Hello,
Today is the day after my husbands birthday and I decided to use the inking techniques used in this course to make his birthday card.
I used the ink painting technique from this course with the Altenew Crisp Die Inks Aqualicious, Teal Cave and Galactic Stream. I painted them onto Bristol smooth cardstock from darkest to lightest creating a gradient. I let this dry, then painted it again to make the color more intense. I could have done this with watercolors but I wanted to stick with the lesson technique, even though I was not creating any flowers. I let this paper dry overnight so I could be sure it was not wet when I die cut it.
Using the Decorative Swirls Die Set from Altenew, thinking it was masculine enough I planned to cut a well from fun foam and from the card front to create a shaker card with the gradient piece I created as the backer of the shaker part. As I worked on this idea it was just not working out the way I wanted. I scraped this idea and moved on to the next. Next from black cardstock I cut out Happy Birthday from a set of dies I received in my Spellbinders Advent Calendar over Christmas.
Using a black card base I had in my stash (I was still determined to use this blue gradient background I created) I decided to make a stand up card, this card base I had was already scored perfectly to do this with. I cut 2 swirls from a silver specialty card stock from Tonic, I had received from their craft kit years ago. I do believe they still sell this paper.
I cut 3 sets of the leaves from the dies included in the Decorative Swirls set out of vellum. I colored one of these leaves on the back with the artist marker in Galactic Stream to coordinate with my painted cardstock. On the front I colored “veining” with silver glitter marker also from Tonic.
I cut a piece of the gradient piece with a stitched rectangle die I had in my stash. It fit on the front of my 5×7 card with some reveal on each side. In that same die set were some heart dies I cut some hearts from my gradient piece and a 2×6.5 inch piece of the gradient piece to be my stopper.
I used my stitched dies to help me cut this piece so it would also have the stitched element around it. I had to be creative to do this as the dies were not the size I wanted. Remember you can cut different sizes with your dies to help get more use out of them. It is all about how you place the dies on the paper.
I had a small strip left of the gradient piece left over which I held onto thinking I might use it on the inside. Very little of this piece went to waste.
Now that I had all my pieces cut I could put the card together. When making a stand up card it is important that the scored areas are burnished very sharply for the card to stand up using the stopper to keep it in an easel position. So first, I creased my folds with my Teflon card creaser from Altenew. Once I was sure the card would stand I added the gradient piece I painted to the front of the card centering it. I placed all of the elements on the front of the card where I thought I would want them to go. One of the leave sets out of vellum was under the swirl and I needed to build this from the bottom up so I first attached this vellum piece to the card hiding the glue under where the swirl would be covering it. This is my favorite way to hide glue under vellum. I added foam strips to the 2 silver swirls die cut with the textured silver cardstock. I attached them in opposite directions over the leaves. At this point I took the colored leaves and tucked them under the other swirl and attaching it behind the swirl and letting it be loose the rest of the die cut. I like to do this with Vellum. I mounted the strip of the gradient paper to the flap on the bottom of the card, this is mounted with foam tape, with just enough height to keep the card in a standing position. I adhered some hearts on the left and another vellum leaf set draped to the left.
When I die cut the Happy Birthday sentiment I used double sided adhesive on the back of the cardstock to make it easier to adhere to the card front. Now was the time to add it and it was not standing out enough. So I cut another, also using double sided adhesive, with the silver textured cardstock. I stuck this to the back of the black sentiment slightly offset so it gave it a bit of a highlight. Doing this allowed the sentiment to stand out more.
The challenge with dark cardstock card bases is how do you write a personal message inside. There are a couple of ways this can be done. One could write with a metallic pen that shows up on dark cardstock or what I chose to do, add a block of regular white printer paper to the inside of the card. This will give a place where I could write a personal message to my husband. This allows him to display the card but the message inside remains hidden still where only he will see it. I added a strip of the gradient paper to the left margin of the inside and put one of the hearts at the bottom to keep it coordinating with the rest of the card.
This card took a very long time to create and took several directions, But I loved the way it turned out.
PLEASE CLICK BELOW TO A LINK TO THE PRODUCTS USED IN THIS CARD.
