A Thank You Card

This card was for a thank you to friends after spending the day with them, for a yearly reunion.  While we were there, I took lots of photos of their garden, especially small areas of plants.  When I got home, I created a box of notelets, each with a different photo of their garden.  Then I took this picture of a primrose plant, and turned it into an easel card.  The main picture was mounted on to mirri card.  The background was produced by taking the photo and blurring it, and reducing the opacity (using My Craft Studio).  The sentiment was colour matched in My Craft Studio, and mounted with Pinflair glue.  Using photos like this means you can give a card that is totally unique to the recipient.

Using what you have

This is an anniversary card I made for friends who spend a large part of their year touring with their caravan and with Land Rovers.  The advert on the front was found on the internet, and I just aged it a little with distress inks round the edge.  Then I found an old black and white image of a trip to Europe by the Land Rover Club, changed it to sepia, mounted the advert on that and then mounted the whole thing on a hammered card, which I also aged with the same distress ink.  The insert was also the same photo, turned to sepia, with a section digitally cut out to add the text.  The program I used to manipulate the images was Roxio Photosuite, but I would probably use My Craft Studio now, which enables you to match the colour of the text exactly to bring everything together.

Use your own photos

This card was very simple once I got a decent photo, which was just being in the right place at the right time. The bumble bee was so co-operative. The photo was matted and layered onto silver mirri card and then onto a backing paper. The backing paper was created from the original photo, by selecting a small area, and blurring it in my graphics program. The base card (Stardream and Majestic range from PDA Cards) was creased and folded to form the main card. The base was covered with the backing paper, the image mounted. The sentiment is matted and layered in the same way as the main image, with the text coloured to match the purple of the crocuses. It is fixed with silicone glue, with a thin layer at the front and built up at the back to create an angle.