Tammy Garcia, of Daisy Yellow, is an creativity instigator. I’ve read her blog for years, and we met for the first time when I was teaching at the GASC (Great American Scrapbook Convention) in Arlington Texas. Tammy and I shared lunch, and before the food arrived, she had involved me in ICAD–the Index Card a Day project. She handed me an index card and some super-cool very fine colored gel pens from JetPens and I was off–creating. Since I’m working on a series of loose-leaf journal pages, the project appealed to me. (Tammy is letting me give away two copies of her zine. Details below)
Tammy asked me to talk about decorating the corners of a card. It reminded me of a wonderful lesson my father taught me many years ago. He said, “take care of the edges and the middle will take care of itself.”
It’s as true of the peanut butter sandwich I was making all those years ago, as of the index card. Some of these go out of the corner and along the edges, but all of them start in the corner.
Decorating any page doesn’t have to involve half your stash. Or even a lot of wet media. This one was done in Pitt Pen. I used black. I repeated the pattern in blue and purple gel pen on a larger card, then layered the cards together. It looks sewn; copying stitches from your sewing machine is both easy and deserving of a second look.
This one is made with hole punches. Stars in one corner, the sun in the other. You can repeat on the other side, or, if you have a lot to write, just do it on the top.
You can also punch stars out of one color and the sun out of another. In this case, I made the sun using Sharpie Glitter Pens, which doesn’t show up in full glitter mode on the scan. Those markers add a nice touch of glam without kitsch. In this one, I also used a corner trimmer to round all the corners. It gives a nice vintage look to the cards.
This shows a paper mosaic. I cut up other cards that I had previously painted, and used these on opposite corners to create a tension that makes the writing look more important. You could do it on all four corners, too, I like a bit of asymmetry.
Stencils don’t have to be applied over the whole card. Place a piece of the stencil over the corner of the card, and use a stamp pad to rub over the stencil. The partial stencil applied unevenly gives a rustic look to the card. Again, you can do this on all four corners, but I like the idea of just one corner.
Index cards don’t hold up to a lot of wet media, but I wanted to have at least one with lots of color. To make this happen, I used fusible webbing to cover two cards with batiked fabric. Then I stitched them together using a ribbon-type knitting yarn. You can write on this with gel pen if you want. OK, so this one was the whole card, I couldn’t resist. The pattern is reminiscent of the first one.
Because I’m a writer, I’d fill all the cards with journaling or quotes, date them and create loose leaf journal pages. You can also create cards in series of colors. Date your cards so you can watch your progress as your skills grow with practice.
Giveaway: Tammy from Daisy Yellow creates a wonderful zine. You can preview it here. Ready for giveaway are two zines, emailed to you in a pdf format. All you have to do is leave a comment that you want to be in the drawing and an email address so you can receive the zine. Location unimportant, it’s a pdf. Winner will be drawn at random on June 13, 5 p.m. Phoenix time (8 p.m. EDT)
WINNERS: Traci Johnson and Stargardener, also known as Teresa. Three other people who came up first gave me addresses that bounced out of my email.
Join me at the Chantilly, VA location for GASC July 22 and 23. I’ll be teaching One-Sentence Journaling with tips for non-journalers and, of course Raw Art!
—-Quinn McDonald is a creativity coach and an art journaler. She is the author of Raw Art Journaling, Making Meaning, Making Art.
QuinnCreative 