"Hey Jude ... take a sad song & make it better!" - the Beatles

My goal is to turn my disabilities around to abilities using art therapy as a means of stroke rehabilitation on my hands & arms. I want to also use cards to spread kindness, show different fun card techniques, bring awareness to issues that are important to me, and to just spread joy in general!

Sunday, September 24, 2017

Background Bonanza!!!

Yep - that is right - this is going to be a "background bonanza"!!  We are making a ton of cards today and we are using backgrounds that I have made while I was sick in bed!  I thought that his would be a great video to do because all of us have moments where we don't know exactly what to do with a pretty piece of paper, colored item, drawing, scrap, etc., and with this, I'm showing you how to take those items and make them into very simple and generic cards.  Fun, huh?!

As I mentioned, almost all of these items I created through watercoloring or regular coloring when I was sick in bed and unable to get into the craft room on one day or another.  So, I saved them because I didn't want them to go to waste.  I then created an assembly line style (which I have showed in a couple of videos before) where you do one thing all at once and then you move on to the next thing and complete that before moving to the next item.  It just makes the entire process go more smoothly. Now, these are not going to be the most innovative, beautiful and stylish cards that you have ever seen; but, what you are going to see are completed projects that are ready to go.  I like that!  I needed to create a grouping for a good friend who was working to get some to the Kidney Foundation and another batch for a group project that I needed to send out (all the while I was working on 20 animal rescue cards!!!!).  So, we had a LOT of cards to get completed!!!

I started with the huge stack of backgrounds that I had.  These, again, were just things that I had created in bed while too sick to get up (I am in bed 80 percent of the time unfortunately - if you do not know I am permanently disabled from two strokes).  So, I took these and then I used my MFT stitched rectangle dies, Avery Elle wonky stitched dies, and my WPlus9 scalloped rectangle dies and just loaded those up onto my Crafters Companion Gemini machine (the absolute BEST investment ever!!!)  I would just put a background on top and then run it through and repeat the process until I was finished with all the cutting.  I then did the same for a bunch of pieces of solid card stock from either Simon Says Stamp or My Favorite Things.  So now the second part was complete.

Next, I moved on to all of the base folding.  I did a Weekend Quick Tip video a while back where I mentioned that I had taken a few packs of Neenah card stock to Kinkos and had them cut it in half.  It cost about 6.00 and the entire stack was cut in half and ready for all of my card bases!  Love it!  So, I then took my folding board and proceeded to score the card stock and fold them until I had enough bases for the Kidney Foundation cards and the large set of cards that I needed for my project.  Next step was complete!


I now needed to get a bunch of sentiment strips ready so I took some Neenah shimmer card stock and loaded that into my new Tim Holtz Stamp Positioner and then used three sets of stamps - the Simon Says Stamps sets in Thankful Heart & Hand Letter Encouragement, and a MFT stamp set in True Friend.  This was my first time using the Stamp Positioner and I loved it!!!!  I used Memento Tuxedo black ink for these and then cut the strips down with my paper trimmer.


Finally I was able to put all the cards together.  I used a tape runner and matched the cards up with the fun backgrounds and either used a stamped sentiment or stamped a new sentiment with some Catherine Pooler ink on one of the solid colored pieces.  They came together super fast and were so much easier to make than if I had watercolored one piece at a time.  And, I feel that they are definitely from the heart and so full of love because they are done in my good times and in my bad per se because the watercoloring is done when I am not well and then the cards were finished when I was feeling a bit better!!!


Hope you enjoy and this gave you some tips for your own background bonanza!  Have an incredible day!  Jude  :-)

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See you there!  Thanks!
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