Forest Scene Card

I don't normally keep aside Christmas cards for myself, but this year I've made an exception.  Today's card was a strange lesson in how doing everything wrong can sometimes be right.

Let's start with the stencil.  I made it out of green acetate on my Silhouette SD.  I'd intended the silhouette to allow me to make white birch trees on a dark background.  So, first mistake: I made a stencil of the birch trees rather than a stencil of the spaces between the trees.

I managed to mostly get the delicate stencil off the sticky backing it's cut on.  I believe there was only one minor tear.

Despite getting the stencil wrong I still wanted to try it out, so I went on to step two, spraying the stencil with a repositional adhesive, so I could lay it on my paper and not worry about it moving around while I inked around it.  I was a little too impatient with this step and didn't let it sit long enough to become tacky rather than sticky and just slapped it down onto the die cut oval of glossy paper I was using (taped to my scrap paper on my craft mat so it wouldn't move either).

I started the stencilling by running a black marker over the indents in the trunks, so it would have the birch bark look.  I then took black, blue and metallic blue gelatos and preceded to smear them into the spaces between the trees, forming a night scene.  It took a fair amount of time to get this dark enough and blended enough, but I was happy with how it looked.

Then I pulled up the stencil.  Because it was more gluey than tacky it stuck to the scrap paper, ripping  the paper and the stencil.  The panel didn't tear, but the glue came off the stencil, making the front of the panel sticky.  I also noticed that the black marker ran, making the indent bits less defined than I'd intended.

Here's a photo of the stencil after removing it from the panel.

I decided the panel was probably a waste, but thought it might be worth trying the old eraser trick on it.  I was hoping the eraser would pick up the glue, allowing me to still use the panel.  Well, the eraser had two effects, the first was to smear the gelatos onto the white trees, the second was to form a grey mess with the glue.  Now, had I continued erasing I would have gotten rid of the glue in time, but the trees would have been ruined due to the smearing colour.  But I realized that the darkness where the eraser hit the glue - and the texture that formed from it - looked surprisingly like actual tree bark.

So I stopped erasing and flicked some white paint pen flecks at the panel.  I also ran a marker around the edge, so it would have a black frame.

To finish the card I used some silhouette cut holly flourishes, deer and poinsettia (the larger poinsettia was done with a die and accented with a marker).  I also took some white plastic wire and glued beads to the ends to add to the flourish.  Finally I added some gold embossing liquid to the centers of the flowers and stamped the greeting.

Fixing Mistakes

I had a different post in mind today, one that followed after the last two posts, but then I made a card and, well, it exemplifies what I'm trying to do with this blog so I thought I'd post about it now.

Though I have a booklet with card ideas and layouts, I don't use it that much when I card craft.  I tend to start my cards by picking a product I want to work with (stamp, paper, sticker) and then building it up from there.

We Are Memory Keepers
Down The Boardwalk clear stamp

Yesterday I wanted to work with a new mini beach stamp set I got.  It only has a few stamps, and one of them is a pair of sandals.  I've been seeing sandal cards all over and wanted to try my hand at one.  I like this particular stamp as it's got a separate stamp for the thong.

So, I picked brown for my backing and dry embossed a sheet of core'dinations cardstock that I could then sand a bit (to show the design better).  Then to the stamping.

First mistake, though this isn't really a mistake.  The paper I picked to stamp on was shiny and a bit ridged, so it didn't hold the ink very well.  I actually like it as it kind of looks like the sandal is a hologram.  The next time I use that kind of paper I'll probably use a pigment rather than a dye ink though.  This strip was supposed to cover the width of the card, with 3 sets of sandals and the sentiment "Enjoy Life's Moments" (from a cheap set of 4 clear stamp sentiments I bought).

On to mistake 2.  I decided that since the sandals didn't stamp that darkly, I wouldn't stamp the second part I'd just draw it in with one of my gel markers.  I tried a few to see which would stand out the most (black) and used that.  Somehow I drew the first strap backwards (bowed in rather than out).  Yeah, that looked bad.  So, quick fix - cut off the first set of sandals.

This led to another creative moment.  Now that the contrasting band no longer fit the width, the card looked empty.  Answer: ribbon!  After some thought I picked a solid cream.  I marked a line on the back to help line up the ribbon when I glued it on with my hot glue gun.  In retrospect I should have put two lines (top and bottom) or used a full piece of ribbon rather than 2 small pieces because this is how it turned out.  (I'm using a ruler to show you how out of line the ribbon is).

Yeah, that's pretty noticeable.  Obviously, adding the center panel to this will show it off rather than cover it up (and I'm all about covering up mistakes).

That just looks horrible.

So, what to do?  That's right, you turn the center panel, making it crooked.  This lessens the effect of the ribbon while making it look like I'd meant it to be off center (at least, that's what I'm telling myself).

The final mistake I made, and I'm blaming this on fatigue and having made several mistakes already, was to glue my front panel (the embossed panel with the gold panel and ribbon on it) to my card upside down.  Luckily I used a cheap dollar store tape runner because I was able to take it off (without ripping anything!) and put it on properly.

Sometimes being a crafty person means thinking, well, craftily.  Learning how to fix mistakes, or seeing opportunities in mistakes, not only helps you learn, but can teach you interesting things.