I wish to sincerely thank ALL of my blog friends out there for their care and support over the past month or so. I am so very lucky to have wonderful, supporting and caring friends such as you out there for me and I only hope that one day I may return the care and generoisty you have shown me.
Frequent readers will know of the amazing Andrea and her blog EnchantINK. Well....not so long ago she celebrated a massively improtant milestone. She reached 100,000 hits to her blog...and to celebrate she set a (torture) challenge to those willing to take up the mantle. It can be seen here. In short you had to create a card that reflects the colour/theme/mood/elements of her new look blog. For those of you who are not aware of Andrea (perhaps the 1 or 2 of you out there) here is her new header.....
Now I immediately resorted to my procrastinating ways and set about coming up with something fitting for such an occasion. I also thought about the friendship that Andrea and I have shared since I started reading (hassling) her blog. So I settled on taking the white, purple tones, hearts and sparkle from the header and our friendship (with a touch of green thrown in) and came up with this......
Now always liking to challenge (torture) myself within a challenge I also decided to try some techniques that I don't usually incorporate in my cards. This time around....sponging and embossing (with a heat gun) got the gurnsey. Now I learnt a very, very important lesson doing this card....NEVER make rash decisions very late at night and NEVER emboss after midnight!!!!!
I have done a pansy card before, but with watercolour crayons. This time I SPONGED every single piece of coloured CS in this card (with the exception of the black of course!!) This is the sponging up close. I also used my So Saffron and Black Stamp and Write markers on the small So Saffron heart in the centre of the pansies
As I mentioned previously, I do not heat emboss often. Having said that.....I have had some successes, and this one did (eventually) work out OK. However, whilst I was laying out the card, the cente looked bare so I thought a gold sentiment would be nice. I have gold sticker "Congratulations" that would have been OK, but at 11.45pm on a Thurs night after being inspired by Dirty Dancing (for the umpteenth time), I decided that a heat embossed sentiment was the way to go!!!! With versamark Pen in hand and a test piece of CS successfully embossed.....I was good to go. Embossing buddy (check), Versamarked sentiment (check), Gold EP (check), heat gun (check), heating gold EP (check).....partially melting and melting the gold sticker border with the heat gun......AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRHGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!! Midnight and I was devestated!!!! I only had the smallest piece of the border left and with very sharp scissors and a lotta good luck, minor surgery was performed on the card!!! I am happy with the way the sentiment embossed....
I also decided to place the outer leaves directly onto the card and then the pansies and 3 of the leaves are up on dimensionals for a 3D look.
Thanks for making it through to the end of this saga ridden card!!! Andrea, I hope you like it!!!!
I will be back to more regular postings over the next couple of weeks. thanks again for being patient. I have some fun projects to share with you all.
Stuff used:
CS: (SU) Orchid Opulence, Rich Razzleberry, So Saffron, Old Olive, Basic Black, White Hammer finish trifold card (non SU)
Ink: (SU) Orchid Opulence, Rich Razzleberry, Old Olive, Elegant Eggplant, So Saffron and Basic Black Stamp and Write markers, V.ersamark Pen
Stamps: (SU) Teeny Tiny Sentiments
Punches: (SU) Brid Punch XL (for all the leaves....they are the bird wings!!), Carla Craft CP2 and CP1 heart punches
Oddments: Gold EP, Upkit Gold flourish sticker, SU Dimensionals, SU Heat Gun
Lynda xx
