Touch the Stars // Card Tutorial

First things first, people.  What in the world.  Honeybabes, it's been over a month since I done blessed you with my presence.  I don't even have a fabulous excuse either.

And speaking of taking forevah to get things done, the card featured in this post, and the others like it, are cards I made back in, um, October.

Anna was disappointed with the utter cheesiness of the card, but you know what?  I'm a cheesy individual, and I'm gonna make cheesy cards sometimes.

Supplies
Blank card
Something x 5 1/2 inch cardstock panel
Black extra fine sharpie
Star stamp
Stamp ink (or acrylic paint)
Paint brush

On the panel, draw a girl reaching up to the sky.  I started with the hand, because I wanted to make sure it was in the right place so I could place the star in the right place later on.

Then I continued to draw the rest of the girl.  I finished her arm, drew a simple sleeve, and then drew the back of her head, and onward.

OH YEAH, and I made sure to draw her far enough to the side that I could add words on the other side.  Which, by the way, is supah to the dupah fun.  I'm into it.

I'm getting better at this typography and fake calligraphy stuff, so what I can do now is better than this stuff from October, but I actually really like the imperfectness of this.

OOH!  LOOK AT IT!  It's my stamp!  I made it!  Out of a cork!

I used both ends of the cork too!  This end didn't work too well, unfortunately, but that's ookey.

Now blob some o' dat ink on dat stamp.

I used my finger to rub it to the edges of the stamp.  It was still really thick on ther' though.

 So I stamped it upon that card, right above the hand.

And then I had plenty left to stamp a second time on another piece of paper, for another card.

You can see that there was a lot of ink on the stamp by the darker edges around the stamped image.

I don't exactly remember doing this, but it looks like I removed some of that thick ink from around the edge, with the stamp itself.  (I do remember that.)

And then I drew some fun clouds up above, and the shoot-y things out from the star, and added a dotty border.  This works a whole lot bettah if the ink is dry, by the way.

Now the panel is finished, and we can deal with the card.  Using a flat, watercolor brush, I dipped it right into the opening of the tube and painted horizontal strokes along the left and right edges of the card, making sure to go towards the center at least half an inch so that the panel would cover ever'thin'.

As I said in the supplies list, you could also use acrylic paint for this, and it might even work better, as it would dry quicklier {definitely a word}.  I just didn't.  But acrylic paint is the bomb.

When that and the panel are dry (and please do make sure they're dry), you can glue on the panel.

HEY LOOK it's done.

This is the original card I made, before I made another to do a tutorial on.

I made a total of...six?  I thought I made eight.  But the picture only has six.  Anywho, I made a bunch, and on one, I drew a boy instead of a girl, which, looking back, was kinda dumb.  These cards are supah girly and should not be sent to any boy.  Oh weell.  Heh, and that boy one is the only one I  haven't used yet......

On some of these, I wrote "reach for the stars" instead of "touch the stars."  Gots to have variety.

Do you think this is just way too cheesy for life?  I agree it is cheesy.  Have you ever made a cork stamp?

Card Tutorial // You (Yes, You!) Take Me Someplace Special.

The centerpiece of this card had been sitting on my desk for, literally, months, before I finally got around to making the card!  (In fact, I think I created this centerpiece around the same time I made this card, and I used the same sharpie for both!)  (I go through extra-fine back sharpies rather quickly.)  I was playing around with fonts and cheesy but sweet sentiments, and this is what I came up with.  I wanted to make a card that would be just as lovely, because this was somethin' special here!

As it turns out, the card I made with it was not my best, and if I could go back and remake the card, I would do it a bit differently, but you know what?  IT'S OKAY!  I still love the sentiment.

Supplies
Doily
Scissors
Sharpies (multiple shades and thicknesses of one color, + an extra-fine black sharpie)
Baker's Twine
Glue
Card

So first, we're going to start with a doily, like we've used many times before.  Now look at the doily.  It has ten sides, see?  So we're going to cut it into ten little triangles.  You'll cut from the "1" to the "6," the "2" to the "7," and so on.

After you cut the doily in half the first time, you'll need to hold the two halves together as you cut it in half another way.

Then you can use the pointy middle to make sure you're cutting it straight through...the middle!  (Do I make sense?  Me thinks not.  So this is where you refer to the picture.)

There, ten little triangles!

Get out your trusty sharpies, and draw some horizontal lines on those triangles!  I used five sharpies, and did two triangles per sharpie, drawing the horizontal lines opposite ways for the two (except I accidentally did the lines the same way for those two on the right).  Can you tell which sharpies I used for which triangles?

It makes a pretty good stack of colored triangles.  We'll only use four of them today, so you can stash the others away somewhere.  (My extras are still...ahem...on my desk.)

Yay, baker's twine!  This stuff is so pretty, don't you think?

I got this idea from this pin I saw on Pinterest, but wanted a little something more, and that's why I added the stripes.  Eep, this is so pretty!  Set this aside for latah.

I already had my centerpiece made when I got around to making this card, so I didn't take pictures of it as I drew/wrote it, but you probably don't have one yet!  If you're nervous about trying fancy typography, you don't have to try it!  You could totally just use your regular old handwriting, or, if you want, you may be able to find a stamp with a similar sentiment that you could use.  But it is really fun to experiment with hand-lettering.  If you would like to try hand-lettering, you should check out Jennie's post on the subject!

After you get it written, you can cut it out in an oval shape.  I used a stencil.

