~ Friendship Shabby Card ~ and a distressing tutorial

How's your week going? Mine is happy and I've got a bunch of stuff to share today.

BasicGrey's new Curio collection has gotten me! I love the vintage beauty of it!

 

...... and felt. Still hand-cutting leaves from the puffy fluffy goodness.





Hi there to all of you who's reading. Say hi back so I'll know you dropped by! :)

...............

After the card was dished up, I decided to do a little something special ... with a large manila tag and some distress ink. This is kind of a lazy tutorial, but I thought to share it anyway. That's me - lazy.




First, you dabble the brush in the distress ink (or any kind of ink, I'm not fussy...) and gently rub it inwards from the edges of the tag. This rubbing technique seems to work only on the manila tags (at least for me), but you feel free to test it on other paper surfaces. Just don't shout at me if it doesn't work.

Then I minced up a few other little ingredients and threw them together ...



... and they baked into a perfect pie!





The card and tag were then bundled together with a kraft paperbag and a yard of twine to make a special gift set.





So fun! Thank you for letting me share it with you!

.......

And a quick update on the etsy store: a huge thanks to the wonderful Miss Sarah Martina for being my first customer! That brought a big smile to me. I will be adding more of the berry-trinket-pins in a few moments, along with die-cut tags in the dollar goodies section of the store. I hope to fill the place with affordable and sweet embellishments for your crafts. Maybe manila tags will follow. Feel free to drop me ideas; I will be more than happy to listen.



Good-bye!

~ Viola

~ Felt Embellishments ~

Discovering the joys of felt - who knew it could be so fun and delicious? Ah, and making this cabbage rose ... this flower is so soft and beautiful. I had so much fun with this card, piling the lovelies on!



The cherry-crystals turned out kind of cute I hope.

Sentiment from a Fiskar's set, scallop die from PaperTrey Ink, and patterned papers from Melissa Frances.



... buttons, ribbons, chipboard key, white ink, little stamps from randomness on my table.



I don't have PTI felt (yet) ... so I grabbed a piece that is definitely not as woolly (it doesn't work with dies) and trimmed the leaves with my scissors. A little tea-dye ink warms the tones ...

More felt fuzzies ...



It's pretty hard to cut a perfect circle, especially with felt. Please understand.



Loving the PTI notebook page die and sentiment stamps! LOVE!

Let me ask you a question. Are there any rules about adding pearls to a card for a guy?



NO.

The card was matted with felt and some unknown patterned paper.
Mr. Owl hopped over from October Afternoon along with the ledger lines stamp.



He makes me happy!!!

Have a good week, friends. get out that felt and snip away .....

~ Viola

~ three LOVE cards ~

Sunny day to you, friends! I'm back after almost a whole week of crazy-busyness - music, craft, housekeeping, and a dozen other things. Back to share with you some craft projects.




I had these beautiful Melissa Frances papers, and I knew I just had to make a card set out of it. They're too pretty to waste on one card. I was so excited that my LSS re-stocked these papers, as they had run out long, long ago. Well, here's the next card in the set ...


  

and this is the third one:





all three in their weird glory:


 
"... the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us ..."  - Romans 5:5

Thank you for stopping by today.

~ Viola

~ Betsy's Vintage Challenge ~

 Happy Friday to you! this week has just flown by on the wings of time (trite statement), but before I forget I must thank you all for the wonderful things you said on my Moxie Fab challenge win. It was so much fun, and I was actually pushed out of my comfort zone to create that card. Your encouragement and cheers got me all the way!

And here I find myself participating on a special challenge on the very last day possible.
Betsy Veldman is one really inspiring person to me. From the first day I found her lovely blog I have never been able to stop poring over every detail of her designs and creations. She is totally amazing.

Ok, so she had a challenge and I simply had to participate. I dusted off an old, old box of buttons that my mother has stashed away in her drawer.



... it simply did not look promising. But I dug. and dug. and dug. as quietly as possible so as not to wake my room-mates (sisters), because it was already quite late. And with what I found, I paired these lovely old crocheted flowers that my mother created for handmade baby clothes so many years ago. Definitely more than 20 years past. Is that vintage enough?



then I did something that was not good of me to do. I removed (in other words, tore) a page out of an old book. It is a soft copy of David Livingstone that isn't holding together too well; it has been in my home for close to 30 years. I wanted to keep the story, so I used the contents page. The other blank pages were covered with toddler-scribbling.. I did it. Many years ago. But scribbling is not vintage.





Isn't that top corner of the page yummy?  Worn down with time and fingering ...

and these aged buttons, still with the threads from being stitched to shirts and dresses ...




these few buttons will not go to waste. They will be treasured for some future project that will befit their grand ancestry...



thank you all, girls, for visiting with me today. Have a blessed weekend!

~ Viola

~ Mazel Tov ~ Papertrey October Blog Hop Challenge

A quick little post before my long-overdue bedtime :) ... I couldn't resist participating in the monthly PaperTrey Ink hop; it's so fun and full of inspiration all along the way!



I used PaperTrey Ink's Beautiful Blooms dies, notebook page die, and small scallop die for my Mazel Tov project ... warm wishes to our Jewish friends this holiday season!



and not to forget the pretty leaves from the Blooming Button Bits set ...



custom sentiment tip: print your text in a mild gray tone (I don't have color printing) ... and trace over with a fine-tip colored marker ... it works! :) The picture is a too-close look at it though ... ah well.



... scrunched flowers a la Betsy Veldman (thanks for the tutorial Betsy!)

... how ironic! My computer spyware is now blocking Papertrey as a bad website! LOL.
Thank you for dropping by!

~ Viola