A Formal Black Tie Affair New Year Card
Not Quite…
The card is not quite formal, and there is no black tie… however it is the card I have chosen to ring in the New Year, or rather it chose me.
As we get ready to ring in a New Year, whether it be with a bottle of champagne or a bucket of popcorn and an evening with Netflix - there are many things we bring to the New Year with us and a great friend(s) should definitely be one of them.
This card reads “no friendship is an accident” and though friendship may not be an accident, this card most certainly was - a happy accident!
Or was it?!
Sitting at my desk with sound of raindrops falling on the roof in the background I gazed around my studio at new Christmas crafting products that had just landed in after Christmas due to the recent mail strike. Here and there a random roll of holiday wrapping paper since my office was used as wrapping central for Christmas gift prep. Some empty boxes that indicated that sadly the festive season had come and gone.
I faced that moment head on, glared it right in the eye - the moment when you’re not sure what your first card creation will be after all of the glamor, sparkle and beauty of holiday crafting.
I should have been way ahead of this game, however the weeks just before Christmas brought a bathroom renovation ( love it ), the loss of my beloved Father in Law (heartbreaking), as well as the usual Christmas chaos. Mix all of this with the usual pitter patter of a few grandchildren’s feet who live in this home and it all made for a super busy few weeks that came with joy, laughter, and unfortunately many tears. Needless to say my desk was gathering dust for the majority of this time.
As I sat at my desk in a complete creative rut, this adorable little Salt & Pepper shaker stamp from Brutus Monroe kept giving me the eye - those eyes, you see them on the shaker image. Those eyes kept locking with mine. I’m sure I heard them calling “stamp us”. “Just once”, “you know you want to”!!
Temptation won out and I found myself opening (it was the eyes, I can’t resist the eyes) this tiny little stamp set, and when I say tiny I’m definitely not kidding - its so small I think my mind was actually thinking how would one even create a card with this tiny little stamp set? Would it even have enough potential to do so?
Ok, so I’ll just stamp it once with some Black Memento Ink, just so this nagging urge will go away and I can move onto a more viable project.
Now, previous to this little stamping incident I had sampled a die cut of postage type squares - not because the squares were new, more so that I had a need to try out this New Magic Mat that I had received. I hadn’t tried it out at this point and wanted to see just how well it worked. I had grabbed the first available die and ran it thought the Big Shot. It cut fabulous by the way! So I actually had these little postage squares sitting on desk from a previous moment of temptation.
When I eventually stamped the little salt and pepper shakers, I stamped them onto one of these squares. They were adorable, however at this point I thought they needed just a touch of color. I did a little shading with my Copics. I still had an empty square sitting there on the desk looking deserted so I decided to stamp the sentiment included in the tiny stamp set.
And then… you know how this goes. There is just no way this stamped image and sentiment aren’t making it to a card, after all they have come this far.
Included on the stamp set are some tiny speckles of what would be salt and pepper I presume. I stamped these sprinkles of salt and pepper randomly on a layer of white cardstock. Trimmed this layer down to size and matted it onto a black layer. I wanted to break up the pattern of the salt and pepper background a bit, but also wanted to stay in the parameters of the black and white theme that seemed to be going on. I chose a small piece of black and white checkered pattern paper and adhered that over the background layer.
I placed the the little postage squares that I had previously stamped, however they seemed to be getting lost in the background paper. The white of the die cuts was just not going to work. Hmm?
I had a scrap of black paper left over from matting of the background layer, so I cut 2 more postage stamp squares in black. Haphazardly attached them to the back of the white postage squares and gave them a bit of a dress rehearsal on the card front. This was going to work.
I added foam tape to the back of the die cut squares and adhered them to the front of the card, added a few sparkling silver rhinestones. I loved it! Onto a card base it went.
So while it’s still undetermined as to whether this card was an accident or not, it remained formally black & white and was a beautiful reminder that friendships are no accident and how very lucky we are to be carrying those friendships into a New Year.
So again, whether you are dancing the night away tonight, or snuggling in for an evening of binge watching Netflix - send a message, a phone call to those pillars that help you get through one year to the next, that celebrate the joys with you or give you a shoulder for those tears to land on. Let them know how much you appreciate them.
Wishing all of you a very Happy New Year!!
