Frugal Cardmaking

You know when you buy the little dollar stamps at Michaels and JoAnn's?  They have a thin clear acrylic liner on either side of the stamp.  One I keep to cover the stamp in my notebook where I store my clear stamps, the other one usually gets thrown away.  But, with my Vagabond (you can use any die cut machine), I cut flowers (3 in this case) from each one.  Then I laid it on a piece of paper and put drops of Adirondack alcohol inks here and there and used compressed air, like you use to clean your computer to spread the ink around.  I used Raisin, Raspberry and Pink Sherbet.  The I set the ink with my heat gun.  To make the petals curl I very carefully "dove" the heat gun closer and pulled it away quickly so it didn't turn to a hard clump of plastic.  Then I used a Red violet RV19 copics pen (which is also alcohol ink, so it works well on shiny surfaces) to edge it in the places where it actually came out clear, just to give it a little definition.  Pierce the center and applied this cute little BoBunny brad.  The background script stamp is Inkadinkado.  Edges of that piece is sponge distressed with Victorian Velvet  Distress Ink. 

But that wasn't the end of the frugality.

I've always just hated wasting the center part of the mats when you only see 1/4 inch of it.  So, from each mat I cut the flourishes using a Sizzix die. Because of the type of die it was, the sizlet, it leaves the base cardstock a little wavy, but I just put it  under my glass mat for a few minutes and it laid down nicely.

Remember, I said that I laid the flowers on a piece of paper to blow the alcohol ink around?  I started out using a piece of scrap copy paper.  When I do bank deposits for work I have to print out four copies and it only uses a small portion of the copy paper, so I usually turn it over and use it again for the next deposit.  But that still leaves a good portion of the paper, so I keep those and use them in my art room for "whatever."  But then as I was doing this card, I looked at paper underneath and got another idea.  I got a piece of scrap white cardstock and used that instead.  So what looks like pattern paper here is actually the overspray from the alcohol inks coloring of the acrylic flower. 

Then I used a mixture of perfect pearls and water and misted it to give it a sheen.  I LOVE the way it turned out.  The stamps used are Close To My Heart.  Title is heat embossed on black.  Butterfly is highlighted with a jelly roll sparkle pen and cut out.

I finished off the card by cutting the border with an EK Success border punch and inked the base card with the Victorian Velvet distress ink and added the ribbon.  It was a fun way to spend a couple hours on Christmas Eve!