My Birthday and a Card

         It’s hard to believe that it is almost the middle of September already. Some of the kids went back to school last week and some this week. They staggered it to ease the kids in with the new restrictions. Some opted for on-line learning instead of school too. It’s been a crazy year!

        It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago and the two daughters that live the closest – still 2 ½ and 3 hours away mind you – decided to meet us at Rondeau Provincial Park for a family get-together…. pandemic style! We had three picnic tables in a row, one for each family, and everyone brought their own food and drinks. Such an odd way of doing it but they were not taking any chances just in case one of them, or us, were carriers of COVID without symptoms. This was the first time we’ve seen them so we were just grateful they could come. One grandson woke up with a migraine and upset stomach so we didn’t get to see him which was too bad but it happens. Both of the cities they live in have more cases of COVID than we do here so better to be safe than sorry.  Just for laughs we had a family photo taken pandemic style too. Here it is. 

        When I’m not quilting, I’m down to the lower studio (aka the basement) making some cards. I recently got started on Halloween cards for the grandkids. Here’s one of them.

                          

        The backgrounds were sprayed and splattered with a variety of inks including some new Distress Oxide spray and very old Ranger spray and very old “know-idea-where-they-are-from” sprays on a large piece of water colour paper and then cut down to card size. I wish I had not used water colour paper though as it soaked in right away instead of blending. This is the first time I’ve tried it though, so live and learn. Once it dried Distress Oxide yellow ink was rubbed in the middle to lighten it and then dark ink was sponged around the edges to darken them. The stamps and sentiments are all from Tim Holtz. I thought the eyes would be cool if they were red so I added some red ink – wrong! It was awful. I decided to think about how to correct it and work on the skull part. The skull and hat are one stamp and I really didn’t like the skull being the same colour as the background.  So, first plain water was brushed on and immediately covered with an old cloth but it didn’t remove enough colour…..darn water colour paper problem again. So, then I used some watered down gesso to make it sort of white but still some colour showing through. Then it was inserted back into the Tim Holtz platform and re-stamped a couple of times. This made a huge difference as it darkened the black lines that the gesso dulled and it fixed the red eyes at the same time. The little bit of red that still shows was fine. The “frightful’ was die cut, glued to a piece of left over background paper and I fussy cut around it for a base. It was glued on with a dimensional strip. The “toil and trouble’ is also a T.H. stamp and it was stamped with VersaMark ink and then heat embossed with white embossing powder. The stitched banner is a die cut. It was finally adhered to a black card base and I called it done.

        That’s all for a lovely but cool Monday, September 14, 2020.

Cheers

Violet

PS: To save a card to your Pinterest account, simply hover over the image until the ‘Pin It” symbol appears and then click…it sometimes take a few seconds. This will take you to your own Pinterest account to save the card.