My Dearest Mother/You Are Wonderful

     I don't know about y'all, but I love typography!  I made these two, along with Out of an Abundance of Tissue Paper Flowers, Friend, and Thank You Squares for my mom's birthday.  Since there aren't many instructions for these, I decided to put them both in one post.

I made up my own wacky font.  Yes I know, Not really "my own," more like taking ideas from various fonts I've seen.  I used the gray, then drew lines on the inside with navy blue.

As you can see, there are green lines that look very similar to what I drew on the
Out of an Abundance of Tissue Paper Flowers card.  That is because I originally drew the lines for that on this very card, but it turned out the strip on the right was too thin, so I redid it.  For the center of the flower, I used a brad/eyelet/grommet.  I don't know what they're called!  But it's one of those things that are used to close the cardboard at the top of a package...did that make any sense?

This is a very simple card.  I got the font at the bottom from Cardmaker's Hand-Lettering Workbook.

Out of an Abundance of Tissue Paper Flowers...

I've made many cards with the flowers from my last post, just because I cut out a lot of tissue paper, and they're super fun and easy to make!  So here is another with that type of flower.  Enjoy!

The sharpies used for this card.

Cut out a 4 inch by 3 3/4 inch piece of scrap paper.  It doesn't have to be cardstock, but that works better to trace around, then round the corners.

Hold it horizontally, and chop off an inch from the right side.  Do not throw away the small piece, you'll trace around both pieces.

Make sure they are centered and evenly spaced from the edges, and trace with the green sharpie.

I'm not quite sure why, but arrows seem to be a trendy thing with card makers these days, so I decided to get in on the fun!  I drew the downward ones first, then the upward ones, then colored them all in.

After all that, I thought the green around the edges didn't look dark enough, so I just outlined it once more, free handed - not tracing the scrap paper.

Oh, how I love washi tape!  And, OH, HOW I LOVE CHEVRON!  Put them together, and it's got to be the best thing ever!

Lay down the washi tape, and cut it off at the bottom edge.

Cut out a 1 inch and 7/8 inch by 1 inch and 3/16 inch piece of white cardstock.  You don't actually have to use those measurements, just whatever looks best.  The only reason I used those measurements is because I had a small scrap that was a good size, and I wanted to use as much of it as possible.  Cut out a triangular section from one of the short sides.  As you can see, there's a little notch in this piece, so I made sure to cut out the "V" on the other end, so it won't show when I put the flower on top.  Then outline it with the light orange sharpie, just as we did in Thank You Squares.

Hand write/stamp a sentiment.  My favorite types of cards to make are Thank You, so that's what I did!

Put a little glue one the edge of the tag-shaped paper piece,

...And position it...um...there.

Stick the flower on!  It should already have a glue dot on the back.

I love buttons!  I discovered that (if it is big enough), you can stick the button right on the glue dot thingy, and it's so much easier to take off!

This is what it looks like with the glue dot on the underside.

Position it in the middle.

Note:  I use glue dots for a lot of things, but they are not essential.  Regular liquid glue would work also, but not as well for most hard things, such as buttons.  Glue dots are just so fun though!  They additionally come in mini sizes.

Friend

     The last project gave me the idea to make flowers out of the tissue paper strips, instead of those squares.  In fact, many of my creations are born from previous projects.  Paper flowers are one of my favorite things to use on cards.

I don't particularly like this picture because it wrongly portrays the way I make the crumples.  (Don't know what else to call them!)  In reality, I hold them from the top, so they're hanging vertically.

A finished "crumple."

Obviously, the next step would be to spread it out like a flower, then put just a teeny amount of glue on the edge, and stick it to the other edge.  It looks like I have too much glue here (at least to me), but I think that's just because I'm almost out of it, and it's all weird and thick.

Press it down with your finger,

...And stick a glue dot on!  The flower in this picture is not the exact same one I use on the final product, but this was the best picture.  Do not be surprised if it doesn't work as well for you to get the glue dot on the flower. This was the third I  tried it on!  FYI, This the back side of the flower.

Now for the fun part!  Okay, just kidding, the flowers are really fun to make also.  I love hand writing stuff on cards.  I based this off a cool chalkboard font that I saw on something we got in the mail, but I had to do it from memory, 'cause I couldn't find the thing when I needed it!  So it doesn't look as good as it probably would have if I had the thing to look at as I was writing.

Then I added this border all around.

I have horrible unintelligible cursive writing, so my sister had to do it for me.  I drew lines with pencil so she knew where to do it.  If you don't have access to a good cursive writer, some craft stores actually do sell unintelligible cursive writing stamps, one of my not-so-secret wants.  This worked better for me this time though.  Corinthians 13 is what is written here.

 

I came up with this technique a while ago.  You rub sharpie on your finger, then rub that on the paper, before it dries.  Duh!  You have to be okay with getting your hands dirty of course.  This is basically a substitute for distress ink, which I don't have, and have never used.  They probably don't actually look that much alike.

Now stick the flower on where you want it,

...Put another glue dot in the center,

...And stick on your button!  I love this button.  I has a rose or something in the middle.  You're probably not able to tell.  I couldn't seem to get any really clear pictures.  I got it at a really cool scrap place, so I'll most likely never see another like it.  *Sob*

So, these are actually left overs from the last tutorial, because I was going to use blue rhinestones for that card, but decided on green instead.  So I already had these ready for this project!  Except I added a little yellow to make it match the color of the tissue paper better.  Attach them to the bottom right corner.

This is one of my favorite I've made lately, thanks to you, +Rebecca Groover!  Thank you so much!

Thank You Squares

My first tutorial!  (As I believe they're called.)  Today, we are going to make a Thank You card!

Let's start with an 11 inch by 4 1/4 inch piece of paper, folded in half.  When folded, it will measure 5 1/2 inches by 4 1/4 inches.  All of my cards will be this size, unless otherwise noted.  This is what you'll need to do.

Cut out five one inch squares.

Tissue Paper!  You'll need five different colors.

...Cut into strips.

Crumple up the tissue paper so that it looks something like this.

...And staple it to one of the squares.  It doesn't matter if the staple doesn't cover the whole width of the tissue paper.

Do that with all five.

Scribble down the left edge of the card.  Vertically.

Glue dots are quite fun to use!

Stamp, or hand write, as I have done here, the desired sentiment.

Round those corners!  I actually regret rounding the corner in this picture.  If I did it over again, I would only do the bottom right corner.

Since I don't own colored rhinestones, I just use my sharpies to color them.  I've found that sharpies work the best, rather than other types of markers.  When finished, adhere them to the card!  I used liquid glue (Elmer's is the best), but mini glue dots might work as well.

Another thing I would have done differently is have the fold on the left side, instead of the top.  Oh well, I can learn from my mistakes!