the joy (and not-so-joy) of rub-on transfers

but first let me remind you that we're in the second week of the "text me" prompt at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ so we are looking for holiday cards that utilize text paper, sentiment stamps, alphabet stickers (or chipboard or dies) and other wordy accoutrements. here's what i made this week:

rub-on transfers of a brand i won't mention bc honestly, the only ones i *NEVER* had a problem with were the old school basic grey ones, which, alas, no longer exist; ancient anna griffin chipboard JOY letters i got at the paper anthology garage sale last fall; patterned paper: crate + super-duper-old ki memories; gold glitter paper: best creation; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sewing machine; apologies for the lighting but between the gold rubs and the shimmery text paper this thing was a bear to capture!!!

ok, so as for the joys and pains of rub-on transfers: being less of a stamper, i've always loved rub-ons because you can place a beautifully executed sentiment EXACTLY where you want it and it will attach flawlessly with zero effort or mess. at least theoretically lol. in actual fact, even when you have an entire packet of current season, full price, highly respected brand name product, it's possible that some of your rub-ons will transfer perfectly and some will not, and you will have no way of knowing which are which until they are on your card... perhaps imperfectly, with a certain amount of missing letters. that's what happened to me this week. luckily, last fall i had been using up a bunch of older rub-ons that i knew in advance were not going to work correctly, so i had devised a way of layering them over each other, as well as other paper elements, in collage that gave a cool-but-funky look i really liked*. so when i opened these elegant golden transfers, selected a word, and wound up with "_OFL" instead of "NOEL" i decided to make the best of it and just scatter all the words all over two corners of some ledger paper and call it a "design decision". it's not the card i thought i was making, but i quite like it anyway.

meanwhile, over at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ stephanie has a gorgeous texty masterpiece that i think will totally inspire you, so why not hop over and enjoy that right now?

*examples of "collaged" rub-ons, just in case you have some you can't quite bear to toss out despite their proven unreliability, lol: in a funky friendship card, on a tiny travel book, as part of a super grungy collage with flourishes, over colorburst, on index cards, and as the perfect "guy card" background under washi tape ♥