Mementoes In Time

Just to say, the members' area is now available for all to visit and use. You don't need to sign up to the site to access these pages shown as 'Free Stuff' on the left sidebar. There are hundreds of free templates and other printables there so do have a browse.

If you want any of these templates, please download them now, while they are still available. Just remember that they remain the property of Mementoes In Time so please respect the copyright conditions.

Here is the Valentines' Wreath Number Two, using a smaller heart from the free template. I am using red and white roses made using the Roses and Poinsettia template to decorate the wreath and you can get the roses part free, also on the Members' pages. If you would like to read the project notes for the roses, have a look at the Valentines' Wreath Part One posted yesterday!

If you like tactile types of cards, then today's card fits the bill!. A simple aperture card but with a cute hanging heart. I have made the heart from a die cut using some shrink plastic. Make two hearts this way and sandwich some confetti hearts inside with a piece of cord to hang. Actually quite simple but effective. I love the way the light shines through it. Thanks for following my short series for Valentines 2021. There are hundreds more Valentines' cards ideas on the Members' pages and also in the Photo Gallery, so have a browse!

I love making projects with paper flowers, so what better way to use them than today's project . I always fancied myself as a bit of a flower arranger so this project lets me pretend I have some of the skills needed! This project takes a while, it is not one of the super quick ones you can make in twenty minutes. I think I spent a few hours here as I handmade many of the roses that you can see but it would be quicker if you were using bought paper flowers or using a cutting machine.

The project is based on the new free heart wreath template you can find on the Members' pages. I am using the largest size here which makes a good sized piece to hand pretty much anywhere. Many people associate wreaths with sad occasions but I like to think they are more than that and you can use them as a basic template on which to create.

Cutting out shapes for the roses

You can use any handmade flowers, bought flowers, die-cuts or punched whatever you like on your wreath. I have used a combination of some handmade roses from the Roses and Poinsettias template which you can find under the Festive Templates on the left hand sidebar and some paper flowers I had. The roses part of the template is also free on the Members' pages. If you are using the template, cut out a series of shapes in decreasing sizes from some pearlised pink and cream papers and layer them up to create the roses.

Curl the petals for a more realistic finish

Use a scoring tool or similar to add some shape to the flowers, just pull the tool along the petals to get them to curl.

Here is a finished one

I have added some die-cut and silk leaves, some stamens and some die-cut foliage to fill in all the gaps.

A closeup

Add a ribbon to hang the wreath and make sure you use a good glue so that it doesn't collapse and fall off wherever you are hanging it!

Here it is hanging on my twig tree. I am not going to display it there but it was useful for taking a photo.

Hope you like it! Please do leave a comment on the Facebook page as we get spammed here so I have to close off the comments.

Today's card is a shaker design with some tiny confetti hearts inside. I had the idea of making it into a balloon with some silver thread and I don't think I have seen one of these anywhere else. The name for this card is "You lift me up" and I have added a sentiment inside to this effect.

You make this in exactly the same way as you do any shaker card but cutting hearts instead of traditional squares. I am using one of the smallest hearts from the free Member's Heart Wreath template which you can get if you join the site. You will find it on the left hand sidebar under Members' Goodies.

Simply cut a heart shape from the template, stick it onto some acetate and cut around the two to get a heart with acetate on one side. Now turn it over and use some tiny foam squares, or cut down some big ones and place them around the outside as I have done here. You can then fix it to your base card. To make it easier, fix it most of the way around and leave a little break so that you can pour in some heart confetti. Then seal it up! You can add another heart on the back before sticking to your base card and this makes it easier if you want to add the silver cord as it will be hidden behind the heart.

This one is for my long-suffering and wonderful husband who I am grateful for every day, especially during these difficult times stuck under the Covid lockdown. He lifts my spirits so a balloon is a great image for that, although he absolutely hates balloons!!

With Valentines' Day rapidly approaching, I thought I had better post up a few card ideas. With almost thirty years of marriage behind me, Valentines' Day tends to be a different thing compared to when I was younger but I still like to stop and think about people who are special to me at this time of year, especially those no longer with me. My mother loved Valentines' Day and always gave me flowers and a card right from a young age, which was wonderful as she recognised that it is not just about couples but is also about expressing your love and kindness to those around you or remember those no longer with us at least one day a year

There are heaps of cards and other projects available to browse on the site but I had made a few things a couple of weeks ago and got distracted with other jobs that I had to do.

Anyway, here is a nice quick idea using some FIMO hearts I made with a tiny cutter, the type you use to make cake decorations. I used red FIMO and then covered them with some glitter glue to give a sparkle.

The tags are from a Sizzix Gifts die and I have simply stamped the letters on with a mini Hero Arts alphabet. Top tip is to use the best quality base card you can, this lovely linen weave finish here makes a simple design look nice and expensive.

Simple and sweet!

52 Shades of Anything But Grey Series (New Year)

To close out the series for this year, here is a festive New Year addition to the '52 Shades of Anything But Grey' projects. I was going to go vintage again, as the Christmas images were so lovely and there are lots of older style New Year images out there but decided to go modern in the end.

Festive and bright for a new year ahead!

