Helloooooo again :)
I'm back with another card to share. Confessions upfront first. I made this card for a birthday way back in June!!
A dear friend was celebrating 60 wonderful years of life in late June and I knew I had to make him an extra spesh card to mark the occasion. He has had a few health scares over the years and so every year he is here with us and doing well is a reason to go wild!! :)
As an "approaching mid-life" treat for himself he bought a beautiful, burnt-orange coloured Holden Monaro (GM/Opal Motors for all my non-Aussie readers) with which to transport himself and his gorgeous gal about town in.
The card took me a few days to get all the pieces together and a frantic search for the "right" buttons with which to finish the card. I absolutely loved it once I was done and the reactions from all those gathered at the party was very favourable too. More importantly the birthday boy took it home to frame and it now hangs in his study!! :)
This card was definitely a labour of love.
All I knew at the start was that it had to be in browns/oranges/rust colours and that I wanted to use the yummy car from PTI's Enjoy Your Ride stamp set. I had a look through the blog-o's and also at the PTI gallery and came upon this card by Michelle Wooderson. I copied her idea for the woodgrain stamp on some of the body of the car. Since I'd still had my heat embossing tool out from other crafty moments I decided to add lots of embossing embellishments to this card (no wonder it took me ages to get the whole thing together). The woodgrain was stamped in Choc Chip ink on Kraft paper and then clear embossed. Then I pulled out my Versamark Pen and applied it to the side mirrors and the headlight rims and bumper bar and then embossed all of these in silver. Used my neglected Copics to colour the orange panels and then, to finish off the the car (and only the car mind you...I still had the rest of the card to work on) I applied Crystal Effects to the windscreen and number plate to replicate glass. Of course, I touched the windscreen before it was completely set and had to apply another layer of CE. But wait, there's more......I touched it or 'bumped' it again!! Ha!! Three coats of CE later and I think the windscreen finally works and I left it alone out of harm's way for a whole day before touching it again. Though the CE made some of the ink run a wee bit, I reckon it just adds to the "rustic nature" of the bugmobile, doesn't it??
Some Verve Bountiful Backgrounds to the Really Rust cardstock, embossed of course, and we were gettin there.
The rest sort of all came together relatively easily but I didn't have any buttons that were "right" to finish the card. I hunted high and low - my stash, Mum's stash, Spotlight, Big W, Kmart and NADA!! Drama, drama, drama. I really felt the card needed something more so I tried Spotlight one more time and they had some new stock in!! Yippee. I eyeballed the pearlised/metallic orange buttons to be an "exact" match and hoped they were close enough to not matter. Then saw these gorgeous coconut shell buttons and grabbed a couple of packs as well!! Got them home and they were exactly what I wanted and matched colour-wise like they were made for each other.
Some PTI twine and distressing around all the edges (can't remember which ink I used, sowwy). Matted onto cream cardstock and then choc chip and onto a final base of Kraft and Bob's your Uncle, we were done.
CARD DEETS:
Paper/Cardstock: SU Really Rust, Kraft, Chocolate Chip; Basic Gray Kraft 6x6 pad (label diecut underneath the car)
Stamps: PTI Enjoy The Ride, Verve Bountiful Backgrounds
Ink: SU Chocolate Chip; Memento Tuxedo Black (tyres); Versamark + Distress Ink
Others: Copics, Clear + Silver Embossing Powders, Buttons as described, PTI Rustic Jute Twine
And just in case you made it this far, here is a picture of the birthday boy's awesome cake with a replica of his Broom-broom on top. Plus a photo of the happy fella reading his card. :)
