The 7 Cent Solution

This swap is hosted by Team Awesome Pants.  She found some scrapbook paper on sale that she couldn't pass up.  She bought it, cut it to size, and put the cards in envelopes.  When you joined the tracker, she sent you a random envelope of cut paper.

My paper arrived and I thought it was okay.  It wasn't something I would normally buy.  The first thing I saw when I looked at the paper was a frog.  But it wasn't a frog at all, it was a suitcase.  I keep seeing a frog.

My first idea for a stamp was a bicycle with a basket of flowers on the front.  That idea didn't really work well with the papers being cut vertically.  I had another idea but again the paper needed to be horizontal.

The 7 Cent Solution: Toad Town

I went back to the frog idea and looked for images with frogs in clothes or with flowers.  My papers have a flower shop on them so I also looked at many bouquets of flowers.  I eventually found the frog on the bike and thought it would work well.  The cards need a little something.  I looked at stickers, washi tape, and flowers.  Think these little flowers look nice on my cards.

Not all the cards have the frog suitcase on them, but the for the ones that do, I tried to position my stamp so that you could still see the frog.   

I'm very curious to see what papers other people got :)

Mermaids & Hearts

Under the Sea: Seamaid

 I have 3 cards due in a span of three days so I decided I would just make one blog post.  The the one set is supposed to be a secret and I will wait to post that one until I get my cards back.

This first one is called, "Seamaid" for jlsd0218's "Under the Sea" LTC swap.  I wanted to carve a mermaid but I wanted her to be more of a sea creature than a happy little mermaid.  I looked at images for a long time and made a Pinterest board just for mermaids.  I went back and forth forever but finally settled on this image.

For the background, I rubbed my distress inks/oxides on my craft mat, sprayed with water, and tapped the cards in the ink.  I did it a few times and when that was dry I sprayed the cards with Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist Moss.  Then I stamped my image and embossed with gold powder.

I thought they needed something and I carved up some small fish scales and tried stamping it on the boarder paper.  I didn't like that and stamped it on the background paper in the corners with gold.  It just barley shows up.  I still think they need something but I was running out of time and sent them off.



This card is for Linden Leaf's "I Got a Jar of Dirt" quisp swap.  I carved the jar for the last quisp swap she hosted and she said it was ok to recycle jar stamps.

I Got a Jar of Dirt: Jar of Hearts

I carved my heart, stamped it on three different colored paper, embossed one with glitter red embossing powder and glued it all together.

I got the idea from the song Jar of Hearts.  There is a line in the song that says, " You're gonna catch a cold, from the ice inside your soul."  That is why I did the blue paper.  I felt like it should be more gloomy and have gray paper but I went with the blue because of the song.