use by creating some simple layering.  The card above was created using a dark green ink.  I stamped across the strip of paper rotating the leaf, but re-inking it each time.  Afterwards, I stopped inking and stamped in between the leaves, letting the stamp get lighter each time. With this second card, I used a leaf stamp--flipping it and angling it slightly differently each time to create a realistic flower bed look.  Then I used a mum stampin different colors to top of the stem.  I then layered the stamped flower beds on a patterned paper and a solid paper to create a springy feel. These were both Mother's day cards for my Grandmas (who are both in their 90s and both told me they liked their special cards--but I mean, what else would a Grandma say to their granddaughter :)).

If you follow craft posts online, you know that projects using paint chips have been very popular lately.  This is my first foray into the paint chip project world.  I am painting our extra room in a shade of lavender.  So we went to the local Home Depot and snagged every card in a shade of purple that they had.  Needless to say...I ended up with about 10 extra paint chips after I had narrowed it down to my favorites (that's a lot of shades of light purple!).  So I thought I'd make a simple project with the leftovers. Behr Paint Chips are larger than most (almost 5 inches wide!) which allowed me to cut off the parts with text on either side and still make a 2 inch wide bookmark.  After I cut them with my paper cutter, I decorated them with some stamps and ink.  Then I searched for some paper to cover the writing on the back of the bookmark.  I just happened to have this lovely shade of purple in a scrap pack that was exactly the right size (but I could have cut up any