I made this card for a friend whose birthday is coming up. I was going through my stash of scraps & 6x6" patterned paper pads (which I store in a couple of mesh drawer units), when I happened upon a package of Mini Placemats by Jillibean Soup. The copyright date on the back of the package was 2014! I think I got them as part of a prize package somewhere along the line, and had just forgotten about them. The package was still unopened even. I decided the "wish" one was perfect for a birthday card, though!
I found the balloon image from "Up and Away" that I'd stamped & die cut a long time ago in a baggie with other such images. The balloons weren't colored in yet, so I used my Tombow markers & blender pen to do that. I knew my background would be yellow, so initially I inked the white edge of my die cut with Mustard Seed Distress ink. But, when I added strings for the balloons later, I felt the black "string" lines on the stamped image were distracting, so I just fussy cut the border off. I then colored the edges with a black brush-tip marker, to hide the white core of the paper.
I wanted my focal panel to look like rays were coming out from a sun at the center. I measured to find the center point both side-to-side and from the top of the panel to the top of the cut-out wish. I made a dot there with a pencil, and used that to help me place my stencil. I inked the rays with Fossilized Amber Distress ink, letting them fade towards the greeting. I removed the stencil, and inked the uninked portion above the greeting with Mustard Seed. Finally, I blended some Twisted Citron for "grass" (for lack of a better idea) up from the bottom of the card. I also die cut a circle from white cardstock, & inked it with Mustard Seed for my sun. I felt it got a little lost on the background, though, so I inked around the perimeter with Fossilized Amber before gluing it in place.
I used several single plies of white embroidery floss for my balloon strings. I tied this around the tail of each of the 3 balloons at the bottom first. I added pieces of foam tape to the back of the balloons, and stuck additional lengths of floss to that, so they would look like they were coming down from other balloons. After I adhered the balloons in place over my sun, I gathered the strings, and wrapped them around the space between the "i" and "s" in the greeting cut out. I used a dental floss threader to help me maneuver all the threads around. Finally, I taped the ends to the back with a little Scor Tape and cut off the excess. I also added a small dot of glue to the knots on the 3 bottom balloons, to hold the string in place.
After gluing a scrap of gold glitter cardstock behind the wish, I adhered my panel to a piece of patterned paper cut to 4-1/8x5-3/8". I matted that with navy cardstock that I'd adhered to a white card base, leaving a 1/16" mat on all sides. This card wasn't difficult, thanks to the panel being already cut. It just took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do with it and finish!
Date: Sunday, September 16, 2018 GMT Views: 293
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Accessories: We R Memory Keepers "Nesting Circles" die; Jillibean Soup Mini Placemat; The Crafters Workshop "Sunburst" stencil; Mama Elephant "Up and Away" balloon die; Tombow markers
Gorgeous -- all that blending paid off! Your sunburst stencil and the colors you chose for it are lovely, and the Twisted Citron "grass" sets it off beautifully.