Wednesday 2 March 2011

Vintage 60th Birthday Card

Today I bring you a card which took me AGES!!! Now you may look at it and question why it took so long, but I kept changing my mind!



There's quite a lot of pictures to show how this came together. I started off by stamping some sage green paper with an ivy leaf (My Minds Eye -Wild asparagus) in bright green. I like the tone on tone look with that. I then used spellbinders labels 1 die to cut the main paper and wanted to make a raised front to the card, so needed to cut a matching piece of cream card with the next size labels 1 die. To make sure they matched up perfectly I layered them up and drew through with the smaller die to help my positioning. The pictures probably show it better.

 I inked very gently around the inside of the labels shape with gold ink, and around the outside of the sage paper. You can see this better on the later images.
I then printed off the numbers 60 onto some white card so I could cut them out. I used my cuttlebug to emboss the numbers (I used provocraft Divine swirls), and then used distress inks to give them a vintage look. I used a scalpel to cut the inside of the numbers, and it wasn't too neat, but once embossed it wasn't noticable.
The paper you can see in the right picture is actually a skelton leaf piece of paper, and is very delicate, but matches the colours of forest moss and tea dye really well.
I had originally wanted the card to be landscape, as I based it on a card I saw over at Waltzingmouse, so I tried that first.
Somehow, it just didn't look the way I wanted, and I couldn't figure out how to finish it off, so eventually I decided to rotate it and make it portrait instead, and then had to figure out what I wanted across the bottom. I tried ribbon, vellum, but finally decided on card with a printed sentiment. This next photo shows more faffing I did trying to get it right.
The top shows vellum stamped with gold and black ink sentiments, and I used some promarkers to test the colours. I decided I didn't like it! I then embossed two lines on some cream card, stamped the sentiment and was sponging...but got a little carried away! So I had to start again on a new piece of cream card, emboss and stamp! The sentiment is Banana Frog, and the little Maple leaves are Waltzingmouse Teeny trees. I stamped in Forest moss distress ink. I did a little sponging this time with gold ink.

Finally I pieced it all together, layering up with foam pads - ideally I would have used thicker foam to make the aperture stand out more, but alas I had none!
I took this picture without the flash so you could see the natural shadows.
So there it is, 4 hours worth of crafting!

5 comments:

  1. That's a long time to craft but worth it, your card is gorgeous and the recipient will love ot.

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  2. I know the feeling...sometimes the possibilities are so great that we can't settle on just one. Your end result turned out wonderfully.

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  3. I'm glad it's not just me who has moments of crafting indecisiveness. Your card s beautiful. Is that the a4 cuttlebug you have? I have the small one and your blog has inspired me to use it more. I thought your embossed numbers were fab!!!!

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  4. Hi Buzzardgirl, I just have a standard little green cuttlebug! Its fine for me, as I only use it for my card making, and I rarely make things above A5 size! Glad I've inspired you to use yours more, check out 'ikkis cuttlebug cupboard', she has some amazing tutorials for making the most of your bug!

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  5. Like Buzzard Girl says, I think your embossed numbers are fab, too! So glad you showed us your process. ANd, yes, I've had cards that take me all day to create: and you only get one card out of that! Thanks for popping by my blog today. :)

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