The background paper was stamped with a date stamp in silver, the panel was stamped and heat embossed and the star was punched from a piece of metal sheet and run through an embossing folder. The wire tails were curled by hand and some stick on gems and stars with number stickers for the year made this piece very simple but still a nice piece for the collection or to use on a card blank.

Mounted on a card blank

If you have been following the series, we are around about half way through I think, so lots more of these mini art pieces to come!

Champagne Bottles Template

Wishing all the members and visitors to the site a very happy and hopefully much better New Year!

If you are looking for a template for New Year, how about this one!

You can customise the labels to add your own names and a vintage year and the template even comes with a bag to put the bottle in.

Find this template under 'Festive' on the Templates tab on the left hand sidebar.

This template is $2.00 on the template pages but the first 5 members that contact us I'll send them the template free.

Use the contact form on the left sidebar. It has been removed long term due to ridiculous amounts of spamming but will be up for just a short while for you to enter and removed when we have our five template winners!

I just love these mini hats and had to post up a couple of photos. Thanks for Tegan for sending me this project she saw on Tiktok (@sarahliw). Apparently they are very easy to make using some wool scraps, a cotton wool ball and a piece cut from a kitchen roll tube. They can even fit on top of an egg as a very cute egg cosy.

I love all crafts not just papercrafts and especially quick and simple cute projects like this. Thanks Tegan!

Thanks for joining us for another festive series of projects after a very difficult year for many.

We wish you a very peaceful and happy Christmas and New Year and hopefully a next year will bring happier times and lots of wonderful creative projects to immerse yourself in!

This is the last in this mini-series where I have been adding to the '52 Shades of Anything But Grey' collection featured on the blog this year. We are over half way I think but I am enjoying doing these little mini art pieces so much I think there will be another series. The idea was to demonstrate as many craft techniques as possible and we have covered quite a few!

The colours on this one were actually quite accidental and I am very happy with the result. Sometimes mistakes really work out better than you had hoped. I got a real mix of reds and greens for this one to pick up the dominant colours in the vintage image which was finished with crackle glaze.

Let the sprays swirl about a bit, you don't have to just have spray marks. As they are from the distress range, then run together beautifully and almost always end up not being a mistake. Once the ink was dry, I stamped over the top with my trusty Brilliance gold ink and a lovely Christmas wording stamp. Three simple red stick on gems finish the piece.

I hope you have enjoyed this mini-series of Christmas themed art cards. We haven't finished the '52 Shades' series yet and will be adding to it. I will also be designing some kind of display album to house them all, as I like to keep them as a record of different techniques that have been used, so drop by again soon!

We are going for a super distressed wood effect with today's art card. I used a couple of layers of gesso roughly with broad brush strokes on the playing card before adding the distress sprays. The gesso was still a little wet, which actually created a great cracked/distressed effect without needing any crackle glaze.

Here is the art card mounted on a card blank

The distress spray colours I have used are more towards the reddy browns as I wanted to get the effect of an old wooden surface but still keep a festive effect. The image is quite dark also, which complements the distressed background and a thin layer of crackle glaze gives a nice finish. The wording is edged with a gold Sharpie as is the card itself. I wanted to create something very rustic and the distress sprays work really well for this purpose as you can build up colours as you wish and nothing is really ruined, just add some more spray until you get the effect you are looking for!

A change of theme with today's mini art card project. I have changed to blues and silvers which complement the colours in the gorgeous vintage image beautifully. This has been done in exactly the same way as all the previous cards with distress sprays to create the background. I decided not to stamp the background with anything as I wanted a swirly, almost cloudy effect of a frosty clear winter sky.

Mounted on a card blank

The image was sealed with Matte Medium, to avoid a highly glossy finish which I didn't want with this piece. The little snowflake was actually made using the Tim Holtz snowflakes die cutter on shrink plastic. After quite a few failed attempts with shrinkles, I ended up using some Papermania shrink plastic which worked beautifully to create a perfectly crystal clear snowflake!

Thanks for reading, look back on the blog if you would like to see all the other pieces in this series!

Waiting for Santa

Day 3 - I just love this image of a tiny little girl waiting up for Santa/Father Christmas. I have chosen to match the cuteness of this vintage image with a simple pink, gold and cream theme.

The festive words stamp is stamped in gold and I have edged the card with a gold Sharpie pen. The wording "Angel" seems to fit, as she certainly seems to be angelic, as all good children are before Santa arrives. Nothing like my girls were at all!

A soft pink theme with a festive stamp on a distress spray background

If you would like to see more of this series '52 Shades of Anything But Grey', you can find all the previous posts on the blog by using the search bar, or you can also find them all in the photo gallery.

Mounted on a card blank

Thanks for joining us. There are a couple more of these cards to come using gorgeous vintage images you can find on the Members' pages, so join us again if you can!

'Yule'

Day 2 of this mini-series where I have been amusing myself with my distress sprays and a selection of lovely vintage images. You can get these images on the Members' pages and many more from rawpixel.com. I love these images, they just work so well with the whole Distress range and I think Christmas and Vintage just goes together.

