Gold and Cream Anniversary Card

Good evening, this week has been very busy hence the late post but we are going on holiday to Christchurch on Friday so I will have to have a go at scheduling a post for next week, so you may well see nothing!

This week’s card was for my mum to send to some good friends of hers for their Anniversary, and although I like some of the individual elements, I just wasn't happy with it when I had finished.  It felt like the colours were a bit muddy and it didn't quite come off as I wanted, anyway here it is …

The card is A5 and I wanted some gold patterned paper for the background, of course in my room full of stuff I had nothing that was quite right!  Rather than buying some more I found a 12x12 sheet of paper from the set I got in a pack from Costco years ago that was cream a with beige vine pattern on it and went over the vines with a quickie glue pen and covered it in gold glitter, this background paper ended up being my favourite part of the card.

I made one large flower from the Heartfelt Creations Vintage Florets and three buds from the smallest dies in the same set.  As I did before with the Heartfelt Birthday Card (link to card) I made up a mixture of iridescent medium, gold glitter and some yellow ink and painted it on the stamped images before I die cut the petals.  Learning from last time I didn't bother to emboss the petals after cutting them as I was going to shape them afterwards.  I also used up some of the leaves (near the big flower) I did for the Heartfelt card which are actually from the Delicate Aster but did some new small leaves for the buds.  I do still love my hot glue gun … gives you some wiggle time whilst only having to wait a minute for it to be completely solid.  I never have to bother about making a box when the flowers are made with the glue gun as they are like rocks!

For the focal point of the card I used Elegant Ovals with gold card and cream centura pearl card.  The gold card could either be the foundations card or some card I found from Anna Marie Designs that looks exactly the same to me, so I can’t tell you which one I used!  The Britannia dies came out for the sentiment and when I went to stick it all together I thought that the large oval looked a bit bare so I found a feather in the Creative Expressions Vintage Lingerie stamp set and heat embossed it in gold to fill the space.  The embossing looked a bit lumpy to me, but that was all I had!

I matted the whole thing on some gold card and added a few gems and it was finished.  As I just wasn't quite happy with it, I wanted to keep adding stuff, so had to just step away.

Lessons learned from this card were; 1) don’t put too many layers on flowers, it doesn't necessarily improve them and 2) get some finer embossing powder!  On the brighter side there were no bloopers, so it wasn't all bad!

Have a great week everyone and thanks for reading.

Heartfelt Birthday Card

Well, here goes ... my first blogged card ... apologies in advance for the photography, it can be a bit hit and miss, with this card I really struggled to get the sentiment to show up in natural light so I took the last one with flash just so you could see it.

I bought a Heartfelt Creations Vintage Floret paper collection at the NEC in March, even though I had PROMISED myself I wouldn't buy any paper as I have so many CDs I could print from, but I have to say I really love this paper collection.  I have made several cards with it and this one was for my aunt in Ireland.

(See what I mean about the sentiment!)  I started off with a piece of 12 x 12 paper and cut it down to 8 x 8. I then stamped a whole piece of white pearlescent card (using Vintage Sepia Versafine ink) with a couple of big flowers, a few medium and then lots of the smaller ones, including some leaves.  I am not much of a stamper as I get result from just about okay ... all the way down to complete rubbish, but I did find this really easy as their stamps are cushioned.  I have found out since that I should be using something under my card / paper if I am using clear or unmounted stamps, but there you go ... told you I wasn't much of a stamper!

When I looked on YouTube for the best way to cut out the stamps I noticed that Emma Lou Beechy from Heartfelt Creations painted on some quick drying transparent colour onto her flowers.  Naturally I didn't have any so I used a bit of Iridescent Medium, a few drops of pink ink, a pinch of glitter and a blob of Glossy Accents and it worked, so I painted it roughly over the flowers and let it dry.  I did the same in green and painted it over the leaves.  After making sure it was absolutely dry I made some templates for my Vintage Floret dies by using some old card cut into squares and cutting out one of each die and placing over different areas of my A4 card and cutting out as many as I could in one pass, repeating till they were all done.  I did make a bit of a blooper (well more than one, but we'll get to that later) in that I then embossed them all; which if I had thought about it was a complete waste of time, as I shaped all the petals later and that gets rid of the embossing!!  The leaves I think are worth embossing as I didn't shape them much and you can still see the veins.

I then shaped all the petals with my white plastic shaping tool and bent the leaves into shape with my fingers. I then got out my new favourite toy, my hot glue gun ... and yes I have already burnt myself but honestly, even the most violent postman wont put much of a dent in those flowers, they are rock solid!!  I bought a Bosch one because it has a very fine end on it and it really is great.  The first two layers of petals you glue with the stamped bit on the outside (with the plain side up) for the bud, all the rest are glued with the patterned side up.

After that I stamped (in Perfect Medium and then Stampendous Gold embossing powder) the sentiment on one of the rectangles that come in the back of the Vintage Floret Collection and then mounted it on a bit of deep pink card and stuck it in the middle.  I then spent a while arranging and rearranging the flowers and the buds till they were where I wanted, added a couple of gems, corner chomped the corners and there it was!

Now for the blooper ... can you see on the biggest flower, just after the bud there is one set of petals with no stamping on?  Guess who stuck that set of petals on the wrong way round!  As I had glued it with hot glue it couldn't be undone.  I rescued it as best as I could with my pink iridescent medium mix!

Thanks for looking, let me know what you think.

Happy Crafting