A Birthday Gnome Card

 Another weekend over and we didn’t leave the house. For some unknown reason neither one of us are sleeping well so we wake up tired and groggy with limited ambition. I did make a few cards but that’s about all I accomplished. Joe did laundry - yeah, exciting couple we are.

I’ve been trying to purge and organize the crafting supplies (without buying a lot of new containers, etc) but it got so confusing I had to walk away from it. The only system I like so far is the sentiments. I actually (some of you will faint when you read this) cut apart my stamp sets. All and any sentiments that were stuck in with flowers or butterflies, etc. were cut out and and all placed on sheets of photo paper. Yes, they stick to photo paper. I stamped them or taped the plastic picture if it was still there on to a piece of copy paper and then stuck the stamp in the same spot on the photo paper. Now I know where each stamp is. Here’s one sample...sorry about the glare.

 

These were the large stamps for weddings or anniversaries. I thought they would show up better than all the small ones. It was a fair amount of work but I’m glad I did it. I used to get so tired of looking for a particular sentiment and not remembering exactly what stamp set it was with. Now they are all together.

But then it got confusing! Some larger flower sets were in large binders; some singles in small binders; some large square ones in containers. I have to sit down and sort out one system for all of them. But I really don’t want to buy expensive containers or envelopes for them. I’ve watched so many videos on YouTube and Pinterest but I don’t have their room, or money to do what most of them do! Oh well, they aren’t going anywhere and are no more mixed up than before I started purging.

So, this is one of the cards I finished today.

                                    
The gnome is from IO  (Impression Obsession) and was fun to put together. The diagram had everything flat. Not my style. So I die cut one image to use as a base. Then I die cut the hat twice, trimming away the brim on the second one. Inked the edges and then glued the brim on top of the first hat. This makes it more dimensional in real life. The arms/hands gave me a bit of a problem….keeping in mind I’m tired and groggy making these. When I die cut both hands and held them to where I wanted them to be, the hand waving was backwards. After a few ‘duh’ tries I realized I just had to cut one hand twice so the thumb would point in the right directions. If both were facing down, than one hand from each die would work.

 I didn’t like the beard being just white so I tried a couple of things but nothing looked ‘beard-like’ so I just laid a piece of white paper down on a mat made for embossing and drew lines. It doesn’t show in the photo but in real life you can see the lines…..I’m fussy, I know.

The hands and arm are one die cut as well but I die cut them twice from different paper; cut the mitts off and glued them one. He is a sitting gnome so the shoes are just die cut and glued on. I added some leaves and a gem to his hat. He is sitting on a die cut crate which I deliberately glued the back on upside down so it would be flat. Otherwise, he would be crawling out of it which I didn’t want. The gnome is attached with dimensional glue dots so he not flat on the paper.

The sentiment was then stamped and some red gems around it. The background paper was from a 6” pack I just cut down to 4 x 5.25 and then sponged green ink around the edges. It was then mounted on a green card base. Whew! Done.

That’s all for a fairly cold (frost almost every night now) Sunday, November 19, 2023.

 Cheers

Violet

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