What do I, a mixed media artist and scrapbooker do with all those beautiful greeting cards I’ve collected over the years? Storing them in a shoebox or worse, in a plastic shopping bag for the next 50 years, (after which my kids will likely throw them away) seems like such a waste. Toss them away myself … Never! Some cards I don’t mind cutting up for craft projects, others (for sentimental reasons), I want to preserve, like the ones given to me by my parents. I also have a lot of vintage greeting cards from a family estate sale. Most of them were sent to my grandma.
So recently I’ve started using those special greeting cards to decorate my journal covers. I use the card front and add any meaningful and handwritten sentiments I’ve cut out. Then I embellish by adding ribbon, glitter, silk flowers etc.
That used up a few cards, what will I do with the rest? I decided to create a greeting card scrapbook album, (making a scrapbook with greeting cards rather than photos).
At first I thought I’d recycle an old science book for the project. I went through it, tearing out every third page to make room for embellishments. Then I used a gluestick, to adhere some pages together, to make them thicker. Then I started adding a thin layer of gesso to my pages. That caused them to wrinkle … badly. I needed a book with thicker pages.
Then I found an old children’s story book with sturdier pages. I used gesso and acrylic paint on the background areas that wouldn’t be covered with a card. Then I glued on my cards and the sentiments that were printed on the inside. In some instances, I added the postmark that I tore off the accompanying envelope (it added an interesting effect and had the date of when the card was sent). I tried to use cards with coordinating colors in my layouts to give them a more cohesive feel. Here’s an example.
