Business card matchbooks

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "your favourite...".  I have so many favourite things, I hardly know where to start! Which is kinda odd when you think about it, cos if there's more than one, how can any of them be the favourite?  Anyway, I decided to be a little more specific and chose my favourite line of craft products, definitely Ranger's Distress range!

I had the idea for these business card matchbooks when I was sitting at my desk gazing out of the window, waiting for inspiration to strike (and some days, that can take a while!).  My eyes fell upon my Tonic mini perforator tool, which got me thinking about tear-off things and what things could you tear off and give to people.  Although I went with business cards this idea is only limited by your imagination!

You could make books of tear-off ATCs or twinchies, so that you always have some to hand ready to be traded - just remember to add an extra 1/4 inch or so to one end of your blanks to allow for the page to be glued into the matchbook.  Perforate at the 1/4 inch mark so that when you tear off your ATC or twinchie it's the right size, the extra 1/4 of blank card will stay in the matchbook.

OK, pay attention, here comes the tutorial part!

Let's say you're going to make a matchbook of tear-off ATCs.  Each card will be 3.5 x 2.5 inches with an extra 1/4 inch added on, so you'll have something like this -

Your cover will be the same width as your tear-off pages (or you could make them a little wider if you prefer) so with our pages sized as shown above, the cover would be like this (the dotted lines are score lines on the cover, not perforations) -

My covers were coloured with Distress Stains (so great for adding quick colour to a large area!) and then embossed in my Cuttlebug.  I sponged Distress Ink on them to highlight the embossed texture. You could make yours with patterned cardstock or decorate some plain covers to make them more personal!  I used a strong wet glue (PVA) to hold my pages in my cover, but something like Glossy Accents would also work well.

So there you have it, simple in concept, but so cool to have handy in your pocket or purse for the next time someone says "What's your blog address?".

Supplies I used included:

InLinkz.com

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week, just make something for the challenge and you could the winner! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)

Don't forget, Simon Says Stamp have a great Facebook page too!  Check them out here!

Rust is the new black

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "rustification".  I took my inspiration from the rusty colours of autumn leaves.  I used scores of buttons in autumnal colours to recreate the feel of a carpet of leaves.  I had collected some real leaves to feature on the card, but after they had dried out they were a little smelly, too much so to use them!

I used a range of different patterned papers for the buttons and luckily the Martha Stewart buttons punch can cut out 5 at a time, which greatly speeded up the process!  The "thread" was created with a Walnut Stain Distress Marker.

The tickets were cut from Tattered Time card stock, and the stamps from Ali Edwards were the perfect size to fit nicely onto them.  The ribbon is a piece that has been kicking around in my craft room for a few years, it's very thick and is brown on one side, white on the other, with a brown and white edging.  I can't even remember where it came from, but it was perfect for this card.

Supplies I used included:

InLinkz.com

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week, just make something for the challenge and you could the winner! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)

Don't forget, Simon Says Stamp have a great Facebook page too!  Check them out here!

All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "Leaftastic".  I just love Autumn, the changing colours of the leaves, the hint of a chill in the moist air and the start of "comfort food" season :)  I ordered a set of Tim's Autumn Blueprint stamps as soon as I saw them, I'm a sucker for anything leafy.  Most of my immediate family have birthdays in September (me included) so I thought I'd make some season-appropriate giftwrap.

My starting point was a roll of cheap kraft wrapping paper, which can be had for a handful of beans from your local Swedish furniture superstore (c'mon, don't play dumb, you know you know the one I'm talking about!).  The kraft colour is a perfect base for some autumnal goodness and it lends itself well to the hand-drawn feel of the stamped images.

The paper has a shiny side and a matt side, I chose to work on the matt side as I thought it would take the stamping and colouring better.  There are 4 stamps in the set, so I used large acrylic blocks with 2 stamps side-by-side on each, to make the stamping faster and easier to line up.  The images were stamped with black Archival ink, which is waterproof, useful as I went on to "paint" the leaves.

I dabbed various autumn-hued distress ink pads onto my non-stick craft mat and then used a water brush to pick up the colour and paint the leaves, blending colours together as I painted, to give that variagated autumn leaf colouring.

The co-ordinating gift card was stamped on Kraft Resist cardstock, painted in the same way and then I blended Aged Mahogany ink around the edges to complete the look.  I'm really pleased with the end result and the recipient absolutely loved their one-of-a-kind gift wrap!

 Supplies I used included:

InLinkz.com

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week, just make something for the challenge and you could the winner! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)

Don't forget, Simon Says Stamp have a great Facebook page too!  Check them out here!