Dan's B'day Card

It took a little while to upload another post - our WiFi has been on the blink since Thursday. Seems to have sorted itself out for now though.

I've been on a pretty wild ride since my introduction to stamping in January this year. Had a whole bunch of fun and found out just how addictive it can be to venture into this world. I'm not really into scrapping (yet!!) but love making cards for my family and friends.

Most of my family has their birthdays in the first half of this year, which kept me on my toes to come up with original ideas for each of them. I don't have a large immediate family, but its big enough when you take 3-4 hours to make each card (usually) and you also have a pretty demanding day job too!! :)

I have a twin brother who we all love and adore and he was overseas serving our great country for the first half of the year. Therefore we mostly put all our birthday celebrations on hold until he was back home and we had one great BIG bash!! But I couldn't let our birthday pass without making sure he got a little package and a little card to open on the day.

As soon as I found The Greeting Farm's website I knew I was destined to have this set. I'm an Army Brat (thanks Dad) ;) and now an army sibling. You may notice I made a little change to Ian's outfit here......no offence guys, but I'm Australian and my brother serves in the Australian Army - so I wasn't about to send him a card with USA on it. My trusty little knife removed that from the stamp permanently, meaning I can adjust it to suit whichever defence force I need it for.

I thought about where my brother was and what they usually wear when deployed and tried my hand at colouring the image to match. This was my very first attempt at colouring with Copics - so was very unskilled and have learnt a great deal about blending, etc. and also added to my collection since then. But I was impressed with my amateur efforts and my brother was absolutely stoked with his card - made my day, month, year (almost). My fav is the criss-cross effect on the helmet - supposed to mirror the netting I've often seen on the helmets of our mighty soldier heroes. :) Colourless Blenders are a marvel....I also used this to help "scuff" up the boots a little.

I've used a sheet of retired SU DSP for the background and picked the Chocolate Chip and Mellow Moss colours to matt the image.

From memory I stamped the image on Whisper White in Versamark and heatset it with Black embossing powder to give me an image that wouldn't bleed when I coloured it in. I've since purchased Memento Tuxedo Black for this purpose.

Here's the side view to help show the layering.

Recipe:

Paper: Outlaw DSP, Chocolate Chip, Mellow Moss, Whisper White

Ink: Chocolate Chip, Versamark

Colouring: Various Copics (didn't make a note, sorry) & SU Markers

Others: Pewter Brads (SU HodgePodge), Dimensionals, Black Embossing Powder

Thanks for looking.

See ya next time.

Michey xxx