Vintage Birthday Image

Thought I would post this vintage postcard image of a young girl with flowers for you tonight.  It may appeal to some of you to add to any cards you're making. 

I like the dreamy faraway look in the little girl's eyes and the subtle colour tinting.

I finally got round to doing a little bit of embossing today for a swap I'm in.  We had to create a 6" x 6" square tile and 12 inchies, all from matboard, using a particular colour range from turquoise through green to terracotta.  The only techniques allowed are inking, stamping and embossing - no embellishments!!! (which is tricky for me as I'm a great one for adding a few "twiddly bits")!  Anyway, I inked and stamped the "tile", lightly embossed a flourish around each corner, and then used clear UTEE to triple-emboss (well, it was double-emboss really, it didn't need a third coat) to cover the entire tile.  For the inchies I used a rubber stamp that Lindsay had given me - it was ideal because it has 12 cat images on it, each one 1" square.  The stamp is called "Kitty Tiles" (4578) from Hampton Art Stamps.  I made 24 inchies in total so that I could keep extras to use on some future ATCs.  Again, I "double"-embossed each little inchie.  So these will probably get posted out tomorrow and then Ali (our hostess) is going to mix up everyone's tiles and inchies so we'll each get back a tile complete with a pattern of assorted inchies on it.  I just love these colours!

I've also made a couple of ATCs for a Lucky Dip swap, we each choose from a list of titles - my choice was "Midnight", "Botanical", "Caged Bird" and "Weathered".  Here are pics of "Midnight" and "Botanical".  Two down, two to go!  I also made another botanical-themed ATC and have another two part made, as I had enough vintage bits of paper left over from the first one.  I used distress inks over the rather shiny plant paper and on the torn strips of paper from an old encyclopedia.  I used gel medium to adhere the paper strips to the background and as a coating over the whole card, which got rid of the shininess.  The card on the "Botanical" ATC is one of those old picture cards that came free in our tea boxes, the equivalent of cigarette cards, do you remember them?  I've added a flower shaped button, threaded with gauzy green ribbon, a skeleton leaf and a rub-on word.

Of course, I had to use Lindsay's "owl" stamp on my Midnight card - I've been using it a lot lately, plus her technique for blowing ink with a straw to create the stark tree branches the owl is sitting on.  I do like those techniques that turn out so random, you just never know what they're going to end up like!

I had the final set of instructions for completing the zetti pages I've been working on too - having added outlines and extra patterns to the pages with crayons or pastels, we now have to spend the next few weeks/months adding journalling to our pages, whatever we want, whenever the mood takes, and on which ever page fits the words (or vice-versa).  I've no idea how my pages are going to turn out, I'm not sure that what I've done so far looks "zetti", but .... we'll just have to see.  Apparently, there's no right or wrong way to do this, I guess I'll know when I've done enough on each page, then I send one out to each of the other participants.  Check out Elena's blog (My Name is Elena) in my bloglist to see what she has done - Elena has really got the hang of this zetti art and is turning out some wonderful looking work - well, I think so anyway, I know it won't appeal to everyone!