Alcohol Ink Pens

A few months ago, I got a set of 72 Spectrum Noir alcohol ink pens.  I didn’t use them much, because I didn’t have a good way to store them so I left them in their original packaging.  And there they sat.  Not wanting to shell out a bunch more money for one of those nifty pen organizers, I decided to make my own.  It’s not pretty, but it works and now my pens are all easily accessible (yes, those are Copics on the top rows.) Except for the paper I decorated it with, my pen organizer is made completely from recycled materials.

Now that my pens are always within reach, I decided I’d better figure out how to use them.  So, I watched a video or two and decided to give it a go.  Here’s a flower I drew on a piece of heavyweight vellum.

Since I was working on vellum, I got the idea to stamp something on a piece of plain paper, put the vellum over the stamped image and then trace it onto the vellum with the alcohol ink pens.  The idea is to get a drawn look even if you’re a lousy artist.  I dug through my stamps and chose the Flower Silhouettes set from Hot Off The Press and set to work using my red (DR1, DR3, DR5, DR7) and green (DG2, DG3, DG4, JG6) pens.

Here’s the result.  Obviously, I need to work a bit more on shading, but all things considered, I think I did OK.

Oh, and my other goal for today was to use up scraps.  Everything on this card except for the border dazzles and the card blank is from my scrap stack.

Here’s the inside:

I put a little piece of foam tape behind the flower to make it stand out from the

card.

If you’d like to participate in a card making forum, come check out the Just Cards forum at http://forum.handcraftedgreetings.com.

Butterflies, Birthdays and Banners

I spent some time cleaning my craft room this afternoon and uncovered some projects I started but never finished.  When I got done cleaning, I decided that rather than start something new, I should finish something (what a novel concept!).

I had all the pieces cut out for a butterfly card, but had never assembled it, so that seemed pretty easy.  After I got done I added a banner and a greeting to it.

I cut the butterfly with my eCraft using the Butterflies and Blossoms cut-it set from letteringdelights.com.  I really like the way it turned out.  The banner is from the Build A Banner template by Hot Off The Press.  The stamps and papers are also from Hot Off The Press.

Here’s the inside of the card:

You can find the supplies list for this card on my website here:
http://www.handcraftedgreetings.com/card.php?card_id=00273