Birthday card

Todays effort is a birthday card.  This was made entirely from my stash - and the stamp is a good few years old!

My brief was to make a card for a lady who loved her stripey teeshirts.

I used a pearlescent card for my square base card, and matted onto that a square of stripey paper from my stash.

To one side I put some brown ribbon to cover the edge and provide definition to the small stamped teeshirts I cut out from the same stripey paper.

I stamped the image onto the back of the pearlescent card, and coloured it with coloured pencils.  Around the edge of the card I used Pumice Stone distress ink, which matched the yellowy beige colour of the yellow striped paper really well.  Finally I printed out the sentiments on my printer.

Having already taken this picture, I then added three small gemstones in the top right hand corner of the base card!

Gilded fish...

This week I did a card for a fisherman - it was a digi image from LaPashe, and I was pleased with my colouring - I think my shading is definitely improving.  But I didn't like the fish, it looked flat.

Then I had a lightbulb moment, and thought "gilding flakes"!!!

Using a quickie glue pen I coloured in the fish again, and waited for it to go clear.  Then I used some morris dancer gilding flakes from Indigo blu, buffed the image with my scootchie sponge and hey presto!  A really lifelike fish!

The photo I took under the ottlite was the best one, as that really brought out the gleaming fish.

Otherwise, it was a straightforward card - 6" square base card, layered with some green textured card from my stash.  I did some faux stitching around the edge and used punches for the circular sentiment (handwritten..) and a stamped Happy Birthday on some scrap card for the other one.

Sympathy card

I was recently asked to make a sympathy card by my friend J, whose friend's mother had died in her 90s.  The brief was that it needed to have a cross, and yellow roses.

I used centura pearl cardstock for the card, making a 7" x 5" base.  I ran a piece of the silver toned card through my Grand Calibur in my 7 x 5 lattice embossing folder to make a base topper, layering it with some plain black.

Onto this base topper, I added a lattice diecut shape cut from the same card, but backed with a different type of pearlescent card which had a more distinctly cream tone from my stash.

I then cut out a cross using a spellbinders die, which I embellished with pearls and put that onto the top of the trellis arch.

I made two small and 1 large roses and leaves from the pearlescent card, using two different size 6 petal paper punches.  They were coloured with distress inks before being made up and I also included some paper flowers from my stash with some pearls in the centre.  Finally, I added a small narrow black ribbon bow.

The sentiment was a rubber stamped banner stamped with versamark and embossed with fine gold detail powder.

The card was to be given, not posted, which was just as well as the rose made it too big for an envelope - instead I made a plain white box, with a diecut aperture that I filled with acetate.