Last Altered Playing Cards

Hi everyone, can you believe that this is my last two altered playing cards. How sad that the challenge is ending. It was a fun learning experience and a lot of things that I did with my altered playing cards I will be able to do creating regular cards. Lol! Doing layouts on regular cards will now be a lot easier after working on the smaller playing cards.

For the last two cards Claudine rubbed ink over the gesso and when it was dry she heat embossed. Instead of rubbing ink over my cards I used my airbrush and then because one card was rough and I thought it would not stamp well I went ahead and covered that one with a piece of a sewing pattern. As it was the card I heat embossed was almost a disaster when the gesso started to lift from the card from my heat gun.

Here is Claudine's cards:

And here are mine. As you will see mine are  different but I did go with the postal theme of her first card here. I also went with using green  but the sewing pattern turned it more of a  yelloa and orange on the other. Drum roll please as here are my last two cards.

 For this card I airbrushed with a couple of different green colors.on a background I had used a stencil with gesso when I was prepping my cards. Since I decided I wanted a smoother surface I went over the card with gesso but when it dried the rectangles from the stencil was still visible. Since I didn't have any background stamps like the one that Claudine used I decided to go with the sewing pattern. Since I had gotten rid of all my sewing patterns this was one I picked up at a thrift store to use in crafting.

I played around with printing images using my printer on book pages. The line drawing of a woman didn't work as you could not really see the details so I decided to go with this image after darkening it so it would show up on the old dictionary page. Although you can print directly on book pages I hate to have to mess with print settings anymore than I have to so I used the same technique I use for printing on fabric. First I print my image on regular copy paper. Then I spray with a temporary adhesive the back of my fabric or in this case the book page.  The book page did end up with some speckles but in the final image it isn't really noticeable. You could probably if you printed registration marks on the copy paper when you printed the first image go ahead and use your cutting machine to cut out your image. I cut the lady out by hand. Then I took a blue oil pastel stick and drew around her and then smudged with my fingers. I decided to go with the blue instead of the black because my sentiments have blue letters. For those who are wondering about why I printed out on copy paper first is because it gave me an idea where to place the book page. Printing first is especially useful if you are going to print on twill tape or ribbon.

The sentiments are from Teresa Collins Everyday Moments collection. I did trim the Define Yourself one as it was too long. I also used blue ink to edge it with. I figured they had been in my stash for long enough and just fit with the sewing pattern and the lady printed on a dictionary page.

For this card I used a couple of different orange markers and a yellow marker with my airbrush to color my gesso background. Then I used Stazon Black since I wasn't sure my Archival. ink was going to hold the clear embossing powder. Everything was going fine with the heat embossing until the middle started to lift. Luckily the bird and the canceled postage stickers were able to hold it down in my finished card. Lol! The stamp is by Stampendous.and is call Christmas Cling Rubber Snowy Postcard. Jo Ann has it for sale online right now and I'm sure it is available at other places.Of course this is just a section of the image as the stamp is larger than a playing card.

My postage sticker came in a vintage scrapbook kit I bought at a warehouse store several years ago. I was going to stamp a bird on a dictionary page but the stickers from Everyday Moments was still out and my eye caught the bird. I thought it would be perfect. The sticker had a white border so I took a black oil pastel stick and drew around the edge and once again did smudging in order to try to soften the border. This time I used a cotton swab as I wanted to blend in the oil pastel more than I did on the first card.

Normally I shy away from using stickers but I think they really worked out on both of these cards.I also think it really worked out edging with oil pastels and smudging so I'll keep that in mind.

Although this challenge is over I'm behind in my personal challenges. I also want to start entering other challenges as they help me to get out of my comfort zone.

Yesterday finally got my paper sorter put together so now it is putting paper in it. This one is by Safco and the middle shelves are adjustable which I like,. Some of the pieces were damaged but the company with no questions asked immediately sent me out a replacement.

*Sigh* It doesn't look like the rain will be stopping anytime soon. I wonder if that is why I saw a boat hooked up to a pickup in the parking lot when I went grocery shopping today. Maybe the owner knows something I don't. Lol! Oh well it is good weather for reading, crafting, and even organizing.

Wishing you Happy Frugal Crafting till we meet again!