Alchemy Orders Completed!

One of my favorite things to do, is for potential customers to call me up, actually now it would be get a hold of my through my Etsy Shop, Scrapping With Sherry, and request a custom order. Which is actually just a fancy way of saying they get a hold of me and tell me what they want. This is how I have been making cards for friends and family locally for years.

I love the challenge of them telling me what they have in mind as far as images and colors for example, what the must haves are as well as the must not's, and then creating a card based on their vision.

Besides the challenge of making a card according to their specifics, my favorite part is when I present them with the finished item and they love it! It still amazes me at how surprised they are when they see it for the first time. Just the look on their face is a compliment that I can't describe.

I had two of them to complete today. The first one, pictured above, is a birthday card for a 16 year old boy. She wanted a card with a guitar and white skulls, she preferred the card be black and white and be done in two days.

I not only used the patterned paper from the Rock Star Paper Pack for the background layers, but I cut out an image of a guitar with a craft knife to create my own embellishment. I added painted grunge board wings to the back for added interest.

She wanted white skulls so I painted a few grunge board cross bones and skulls to add since the images on the patterned paper were silver.

 

I added a touch of red to the card by hand stamping "You Rock" on a piece of white cardstock with Brick Red Distress Ink from Tim Holtz and then added the Distressed Embossing Powder in Brick Red. I didn't care for the plain white cardstock so I cut the middle out of a tag and replaced it with the hand stamped one I made. The inside has a "Happy Birthday" sentiment in rub-ons.

Tip: When Distressed Embossing Powder is used with Distressed Embossing Ink it ends up being light as there is not alot of coverage. To make it a darker color I use a coordinating colored distress ink. Any distress inks can be used for embossing too.

The second card is a friendship card. The recipient is a music teacher who has a passion for playing the piano . She did not want just black and white and decided that she wanted alot of her favorite color, red, to be added to the card.

I showed her a vintage card and suggested that the style and colors of the vintage browns would go good with the mandatory color red that she wanted. She did not like the look of vintage, so I resorted to using black and white with a red textured background. Since she wanted the card to have a good amount of red, I made the middle smaller than I would have otherwise. 

I hand stamped and colored the piano keys and then added them to the hand stamped, embossed musical background image, that makes up the middle portion of the card.

You can really see the texture of the embossed musical background in the photo above.

The tag says "You Are" and the sentiment on the inside says "Very Special To Me".

A black satin ribbon is what separates the musical image from the piano keys. I wish that I could of found a way to shape the musical image to look like a piano.

To finish the card I added a layered black flower with a white pearl in the center. I also added two black pearls to the two top corners of the musical background.

She is coming to pick this card up today. I have to admit that I am a little nervous. I like the card. But that may be the problem. Our taste is very different when it comes to most anything... I will just have to keep my fingers crossed! Update: She came by and picked up the card and loved it! We discussed her hiring me to create each of her grandchildren a canvass wall art for Christmas. She is going to place her order in a few weeks, through special request or Alchemy at my shop, Scrapping With Sherry.

I am really looking forward to doing these layouts for her. I have not had the opportunity to create like this in a while now.   

Thanks for coming by and taking a peek at what I've been up to. I have also been working on the list of books that everyone submitted during my giveaway. I should have it done within a few days.

Until Next Time... Take Care! 

Black & White Birthday Card

Yes, that is a black and white card in the picture above... I have made a Black & White Birthday Card. For those of you that have not been able to read my older posts, I had put myself on a restriction from making black & white papercrafts. It's the only colors I seem to be inspired by these days and I wanted to get out of a rut. In my defense though, a customer saw the black and white birthday card with the cake at my Etsy Shop. However, it wasn't what he was looking for, but he loved the look of black and white.  I agreed to make him a more classic card for his mothers birthday. It had to be done by tomorrow morning, which I didn't mind. He is a good friend of Glenn's, and I was happy to get the order.

Below are a few more views of the card.

Above is the banner on the card. I love the dimension of the butterflys and the pearl embellishments.

I embossed the two butterflies on the upper portion of the card to match the first layer, but the one on the bottom was handstamped using the same stamp I used for the background image.

The supplies that I used for this card are the white 65 pound cardstock that I always use for the base of my cards. It makes such a difference in the quality of a handmade card when you use the heavier weight cardstock. Black cardstock, black felt specialty paper, black satin ribbon, white organza ribbon, black archival ink, small and medium sized pearls, hand punched butterflies.

The tools that I used are the "Floral Fantasy" Cuttlebug embossing folder and my Cuttlebug. (I love my cuttlebug!) The background image is a stamp by Anna Griffin, the sentiment is also by Anna Griffin and comes from the "Sending You: Sentiments Statements" Set. For the tag I used my Cricut Machine along with the "Sweethearts" cartridge and the butterflies were made using a punch by Marvy.

Hope that you are inspired by this card to create something absolutely fantastic today! If you are I would love to see what you came up with based on this design.

Your comments are a gift to me and I am always excited to read each and every one. For those of you that have been leaving me the gift of your word and supporting this newbie, I thank you!

Until next time... Take Care!