Folded with Care

Again, AECP instructor Therese Calvird leads us in fun for the class called “With A Twist”.  She quietly tells us to leave our comfort zones and do something different than what we would previously – put unexpected colors together (just after I learned the color wheel 😊), cut your card differently, make background patterns with only part of a die, etc.  I tend to think out of the box anyway so this lesson was right up my alley.

I ended up combining a couple of the lessons by creating a different background and cutting differently.  I used Altenew’s Color Wheel Die and cut the corner off a card base.  It looked cool with the lines around it and the center spoke near the corner.  Because some of the lines were cut it didn’t make for a stable card base so I took a piece of cardstock I had stamped a while back and put it behind the card front.  This particular piece I had stamped butterflies from Altenew’s Painted Butterflies stamp set with Distress ink -tumbled glass.  It’s a beautiful pale turquoise and is one of my favorite colors.  So now, I wanted to continue with the butterflies on the outside of the card front because my color wheel die made a window to the previously stamped butterflies.  As Therese suggested, I used the outline stamp of multiple size butterflies on the outside.  I wanted to dress it up a bit so I stamped them first with Altenew embossing ink, then added Altenew Antique Silver embossing powder.  Once heated with my heat tool I had the makings of an elegant card.  I again was trying to think differently from what I usually do, so instead of adding color to the front of the card by blending color, I sprayed color on it.  I practiced with a couple of different colors and decided on Ranger Distress Oxide Spray in broken china color.  It was just deeper in color than the tumbled glass so it went well.

Spraying ink is quite different and can look great or clumpy, depending on how you spray.  Along with my practice of colors I also practiced how to get the spray I wanted.  The Distress Oxide spray needs to be shaken quite a bit before you spray it.  After doing that I pushed all the way on the nozzle.  Big splatters of ink showed on the cardstock.  I tried again and only pushed halfway down on the nozzle…it was better but still some big blotches and some smaller splatter.  A couple more practices showed me that gently going only part of the way down on the nozzle gave me the look I wanted of a more uniform small spray.  I proceeded then to the real thing and sprayed the front and the back of the card to give it a soft turquoise/light blue look over the silver butterflies.  Once the ink had dried, I took a soft cloth and wiped any extra off the silver embossing to be sure it stood out.

Now it was time to put it all together.  I took the previously stamped butterflies cardstock and glued it carefully behind the corner where the wheel was cut, adding only a little liquid glue along the spokes and circles of the wheel and closed the card front on top of it so I knew the positioning of it.  I then opened the card and glued down the rest of it from the inside so it would strength the whole front.  I cut two labels out of the Altenew Apothecary Labels Nesting Die Set – one from white cardstock and one from a scrap that had the Distress tumbled glass ink.  Then I too the sentiment from the Dream Big set and stamped it on the blue smaller label with Simon Says Intense Black ink.  I glued on the white label then popped up the blue label with some foam squares.  To finish of the elegance of the card I added some Offray sparkly gems. 

I was pleased as I felt like the butterflies were all over but the color wheel die brought your eye to one center point — almost as if looking though a telescope out into the sky.  Yes, that’s a pretty dreamy picture but hey,

‘dream  big’!