 Now all the elements are made, and all we have to do is figure out how the card will be layed out.  This was my first idea.  I actually really like this, but I nixed it because I wanted to include a bow, and there didn't seems to be a place for a bow with this layout.  Also I would have had to cut off parts of the triangles, which I didn't want to do.

 So I played around a bit more, and came up with this.  As you can see, there are now only four triangles visible.

Now that it's decided, we can begin to glue everything down permanently.  But first, I wanted to knot the ends of the string, to kind of give the impression that it's hanging up.

After the ends are tied, put a little glue under each knot, and let dry.  Don't try to do anything else until they're dry, because the string will move from the glue very easily before it's dry.  And if that happens, you just might go crazayyy!

Alright, cool.  The glue under the knotted string is dry now.  (That was quick!)  So now you can glue down the triangles.  Which, surprisingly, can be a little tricky.  Because you want them to be at exactly the right place so that the centerpiece will be right in the middle of them.  I kind of had to maneuver them into place until they were right.

Then when they're all behaved and glued down and dried, you can glue down the centerpiece.  As the catchy commercial goes, "Push it REAL good!"  Meaning, push that centerpiece down.  Keep it calm. Give it a nice long back rub.

There we go!  All the main elements are glued on!  (What do you think of it at this point?)

I was not satisfied at that point, so I added some outlining lines.  I'm not sure I really like the look of it, but you know what?  IT'S OKAY!

I knew it needed a bow the whole time (remember what I said up ther'?), and finally!  The chance came!  I made a pretty little bow from the baker's twine used for the doily triangles.  (Hey, did you knooow, there's actually a fancy name for that, other than doily triangles?  It's called bunting.  Yes, I do know words sometimes.)  Maybe someday I will show you people how to make one of these perfect bows, but alas!  Today is not the day.

Then I still thought it needed somethin' more, specifically, black adhesive pearls, which I do not own.  So, I just drew some, which do not look near as classy, but you know what?  IT'S OKAY!

There we go!  It's all done!  Whew!

The finished card!

What do you think of the sentiment?  Do you think it's cute as can be, or plain cheesy?

How to Put Together a Simple Girly Birthday Gift {For a Girl of Any Age!}

It's almost summer.  Which means, in our family, it's birthday season.  And birthday season means lots of cake.  OH OH and also lots of gifts to give!

One of my sisters is somewhat hard to get gifts for, so you know what I did?  Well, I went straight to Thinking Outside the Giftbox by Lauren Lanker, and when I was done, I had several ideas to pick from!  I decided to use two, and put them together to make a cute gift in a jar.  Or a glass.  Or whatever you call this cool looking thing that came from a building in our woods.  What do you call it?  (Ooh, and it even has this cool glass top with four points that look like the points of a compass!  Coooool.)

The two gifts I ideas I chose were a "10 Things I Love About You" booklet, and a plain ol' letter, because everyone loves letters!  The "10 Things I Love About You" booklet was not originally Lauren's idea; she borrowed it from Ashley at The Creative Place.  It's such a simple idea, and yet so special!

Instead of using the printable, I decided to just make my own from scratch.  So I painted on watercolor paper, and used that as my "canvas."

I didn't do 10 things actually.  I did 9, only because, with the size of the paper I was using, it worked perfectly to cut it into 9 sections.  There are certainly more than 9 things I love about my sister!

 I hole punched and fancily numbered each one.

Now this is the fun part - writing out what you love about your person!  (JK, all of it is the "fun part.")  Lauren said in her book that the ones she and her husband made for their moms were so specific that they couldn't be said of the other.  That's what I tried to shoot for.  The more specific, the more specialific!

This is the tag I made to attach on the front.  It's just white cardstock and black sharpie.

I have this little jar of ribbon that is just! so! fun!  Actually I have three matching jars of ribbon!  One of them contains lots of thin, pretty, colorful ribbons, and it is where I fetched the beautiful teal ribbon used for the booklet.

You could tie it like this, with a long tail....

 ...Or you could tie it with a pretty bow like this, which is how I ended up doing it.

I wanted the letter to be fun and colorful too, so I wrote it on this cool, wrinkled, old looking paper I had, with all different colors of sharpie.

Since I write long letters, and since I couldn't write on both sides of the paper because the sharpie bled through, the letter ended up being two pieces of paper long.  Which I like.

Now the construction of each of the gifts is completed, and all we have to do is package them up!  That's one of my favorite parts.

I wrapped a ribbon around the letter so it's all nice and compact, and it fits in the jar.

Now, just because the making of the gifts is done, that doesn't mean the making is done!  Time to make confetti!  (That's part of packaging up, right?)  I have these cool fringe scissors that are perfect for this.  I used hot pink, light pink, and light blue tissue paper, and just cut it into about inch-long strips.

Now, just because the confetti making is done, doesn't mean the making is done!  Oh no!  We still have a tag to make for the jar!  Actually though, this tag was pre-made when I put this gift together.  Yes, it was pre-made by me, but still, pre-made.  So all I had to do was punch a hole and write on it.

Out of the same jar of ribbon as I fetched the teal ribbon from, I pulled this pretty green ribbon.  It happens to be the same ribbon I used for The Little Green Bow, if anyone remembers that!

Alright, now the making is finally done, and we can put the gift together!

First I put in the confetti.  Then the booklet and letter went in together, and on top of that, the top!

Don't you just love how old and antique-y this jar looks?

And the top is so cool.

As I said in the title of this post, you could do this for a girl of any age, and she'll love it!  I'm sure you could easily tweak this also to be a good guy's gift.  But...probably only if he's your sweetie or your brother.  Or your dad.

Who, in your life, could you make something like this for?

{P.S. Linking up here!}