Back to school

Hi Crafters, 

where we live, school is starting today. I honestly wish it wouldn't. I really enjoy not having to drive the girls to school every day and not having to send them to bed at any specific time. The summer holidays are always a time of easy going.

Well, it can't be changed, we enjoyed our holidays, and now it's back to business for all of us.

Also my friend's daughter is starting school this summer, and I created a card for her. I don't own a single stamp set for school, so I had to make do with what I had. 

I decided to go with a chalkboard again. I did that before and it's relatively easy, always effective and so fitting, for a school card. So I created a black panel and a craft coloured matte for it. I stamped the matte with my wood grain stamp in brown ink, so it looks like a wooden frame. Then I stamped the sentiment and little images on the black panel and heat embossed them in white. After that I sponged white pigment ink around the edges and over the panel, to make it look like a half cleaned chalk board. The tag was made in the same way.

For the card I wanted an animal to look at the board, so I checked all my critter stamp sets. The little fox from Avery Elle's "more stories" was perfect, but I wanted him to have a school bag. As I don't have such a stamp I checked the Internet for a nice clip art as an example and drew the bag and apple myself on water colour paper. Then I masked off the right side and stamped the fox. 

I watercolour the image with my inktense pencils and fuzzy cut it.

For the card base I had planned to adhere lots of die cut letters white on white to create a faux dry embossed look, but that was too plain and boring. After all, that's for a 6 year old, it should be fun. So I decided the card needed more bright apple green, to tie in the leaf of the apple. I die cut the letters in green instead and adhered them at random on the white card base. 


At last I assembled the card, mounting the fox on foam dots and added glossy accents to the apple and hearts and some silver pearl pen on the buckles of the bag.

For the envelope, I picked a matching bright green ready made envelope and just adhered the letters in white.

I must say, I love how that card turned out. The bright green really makes me happy and it even fits with gift we picked, a book about an inventive frog.

I think I'll create the same card again, because there are still some more kids among our friends who will start school next year, or the year after.And those friends don't know each other, so they will never know. ;)


I hope you all have a great day!

Hugs
Ela

Birthday lanterns with alcohol markers

Hi Crafters,

I made a card! 
Yes, I know, that shouldn't be worth mentioning on a card maker's blog, but I didn't manage a single one all summer. The holidays were all busy busy, and my muse seems to have been on holiday too. 

School is starting next week, with a lot of Birthdays coming up, so I am settling back in my daily business. To activate my creative mojo, I re-created the last card I made,  but with different means and a little twist. 

Last time, I masked off the lanterns and used distress inks to sponge the background. This time I did the whole panel with alcohol markers. I only sponged on a tiny bit of black soot distress ink to darken the edges. 

For the back ground I stamped the images in dark yellow as before but this time I also used my alcohol markers to create the shadows. I created the envelope similarly, but I didn't want the alcohol ink to bleed through so I used my Tombow blender pen for the shadows. The area for the address was masked off of course.

So, what's the twist? Here it is: The inside is not white, but the same yellowish orange as the matte.

I had that idea when I created my first card, but didn't have enough of the card stock, so I decided to try that with another version. I love the bright sunny colour and the little surprise when you open the card. I think I might do that  more often in future. 

So, that's almost it for today. For those of you who are used to comments from me on their blogs: Girls, I didn't abandon you, I just didn't get around anything card making this summer, not even blog reading. I'll be back! Promised!

Lots of love
Ela