Saturday, January 30, 2010

Pretty Cards From Scraps

by Josef Laurens, 1811-1888
Flemish



An example of a card or tag made from the picture that sometimes accompanies a magazine insert card. 


Cut the picture, mount it on papers that match the colors, and cover up the advertising spots with stickers and clip art. A foam heart is used here.Stickers and scraps hide imperfections in this kind of artwork. You need not throw a card away when there is a mistake on it. Just find a matching clipping or sticker to cover the flaw.

Here is another one, made into a large tag, by layering matching colors of scrap papers:



Stickers can be used to cover the advertising spots, and glitter glue can be added on the edges of the petals, to make them look rain-splashed.  This is a very stiff card that is somewhat like the decorative pictures on wire hangers that you sometimes see in gift shops.




This card is made by laying the upper part of the heart on the fold of a card, and cut with shaped scissors. The foam heart is added, pasted with coarse white glitter. At the top is an embroidered white rose from sewing notions and trims. A hole is punched to insert a sheer ribbon. Ribbons can be collected from packaging and gifts your receive. Store them in a zip-lock bag, in your paper supplies.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh what a good idea for using those subscription post cards! They always have such pretty pictures, and I hate to throw them out- now I know what to do with them!

Julian said...

so pretty! christina

Brenda said...

Your cards with the roses have a touch of elegance to them!
Your reader can also find pretty pictures of flowers in old seed catalogs and in old calendars.
Brenda

Lydia said...

The subscription card inserts have a good quality cardstock and work well with glues and glitters. Some catalogs have a poorer quality paper and dont work well with crafts. You can make a clipping and run it through a sticker gadget. It gives it a better finish and creates a sticky back. You peel off the piece and apply it. Or, if you have really nice clippings and dont want to use them, or they wrinkle too much with glue, then copy them on to cardstock on the copy machine. Copy ink is expensive and so is cardstock, but once in awhile it is a treat to have things copies. Go to a free victorian printable graphics site and get yourself some nice pictures. Put 9 or 12 on a page if you can, cut them in squares, and apply to a card. If you do not wish to use technology, there are many sources of free clip art: ads in the mail, catalogs, even fabric. Fabric sometimes has details on it that make good cards.

Lydia said...

Calendar pictures make excelling scrap art for cards, especially a desk calendar that you tear off each day. they are usually pictures with borders around them, and the paper quality is good.Use one of those solid glue sticks. wet glue wrinkles your project. Larger calendar pictures can be cut into small detailed pictures: find a swan in a stream or a house in the distance, clouds, etc. and put a shaped stencil over them to outline into whatever shape you want: square, oval, circle, heart. You can get a basic stencil in a discount store or sometimes the dollar store, or you can actually make them yourself.

Anonymous said...

I have found that the UHU glue stick is the only one I like using. It is very smooth, sticky and adhesive. I get very frustrated with the cheap ones.

Thank you for these posts. I just sat down and went over many of the older ones again. I do this when I get "stuck" in homemaking/homeschooling.

Anonymous said...

Lovely ideas, thank you for sharing...gardening books also have beautiful pictures in them that would work nicely for this project.

Angie

Lydia said...

If I need anything cut accurately, like something to make a quilt pattern, I get my husband to do it. He is great with rulers and very accurate. Usually I dont use rulers because its faster for me to draw free hand or use folding to get a straight edge. I didnt use rulers with any of these but the papers have a straight edge and by eyeing it you can get fairly straight. Some things in crafts dont need to be exact, as it is more artsy to have things a little out of line ;-)