Home is where the heart is - JCC #75

I'd had this card idea in my head for quite some time, but hadn't really gotten round and making it. When a friend of mine bought a flat, I decided it was high time to get on with it. Besides, I noticed that this week's sketch in Jehkotar CardChallenge was really similar to what I'd been pondering. So here's my entry for JCC #75.

Die cut: Cricut 'Plantin Schoolbook'
Flowers: Prima/ Reprint
Stamp: Inkadinkado
Ink: VersaMark
Embossing powder: Ranger
Rub-on: Kaiser Crafts
Heart gem: Tiimari

I cut the city scene with Cricut from black and red paper. I only used part of the whole black strip and only one house from the red. The small heart was leftovers from a border punch. I stamped and embossed swirls on the red flower to echo the doodling and layered it with a couple of white flowers and a heart gem. I used wire to attach the key charm to the flower, no idea where I got that or the ribbon hiding the die cut's edge from. The rub-on was really hard to keep still while rubbing and I had to do some slight retouching here and there to hide the breaking points. I didn't quite stick to the sketch because I felt the card looked better this way, but I think stayed true enough to it.

1928

My friends' house was built in 1928, so for their housewarming party they decided to take that year as the theme. As I knew that everything would be to a T (and especially the food), I wanted to make a card to match.

I took the old-fashioned kitchen tile and made it into a house with a triangle of striped paper for the roof. I tore a piece of light green paper to lift my "house" off the key-patterned paper. For a homely feel, I added a strip of red gingham ribbon which also gave a perfect spot to attach the number tags. To fill up the empty spaces I added the rub-on letters, the key button and the peel-off corners.

Snail mail

This card was a real rush job and I'm not particularily happy with it, but the receiver liked it, so I guess it served its purpose. I just glued a Penny Black sticker onto white mulberry paper, frayed the edges, stuck it onto a card blank and surrounded it with punched houses and the greeting.

Home tweet home

I first came by this nesting box stamp in a swap and loved it so much that I just had to get it for myself too. It's perfect for new home cards and easy to come up with a greeting as well.

For a more masculine card, I used bright basic colours. I coloured the image in with watercolour pencils and spread the colours a bit with a waterbrush. I mounted the image on a panel of patterned paper and fixed it onto a card blank. I printed the greeting, backed it with light yellow handmade paper and attached two green brads before fixing it onto the card.

Another variation with more feminine style and colours. The image is again coloured in with watercolour pencils and backed with pink paper. I glued a large panel of stripy paper onto the card blank and fixed the image on top of it. I cut away the fastening loop from a flower button and used glue dots to fix it as a flower centre and to fix the flower to the card. Here's also a very rare occurrence of my own handwriting, highly stylised as my normal handwriting is terrible. I wrote the greeting on a strip of white paper and inked the edges with pink.

A new home

I found this design in Julie Hickey's Quick and Clever Handmade Cards and just knew I wanted to make it. When my colleague bought a flat, I immediately embraced the opportunity to have a go with this card.

Although the original design was in shades of green, I changed it into blue to better match my friend's favourite colours. I punched three houses from blue paper and attached them onto a paint strip. I punched a house stencil and dabbed the houses onto a card blank with blue ink. I glued the paint strip onto the card blank, attached the blue strip of punched houses on top of it with eyelets and fixed a peel-off key tag with a foam pad.