Sunday, May 10, 2009

May Card Swap

For the second month running I have managed to get all my card swap cards made with time to spare - very unusual! This month's theme was circles.

My original idea was to try and create a photo frame effect with a silhouette of an old fashioned woman inside the circles, sort of inspired by a cameo brooch. The idea was to have several circles of expanding diameter building up around the sides of the silhouette to give it dimension. It very quickly became obvious that there were several issues with this idea. It was incredibly difficult to locate a suitable silhouette that was either free to use from the internet or that was a stamp that I could use. The second issue was creating the circular frames themselves in such a way that they would all align when the card was created.

So, I had a rethink, and instead of having a silhouette, I decided to use half of a stamp that I bought a little while ago of a Victorian lady and go the opposite way, so that one circle is smaller than the other, and they are built up with Magic Mount, give three levels of dimension. Originally I bought this stamp to use for bookmarks for Historical Tapestry, and while I still may use it for that purpose, I haven't figured out the rest of the components yet. This is an image of what the lady looks like normally:


The next issue I had was getting hold of papers to use. What I wanted was so blue and cream type colours. I had a look through the papers that I had, and I had one sheet each of a couple of designs which would have been perfect, including those pictured below. Unfortunately, when I went to the scrap booking shop there was nothing that was really similar, so had to rethink that was well.



So what I ended up with instead was this finished card which is more brown and light blue than dark blue and cream, but never mind. The embossing is really getting caught in the flash and kind of hides the fact that there is a small pearl stuck just at the collar of the dress to try and bring the idea back to the cameo idea.


I did have a bit of an issue with the ribbon that I used because when I wanted to buy 2 metres, there wasn't that much on the roll, but I just had enough allowing for a test card and also for one screw up. There is a certain irony with the screw up because before I had finished making all the cards, I had to clear the table for dinner. When I came back to it I happily started working away, not realising that I was working on a scrap piece of paper that wasn't the same width as the actual card until far too late in the process. I thought I would try to rescue that card for my own use and not as part of the card swap (because you needed 11 identical cards) and so I put a strip of brown down the side to cover the fact that this one was narrower. Only problem is that I think that my rescued card looks better than the 11 actual cards! Whoops! Too late now though.


The other thing that I did over the last couple of days is play with a sheet of images that I bought a while ago when I went to the Stitches and Craft show. The idea is very similar to decoupage with the idea that you build up different levels of a picture, but this time with a twist. I love the image that is on this sheet. I kind of wish I had of bought a couple more of this type because with the fact that the shapes are all rectangles it was really quite easy to assemble. I also bought some Japanese ladies to do, but the cutting out on those ones is much more intricate so I will save them for a bit later. Below are two images of the same card. The first is from above, and the second is from the side so hopefully it will be clearer to see how the layering works.


2 comments:

  1. I especially like the last one. That is cool!

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  2. Marg, I didn't realise you made cards as well. I'm a scrapbooker/card maker. You probably know me from The Eclectic Reader but I also have a blog where I share cards & layouts I've done if you want to have a look?

    http://teddyree.blogspot.com

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