Paper 9 Play

*garbled with a mouthful of organic kielbasa* Good afternoon. It’s October! Raise your hand if you love October. The sight of changing leaves. The smell of maple. Pumpkins in all sizes, shapes, and colors. Oh this all makes me smile.

Tennis season is now half over. Earlier this month the team texted and emailed family and friends to raise money for the team fund for future uniforms, tournaments, etc. A couple of our relatives dug into their wallets and donated. So for the past week I’ve been working on a design for thank you cards.

The background was the easiest as I pretty much knew what I wanted to do because lately, I have been obsessed with paper collage and gesso! In addition, collaging makes me think of peeling wallpaper, something I wanted to recreate here.

Materials used

• I took paper that had texture and paper that had prints, rippled them into pieces – sometimes saving corners – and then glued them down with Ranger Distress Collage Medium. I wasn’t worried about covering up the bottom of the cut cardstock because I knew I was going to have something down there.

• I then brushed gesso over them. Gesso is basically watered down, white paint and yeah, it smells like it too.

• I didn’t want the gesso to be so white so I thought I’d try to color it. I blotted down Distress Ink in Hickory Smoke on a piece of Saran Wrap (yeah, that’s my cheap craft sheet). I spritzed water onto the ink which makes it bead up as Distress Ink is water-based.

• However, after swiping each piece of cardstock through  this, I found it washed some of the gesso away (duh) and there wasn’t much color. The light bulb went on (ding!), having me remember that I had a bottle of Distress Stain in Hickory Smoke. So I sprayed that from high above. These are my results, ones I was much happier with.

• Now for the bottom pieces. I was still in love with the blended, Distress Ink background I had used for El’s card. I really wanted to use that color palette again. So with the thought of a wall of layers of old wallpaper, I decided to score rectangles of wainscoting that would enable me to use the color scheme of Frayed Burlap, Walnut Stain, and Black Soot.
• They’re inverted in this photo here below obviously. I spritzed water from high above to get those water drops and distress look.

Okay, here is where I got stuck. I got the background nailed but what to put on top? I wanted to use my three-tier luggage stamp but what else to decorate with it?

On Pinterest I created a board of real life inspiration for my card making. On it I pinned pictures of vintage luggage that were used as decor inside and outside and rooms that had peeling wallpaper. But most of these examples either use the luggage as furniture or the featured wall had simple furniture in front of them. I didn’t have furniture stamps and I wasn’t in the mood to draw and cut out pieces. So I had to sit on the design for a couple of days.

This past weekend I experimented with two ideas:

I. Crumbling wall outdoors, trees, sky, & butterfly stamps could be the 3-D elements

• Well, I didn’t like how bright my green, pigment ink was with the original, color scheme; they seemed to clash.

II. Crumbling wall outdoors but have the sky be a Parisian one at night since the teenager was taking French

•  I experimented with my cloud stencil and with different blues until I got it just right.
• I stamped a stacked, trio of hearts and added twine.
• The luggage, mounted on foam tape, has a tag of Bon Voyage so I made new tags to say Merci.
• And there are those 3-D’d butterflies. I swear they make the best 3-D elements. I may get more as Tim Holtz has a set of them or maybe the entomology set of bugs.
• I only over stamped the sky area so the crumbling wall would showcase the collaged papers and the blended inks.

Here are the results:

I am very pleased with these final results. I cut pieces of cardstock to place in front of each card in its envelope so each one will run smoothly through the USPS machine. The envelopes are addressed and the ninth grader’s school picture is nestled in every card. Now my daughter has to write her short messages and then they can be mailed off.

Alright, my youngest and the neighbor’s kids are here doing their homework. I need to redirect the boy who is getting distracted. Thanks for dropping by today. TTYS.