Some of the distress sprays used

Green is the theme here for this image. I think this Santa has a very nordic, woodland look to him!. I also added some gold spray after it had dried a little. Going with the woodland theme, the reindeer was actually a really gaudy gold also but I just added some of Distress Dust, Vintage Platinum to tone it down a bit. I didn't want to use Distress Glitter as this has a much rougher texture with larger glitter chips. The colour was still a bit bright for me, so a touch of Tea Dye ink fixed it!

The image also has some crackle glaze on it, which makes something that is obviously printed look a bit more authentic.

Mounted on a card blank

I will post up a JPEG and PNG of the wording on the Members' pages, in a bit.

A mixture of tried and tested techniques to create a nice vintage effect

I wanted to return to the series running earlier this year, '52 Shades of Anything But Grey' with some Christmas themed mini art pieces. Much as I love designing templates, I also like messing around with my inks and stamps creating one-off creative work.  We covered a lot of ground in this series and you can see all the completed cards on the blog by using the search bar above and you can also see them in the Photo Gallery. We will keep going until we get to 52!

The idea was that using a simple pack of playing cards, you can create a set of lovely keepsake cards that demonstrate a range of craft techniques. Each card was on a different theme and could be kept as is, or mounted onto card blanks to make a greetings card.

Some of the previous pieces in the series

I love vintage images and came across some lovely public domain Christmas images on rawpixel.com. You can find all the ones I used on the Members' pages under the Freebies section. All the cards that will be posted over the next few days feature pretty much the same basic technique.

One of the public domain images you can find on the Members' pages

The bases are built up using Distress Spray Stains. You can theme the colours red, green etc or just go for it and throw a heap of different ones at the card. If you are using playing cards like I am, you need to prep the base, either with a few layers of gesso, which takes a while to dry and creates a rougher effect on the surface (like this demo card today) or by cutting a piece of plain card or paper to fit on the front. You can use ordinary white acrylic paint instead of gesso but it will probably take a few more coats to cover the card.

Go crazy with your distress sprays, you can't really mess it up!

One technique is to lightly sand the card to remove some of the plasticised coating but go carefully, as this will expose the card to more of the spray and can make it very damp and curl up, so you will need to let it dry and flatten it out. I have used all ways and they all work though.

Add some distress inks for dimension and to create the aged effect

After printing the image, I used some crackle medium to give it a nice aged look and went in with my distress inks around the edges and to get into the cracks. The background is stamped with gold ink on a festive words stamp and I have edged the whole card with a gold Sharpie pen to define it better. I have added a curl of wire to add interest and a few stick on gems to lighten it a bit. The words were simply printed and I will add those to the freebie pages for this year also, when I get the chance!

Easy to mount onto a card blank if you want to send it

Thanks for reading. If you enjoy this type of post, please send us a comment and stop by again for the next one of six in this mini-series.

If you have been joining us for the Christmas projects this year, thank you! There are some free templates on the Members' pages and all the card examples can be found here on the blog, just scroll back through the posts below.

You can also find them in the photo gallery and they will be linked up on the project pages soon. If you have any comments or want to send us a message or a photo of your festive makes, please contact us at mementoesintime dot com. We have had to disable the contacts form, the guestbook and testimonials page due to a huge amount of spamming on the site.

Village scene with snowy hills and die cut houses

A range of snowy scene cards today with the new adapted Window Card Template. This is a combined template that includes the pieces from the basic Window Card Template plus some extras that will allow you to make these lovely 3D scenes. They lend themselves really well to snow scenes as you can see with the demo cards. I had such a lot of fun making these!

Acetate on each layer with snowflakes added, gives an amazing 3D effect of falling snow!

You don't have to use the concertinas, as the template includes the basic Window Card as well.

Cutting out behind the window and using acetate with snowflakes creates a window you can see right through!

You also don't have to just make snow scenes as the template is pretty versatile.

A cosy fireside scene complete with cat and Christmas cards above the fireplace

Using the window on a larger card base gives you more room to create.

Mounting the window on a larger card gives more room for being creative around the outside with brick embossing and some chalks

Roses from red card with red ink used on the edges to add dimension

I've loved playing around with the new Festive Flowers Template which includes smaller layering templates in a range of sizes for both a poinsettia and rose flower. I think handmade flowers make a lovely embellishment for a special card or project and it is worth the time making them, as you can then use your own creativity by adding inks, glossy accents and more. Here are a few more cards, all made with this new template which you can find on the 'Festive' tab under Templates on the left-hand sidebar. You can get a sample of the template on the Members' pages, a rose in a couple of sizes to try.

Poinsettia flower with scoring for flower veins

Deep red poinsettia with glossy crackle accents finish

Silver poinsettia theme with glitter paper

White roses on silver

Curl the layers before and after layering to get a natural effect

Use a texture stamp, chalks or inks to get a 3D gingerbread appearance

There is a new free template on the members' pages today, featuring a cute gingerbread man in the largest size.

The full template includes a gingerbread man and woman in several sizes

This is taken from the full paid template that includes a gingerbread man and woman in different sizes, ready to cut and use on your projects, which you can find on the 'Festive' templates on the left hand sidebar.

Lay template across a fold to get an opening card