Collage Card

I made this card for Paul and Dorothy - friends of ours who celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with a lovely party at the Marine Memorial Club in San Francisco Saturday night. The image came with the "save the date" email - so it wasn't the best quality pixel wise, but it still turned out lovely, if i say so myself! I trimmed the photo and chose the size for the card. Actually the size was determined by a nice large vellum envelope i had, which was perfect for a standard 81/2" by 11" piece of card stock folded in half. I used dictionary paper for the background - using the word "romance" as the highlight. A strip of sheet music, some gold script and some printed pale aqua mulberry paper frame the cute couple. I outlined them with a light brown photo tinting pen for a subtle shadow. I added a gold rub-on swirl and a gold filligree sticker to balance off the organza ribbon. Then the final touch was their initials using faux typewriter keys. One day i will have enough ACTUAL vintage typewriter keys to feel good about using them. I mean seriously, you spell a word like beauty and you have used up all your vowels! Luckily the local antique store has me on file and rings me up when they get one in stock. Jim has figured out the trick to snap the keys off cleanly with pliers.

I finished off the card with a pale blue-green vellum overlay (not shown). I slipped it under the ribbon and carefully cut out little holes for the 3-D letters to poke through. The effect was all dreamy and ethereal inside the vellum envelope.

I am sure like most of you - i use "other people's relatives" all the time in our altered art. It was nice for a change to use REAL people! The best part of giving this card to Paul and Dorothy, was hearing even two days later how much they loved it, and hearing them brag about it to others! Thanks for having Jim and I share your special celebration.