Sue's Book

OK so here is the card that I made using the Lindisfarne bricks as a background, sorry the picture is a bit blurry! It was for Sue Roddis, who had a book signing for her first book (of many I hope!) at Paddy's Stamping Place in Prestwich, Manchester yesterday. I went along and got my book signed - the book is published by Search Press and is called Handmade Decorative Books. (available from Paddy 0161 798 5115) It is absolutely brilliant, and I'm not just saying that because I consider Sue a friend, I would buy it even if I'd never met her! She had brought with her many of the actual books that she made to put in the book, and they are so great to see and to handle, if you get the chance, go and see them, and her, and buy the book! Even though it's about making books, the ideas would apply to cards, scrapbooks, altered art, mixed media work, all sorts of things.

For this card I started with a white card blank, and applied Vintage Photo and Black Soot Distress inks around the edges, then I overstamped with a gorgeous little border stamp from Elusive Images ATC plate in Black Soot. I dried this all off with a heat gun then gold embossed small EI flourishes in the corners. I used a Tim Holtz mask set called borderline, sponging the same inks over them onto heavyweight brown paper, then I embossed the calligraphic alphabet from the EI plate in black over the barbed wire part and tore a long strip out, then tore the border out and used that to attach to the edge of my photograph. I mounted both these onto my card. Then I took a black chipboard tag and edged it gold with a krylon pen, stamped 'congratulations' all over it (another EI stamp) and embossed in gold, then stamped the same onto scraps of the brown paper and embossed with black detail powder, chopped out rough shapes and stuck them on the tag. I finished the tag with a twist of wire from a bamboo fence panel, which is a bit of a "Sue" touch! Anyway I hope she liked it.

The last couple of days have been chaotic because I lost my diary on Monday and only found it last night - it was in the ironing basket, where it would have languished for months if it had not suddenly come into my mind that that was where I had put it! (After searching my house, work and car for the previous two days, driving everyone mad asking if they'd seen it!) Anyway, luckily I hadn't missed anything crucial, but it would have got nasty very soon as there was lots in there that I had not remembered!!! For example, I might not have realised that I've got a day off today, but as I have, I'm going to have a go at the latest RSS challenge now!