Pergamano Stencil - Bracket Flower

Coming up with an idea for creating the card focal is often the hardest part of card making for me.  I love playing with new tools because they give me new ideas for my focals.  Over the next few weeks, I'll be showing several different pergamano examples that have been made with pergamano templates using dry embossing and paper piercing.

Today's focal uses a Bracket Flower template.  After embossing and piercing the parchment paper, I cut close to the embossed edge.  Then I cut a purple mat and placed the parchment on top of it. Using the original piercings as a guide, I pierced through the purple mat.  Then I took gold metallic thread and stitched through the edge piercings, sewing the parchment to the mat.  I then pierced the center of the center flower and added a little stitch there as well. This then made a nice card topper for the front of the card.  I finished it off with a border and sentiment of outline stickers.

Die Cut Your scraps

Do you have a huge collection of scraps that just grows and grows?  Here's another thing you can do with them - especially those plain-colored ones.

Use your cutting dies to create cutting mats, tags, and embellishments for your projects.  It can be wonderful when you need to make something in a hurry to already have a bunch of these ready to use, and it saves you from wasting paper if you create something like this that you actually USE rather than just having a bunch of scraps sitting around in containers somewhere. 

If I'm not going to use mine right away, I store them in drawers with my other embellishments, organized by color.  This makes it quick and easy to find what I need at a later date.

Tunnel Card

I love making cards with different shapes and/or folds that go beyond the basic rectangular card shape.

There are several different types of "Tunnel" cards.  Instructions for making this one are described here.  This is my first attempt at one.  The construction itself is not that difficult, but I found it rather challenging to figure out what to put on the different layers to form the 3-D picture that is this card's specialty.  I also found it much more challenging to see the layers in the picture of the card than in the real thing!  What I ended up with this:

• Back layer - Thank You sentiment with flowers.
• Middle layer - picket fence with flowers
• Front layer - 3-d flower in upper corner

As I think about this, I find myself eager to get caught up with my other tasks so I can play.  I have a lovely bird-house stamp that would make a great "middle" layer with a bird flying in from the top layer and some sort of landscape for the back layer.  I'll have to find the time to do more playing with this type of card! 

Take it another step - I suppose if I get so I can figure out what to do for 3 layers, I could increase the number of accordian folds on the sides and make more layers!

Journaling Tips 5 - Print on a Picture

This picture shows what can be done when you use a photo editing software to add your journaling directly to a photo.  In the next example, I created my own photo in the photo editing software -- made it a plain black background with white text and printed it to add to the page like this:

I made it easy on myself by allowing for a white border around my photos and journaling picture.  Just a quick trim with my paper cutter and it looks like they've been matted on white without all the work!