Cards part 2

Here are some of the other materials I assembled to make cards. There are clippings from rose catalogs, advertisements, bits and pieces from quilt magazines and other magazines.

Above is the clipping I got from the Gooseberry Patch catalog. I really admire their product drawings but it was hard to get one that worked well for card making. I layered this one on various pastel papers.


Using the idea of the gift bag from my mother's blog, I got this background for an old-fashioned postcard I found in the Reminisce magazine.

This heart was from a quilting magazine, and it is mounted over a bit of a doily. The little key is an embossed rubber stamp image.

This is a picture from a rose nursery catalog on the left, with a rubber stamp heart and a sticker.

This is a piece of clip art, and the heart is a rubber stamped image on silver cardboard, embossed in white.

Another piece of clip art, mounted on a couple layers of pastel paper.

Card Ideas part one: Dress Cards

Here are some cards that were made for Christmas gifts this year, and at last I may show my readers! First are the little dress cards, which I feel are my own little troupe of people!
They are not made of fabric at all, but cut out of a dress catalog called "The Wooden Soldier." I have admired the dresses from this company for years, and this is the first time it occurred to me that I could have any (or all!) of them, in a smaller sort of way! The catalog is perfect for creating this little cards, as there are few real models, and the dresses are against solid backgrounds (no cutting off someone's head!). This could work with a variety of catalogs, but I happen to think that this particular one had the perfect sized dresses for my purpose. Ladies' dresses nowadays are so tall and narrow, whereas little girls dresses still have all the lovely "poufy" skirts, and they make a great card!

I cut around the dresses I liked, and used double-sided tape around the bodice, sleeves, and edges of the skirt. Liquid glue tends to wrinkle up magazine-weight paper, but perhaps a glue stick would work. Before I added the dresses to the cards, I folded up a bit of tissue paper and taped it in the skirt area, and pressed the whole thing onto the card. This makes the skirt stand out a little and have a swishy sound.

It was fun to trim the little dresses with glitter glue. Buttons, buckles, rhinestones, necklines, sleeves, hemlines, flowers, etc. were great opportunities for glitter.

Merry Christmas

Home for Christmas

Home for Christmas, 1784
Giclee Print
Ferris, Jean...
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Books in Winter
Art Print
Wilcox-Smith,...
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Summer fading, winter comes--
Frosty mornings, tingling thumbs,
Window robins, winter rooks,
And the picture story-books.

Water now is turned to stone
Nurse and I can walk upon;
Still we find the flowing brooks
In the picture story-books.

All the pretty things put by,
Wait upon the children's eye,
Sheep and shepherds, trees and crooks,
In the picture story-books.

We may see how all things are
Seas and cities, near and far,
And the flying fairies' looks,
In the picture story-books.

am I to sing your praise,
Happy chimney-corner days,
Sitting safe in nursery nooks,
Reading picture story-books?


From the Child's Garden of Verses
by Robert Louis Stevenson
You can find a complete collection of his poems at Poetry Lover's Page.

Today we found an audio book to listen to while we worked, of another of Robert Louis Stevenson's works, "Treasure Island." Shiver me timbers, it is a bit scary.  The recording was from LibriVox, and many of my favorite Austen books, poetry, and other classics can be found there.

The Night Before Christmas
Limited Edition
Kinkade, Thomas
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Christmas Cheer

Christmas Cheer
Giclee Print
Knowles, George...
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Even More that Glitters

Mrs. Lydia Sherman has contributed so many glittery craft ideas to The Pleasant Times, that we are going to give her our "trash craft" award. We ought to go out and buy her a bottle of glitter glue for a prize, but we are too cheap, so we are honoring her with the title of "Craft Editor." Keep watching for her new book, "Stuff I made with Garbage," which she is being urged by her family to print.

Here are tonight's ideas:

The Egg Carton Jingle Bell, with pipe cleaner hanger;

The Egg Carton Cowboy hat, painted with sliver glitter glue and then sprinkled with big silver glitter and fine glitter. (Editor's Note: Make sure to wash your hands after dealing with egg cartons, and paint them thoroughly.)

And the last trash craft for the night..... (drumroll)....

A coffee-cup sleeve turned into a glittering crown for the Christmas tree. This picture does not show it well, but the white is actually all fine glitter, with silver glitter glue "diamonds."

More that Glitters

Here are some more of my mother's glittery crafts for the season, and a little innovation of my own.
My mother traced around an old-fashioned key she had, to come up with a pattern for this cardboard glitter key for the tree.
As usual, she painted on glitter glue first, then sprinkled large glitter over that for extra sparkle. After that she sprinkled on fine glitter to fill in the gaps.

It really adds shine to the tree.

No, this is not a tarantula that fell into the glitter, it is a little chandelier made using tinsel pipe cleaners. My mother likes chandeliers, so I made shaped a little one for her while watching the Three Tenors rerun last night.

It is basically six pieces of pipe cleaner shaped into some curlicue "C" shapes, and joined by twisting another pipe cleaner around the middles. Someone could get really fancy with this by adding crystal-cut beads to the ends.