Thursday, August 11, 2011

Working with Scraps - October Afternoon Cards

First off, let me start by saying a big Thank You to all the wonderful comments and support I received from my last posts. You have no idea how wonderful that was for me or how much it touched me deeply. I hope I can continue to make someone smile. If you enjoy viewing my posts and projects, make sure to become a follower so you will immediately know when something new is posted. :-)

Now on to my current project. The October Afternoon 'Modern Homemaker' and '5 & Dime' collections are awesome! They each have such bold colors and retro style. It was so much fun creating layouts and projects from these. But after I was finished, I realized that I had a lot of scraps. So, what did I do? I used them, of course!


Since the papers have such a vintage retro vibe to them, I wanted to keep with that feel for my cards. I used the October Afternoon Sprinklers to color the backgrounds of both my cards to give a soft feel to them while staying in my color palette. I've recently been trying to learn how to sew on my projects, so I thought this was the perfect opportunity. When you're doing a homespun or vintage feel, it's ok for things to be a little messy and imperfect. Things were usually made by hand back then, so mistakes are ok. I feel they add a little charm to my cards.


On the front of my first card, I used the Sprinklers mist in 'Strawberry Creme'. It was a beautiful tone of pink (not too dark and not too light). After that was dry, I created my flowers by layering circles punched from various papers. Some cute buttons out of my FMIL vintage stash added the finishing touches. While the circles were waiting on the glossy accent glue to dry, I sewed the red stems onto the card. Then I added the flowers and the stamped sentiment. One card down, one to go!


If your going for a vintage or retro feel, why not quilt it? I saw this pattern online for a simple quilt. I cut 7 small hexagons out of my scraps and glued them in a flower shape. I went around all the edges with Tim Holtz's distress inks. Then I jumped back onto the sewing machine and started sewing a rough frame around the card.

I'm really pleased with how these turned out. I'm also excited about the fact that I used my scraps so I won't be stuffing them into any scrap drawers. These papers were just too cute to hide away.  Hope you enjoyed these fun cards.

3 comments:

Jen Peel said...

I really love those flowers!! Great cards!

Mary Pat Siehl said...

these are just soooo cute! love the october afternoon

crimsoncat05 said...

love these cards, especially the hexagon quilt one-- and your stitching adds a really nice "handmade" touch to them!