Wallpaper, Drawer Liner, Greeting Card

Howdy folks.
When you are reading this, I'm somewhere in Continental Europe, living it up, seeing the great sites, buying the good stuff, eating the delicacies. Yep, all in all, you should be very jealous of me. Or so I say now as I type this. I think most of you can remember the last time I said something about "you should be jealous because I'm going to Italy." Hint, few people are jealous of that life experience. Knock on wood, that won't happen again. Anyhoo, while I'm out of town, I didn't want to leave you without some crafts so I'm showing you crazy kiddos three things I've been up to of late.
I made a greeting card, as shown above, to accompany a wedding present, also shown above. I bought a stack of blue, turquoise, cerulean, and seafoam cardstock and I have found that it comes in handy all the time. How did I live without a standing stack of cardstock to dip into? I don't know. Also, I think I've blogged about this before -- I bought myself a miniature paper cutter, like the kind that teachers used to have in the teacher's workroom, with a big old blade, capable of cutting off a finger or worse. Mine is a mini version but it is great for cutting straight edges on things. This way I can size the cardstock exactly as needed.
What's special about this project is neither the cardstock nor the paper cutting techniques. No, my friends... What is special about this card is that vintage floral paper. I'm really proud of that. I love that paper. It is actually a little hard for me to part with even a few scraps. It is vintage wallpaper from the 1960s. And its been in the family since it was brand new. After a career as wallpaper, it was reused as drawer liner. And during its career as drawer liner, it was snuck out of its drawer and came home with me to be used for crafting purposes. It was smuggled out of the family farmhouse, up in Collin County. I only have a few scraps of this wallpaper and I generally don't pillage the family's property. After all, the family farmhouse is shared by a lot of people; I wouldn't want to be accused of overstepping the boundaries and taking advantage of communal property, now would I? That's so inconsiderate. All the same though, when I spotted this retro paper (so en vogue right now!), I figured it would be ok to take home one or two drawer's worth of paper squares.

No One But Us And The Indians

I did the Charlotte Collins Thanksgiving Classic invites this year. And above you see the results. Oh and my mom is the RSVP contact. Hi Mom! That was actually lots of fun, writing that up for everyone in the you-wouldn't-believe-it extended family. I think I'm the only spawn of my generation to know who everybody on that list is and how they are related. And as much fun as I had with the invite its self, I was really having a blast with the envelopes. And then I had lots of fun making jpegs of all the envelopes, as you can see. This is a bit ridiculous, I realize, but I liked some of them and wanted to show them off.

Not wanting to reveal these peoples' names and addresses, I tried not to show full envelopes. Well, all except Mary, but she already moved out of that place and now lives in Spain. So if you were trying to track her down or if she is secretly not a part of the family but has indeed been a part of the FBI witness protection program since five or six days after her birth (which is about the time when I first met her), well, you are too late in finding her on Nueces in Austin. So about the above, I'm a big fan of the new "A" and below is the old "A" but it is paired with the new "M."

I don't know why I liked this one so much, but I thought it turned out pleasantly so here it is for you to admire.

The new "A" and "M" on my nana's name.

Day Off Correspondence

To add to the recent collection of calligraphy posts, here's what I did this morning for some letters I needed to send. I tell you what, I've gotten pretty good at the standard, "Dallas, Texas 752.." because I use it so frequently! And I decided to really roll out the personalized pink stationery that I bought from vistaprint.com (which is cheap yet high quality... I can't say enough good stuff about using them though I'd advise going for the "linen" paper option so that the paper feels really high quality).

Thanks to several practice sessions, I've really gotten comfortable using the colored ink. At first I had a really hard time switching from black to blue or red or gold (the three colors I own besides black) because I felt like you could see differences in color as the amount of ink left in the quill started to dwindle. And that's true -- you can see the color difference, but I've gotten better at knowing when to refill the quill, which is, like, constantly. If I were to write a sentence with my quill with colored ink, it would look like this,

"Geez, d(refill)o you thin(refill)k that t(refill)he So(refill)x have (refill) what it(refill) takes t(refill) to make (refill) it to the (refill) Series (refill) this ye(refill)ar?"

Clearly, it's not an efficient way to write a lengthy amount, but it's all right for addresses... if you are in a patient mood. Luckily for my lady friends to whom the envelopes are addressed, I was in a patient mood this morning.

But now I'm not, I only have so many hours to shop on my day off! Goodness gracious folks, I hope this post will sustain you through the weekend and my trip to NYC.