Don't Forget!

Hello all!  After an insanely busy start to the week, it's been a little quieter here at Words and Pictures in the last couple of days (it's far from quiet in my real life, but there you go...).

But I'm back, and with a picture-heavy-post warning (cup of coffee time), as there are lots of bits to this make!

Today it's time for our mid-month reminder over at Our Creative Corner, with projects from the rest of the Design Team to inspire you to enter our Forgotten Things challenge, hosted by the fabulous (Red)Anne.

You can find all the details of what Anne is after, as well as some amazing inspiration from my teammates, at OCC - but essentially the idea is to use something from your stash that you'd forgotten was there, or a technique you've lost track of in the mists of time.

Oh, and my apologies for slack visiting - I'm having massive problems with Blogger in the evenings - the only time I have to visit Craftyblogland at the moment.  It's why this post is late too, sorry.  Anyone else suffering?

This proved a little trickier for me than I'd imagined.  Since none of my stash is more than a year and half old, there's really not anything that I've fully forgotten about (yet). 

But I did have a genuine "Ooh, it's ages since I've used that!" moment recently, and it was as I was deciding what to make for my ICADs  for the swap organised by the fabulous Astrid.

ICAD stands for 'Index Card A Day' - they're also sometimes known as "skinnys"... basically, it's a work surface 3 x 5 inches in size.

I received two lovely ICADs with holders as part of the international swap (I'll share those another day), and I needed to make two of my own, with holders, to send off on their merry way around the world.

As you can already see, I took the opportunity to work with lots of my favourite colours, materials and techniques, though I didn't know what stamps I'd be using until all the backgrounds were already done.  I just followed my instincts...













It started with the fortunate finding of the perfect bit of cardboard packaging, which even already had the folds in pretty much the right place to create the holders for the ICADs.

And I cut my ICADs from some manila tags to give me a nice working surface to get inky on.







The first step was some wrinkle-free distress technique.  

On one side I used Distress Stains, and on the other, I added some Distress Paints to the mix, so as to get a slightly different quality of colour, more opaque and chalky.

To contrast with that chalkiness, I blended Broken China Distress Ink through the Harlequin stencil, and immediately clear embossed it.










I just love the watery, translucent look this gives you, so beautiful when it catches the light.  

For some reason, I decided this was the back of the ICAD, so it needed to say who the maker was.









I'd found - still in its envelope, so sort of "forgotten" - this lovely 'made by' label, an ebay purchase.  So I stamped that on the back of the ICADs in Olive Archival.













Then, feeling it needed a little something along the bottom, I added the adorable tiny meadow flowers from Artistic Outpost's Generation Redux set....













And then just one more layer - stamping Tim Holtz's little wildflower stamp using Aquamarine Archival.











I also used the Harlequin stencil on the front side, but here I used the 'stencil bumping' technique demonstrated by Leandra of PaperArtsy in this great video.  

Of course, she's using Fresco paints, but I used Distress Ink, and then Picket Fence Distress Stain for my 'bumped' top layer.

It's a technique I'd not exactly "forgotten" about, but am always meaning to use more often.  I love the dimensional look it gives.

I layered in some text stamping using the wonderful SheArt Print Texture, one of the great Christy Tomlinson stamps made by Unity.








There's a text layer on the back too (of course!).  

I used Aquamarine Archival ink so that it would hold its own if I decided to do any spritzing or spraying later.













Because I'd already used the little meadow flowers, they were obviously in my mind as I went flicking through my stamp collection to see what I might use as my focal image.  

And it was at this point that I looked at the large hedgerow grasses of Donna Downey's Delicate Wildflowers for Unity, and had my "ooh" moment.







I was completely obsessed with these stamps at the beginning of this year.  Longtime regulars may remember them appearing on project after project!  

But they hadn't been out to play lately, and I suddenly realised they'd be perfect for this make.










First of all, I stamped the Delicate Wildflowers in Olive Archival, to match with the stamping on the back.

And then I decided to try for a ghostly stamping with Picket Fence Distress Stain - a little nerve-wracking as, if it all went wrong at this stage, there would be quite a lot to redo - but thankfully, I absolutely love the cobwebby effect it created!











The sentiment is one of Tim Holtz's, and again I've clear embossed the ink.

There's always a delight to me in the "now-you-see-it, now-you-don't" of the glossy words, hovering in and out of vision, as things do in dreams...

Time to get on with the holders... 

I used a generous coat of white acrylic paint to smarten up the packaging, after peeling away the top papers in places to reveal some of the lovely corrugated texture, of course.

I used Tim's new tiny dots stencil with various blue and green Distress Inks.















Then it was out with another long-time favourite, the Silhouette Blossoms, stamped in Olive Archival.














Very happy with how the branches and the dots play together.















I blended Distress Inks around the edges for definition and a touch of distressing.

I used the same set of colours to dye some seam binding to create the closure for the holders - no more than a simple bow.













On the inside I glued strips of dictionary pages (lovely old German typescript) and white washed them.












This time it was some brand new grasses that came out to play - a lovely stamp by Indigoblu layered up in different colours.... and a bit more inking round the edges, of course.













I used one of the Brackets On the Edge dies to cut a couple of pieces of paper from one of the Tim Holtz stacks to create the pockets to hold the ICADs, and glued them in place.











So there they are... ready for their journeys.

I hope by now they've both reached their destinations, and I hope they've brought as much pleasure as I found in the making of them.












Do hop over to Our Creative Corner and see what the rest of the team have come up with to inspire you.  The projects are well worth a moment of your time!

And we hope you'll find a moment more to come and share your Forgotten Things with us this month.

I'd like to add this as a second entry in the Embossed challenge at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge
And with those book pages lining the holders, I'd like to join in with Hit the Books over at Anything But A Card
And, at long last, a chance to play along at one of my favourite challenges Frilly and Funkie again, as they're playing Anything Goes

The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.
Friedrich Nietzsche

There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.
Marie Antoinette

I've a grand memory for forgetting.
Robert Louis Stevenson