The Star of My Life

 

Most of the cards I make for my husband are of the more romantic variety, so I don't have to worry about designing a masculine card, but to me, his birthday calls for one.  I don't know about y'all, but I struggle with masculine cards.  Fortunately he has two hobbies, astronomy and cooking, which gives me some direction.  For this year's card I went with a star for astronomy.

I started by blending Tranquil Tide, Night of Navy, and Blackberry Bliss inks from Stampin' Up on white cardstock.  Then I sponged on Champagne Mist shimmer ink by Tsukineko over it to give it a gold shimmer that is not that visible in the photo, and set it aside to dry.

Next I cut a 5.5 X 4.25 piece of copper foil paper to use as a mat. To conserve specialty (in other words, expensive) paper, I used the So Many Stars dies from Stampin' Up and a die by Simon Says Stamp to cut the stars and sentiment. Once the inked panel was dry I positioned the die cuts to fine tune the composition, moved the copper star, and cut a medium sized star out of the inked paper under it. I cut a second mediumd star from scrap paper and popped it in the negative space, so the surface would be smooth. I used a stamp from the So Many Stars set to emboss the filigree pattern in copper on that medium star.  After stacking the stars I attached them to the background, rotating the star so that the Night of Navy and Blackberry Bliss points were backed by the opposing colors.  This helped the inked star stand out.  Of course, I had to finish the card off with a sparkle in the center of the star.

I am entering this card in the Watercooler Wednesday Occasions Challenge, the Just Add Ink Challenge to make a card for a guy, and the Seize the Birthday Challenge with an optional topping of adding gold.  So why did I use copper foil paper instead of gold?  After applying a gold shimmer to the background, I found that the copper stood out better and had more of a nighttime feel to me.

Thank you for stopping by!  Until next time, Hansi

Freshly Made Triangles

 

Long time no post!  It isn't that I haven't been making cards; I just haven't had time to photograph them before sending them or haven't gotten them finished in time to meet a challenge deadline.  As it is, this one is getting in just under the wire.  When I saw this Freshly Made Sketch I was so excited because I had just gotten the Prismatic Triangle layering dies by Birch Press Design and wanted to play with them.  

At first I thought I would cut off the extraneous triangles, but then it seemed like the composition would be out of balance, so I thought I would just not color them in which was also unbalanced until I pulled the color through by putting the sentiment on a background using same colors as the triangles that are part of the sketch.  Leaving the edges of the extra triangles ties the sentiment piece to rest of the design.

I started by using blending brushes to blend Peacock by Close to My Heart with Night of Navy and Rich Razzleberry from Stampin' Up on white card stock and cutting it with Layer C (bottom layer) to get the filler pieces to color the triangles.  If you have not tried blending brushes I highly recommend them.  They make it so easy to create smooth blends!  I layered two layer C's and a layer B cut from white cardstock and one layer A cut from Champagne foil cardstock from Stampin' Up.  Champagne is like a warm silver.  I also used it for the sentiment cut with a Simon Says Stamp die. The sentiment piece is popped up with thin foam tape.  Although I usually cannot resist adding some sparkles, this time I felt they would detract from the clean geometry of the design.

Thank you for stopping by!  Until next time, Hansi