Thank You cards for staff at an Art dorm

I just wanted to quickly share the fronts of these thank you cards I made for my staff. We run a creative and performing arts dorm so I figured a fun and artsy card would be appropriate. Enjoy!

This was a fairly simple card to make and allowed me to use some of my watercolor paper scraps. First I stamped a whole bunch of butterfly/moths on scrap squares using the watercolor stamping technique. I aged the edges with Distress Ink in Vintage Photo and then tore the edges off. Then I put some Walnut Stain Distress Ink on the craft mat and got it super wet with my mister. Then I drug the torn edges through and dried with my heat tool to get the darker effect. I attached it with foam tape.

The right hand side was just a stamp from Tim Holtz and then I used the "splatters" stencil to dab in some cool color blobs on the side. Nice and simple, but fun.

Steampunk Airship Pirate Pin

Three years ago, around this time, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do for a costume for some events I had. I was reading the Myst series and was awkwardly obsessed with all things steampunk at the time, so I wanted to be an Airship Pirate. I bought some cool victorian pants, a flannel shirt, suspenders, and some cool additions to my glasses that I found in the jewelry workshop where I work. Then I just wanted something that said "pirate." So 6 hours and a lot of epoxy and gears later I ended up with this. (click to enlarge)

Ocular/Optometrist/October... you know, "O" things.

So this week I tried something new and COMBINED challenges I found on the net (whoooaaa adventurous). So what were the challenges you ask?

RetroSketch Design Entry!

So I really like these challenges and this week I also wanted to tie in some quilling along with making something for Dia de los Muertos since there really aren't a lot of cards out there for that holiday and I have a friend that I know will enjoy it. (Spoiler alert if you're reading this, Angel!).

So the sketch this week from RetroSketches was pretty fun:

It was crafter's choice! Which meant I could go through the Archives and pick out a sketch that I wanted to use and design around that. Since I'm new to this blog, I haven't done many of the sketches so there were a lot to choose from. I knew I wanted to do quilling, and I knew I wanted to use this festive washi tape I bought soooo I went with this sketch:

And 6 hours of meticulous paper curling and gluing later, I got this beauty:

Feliz Dia de los Muertos! (On November 1st anyway. No shame in being ready early right?)