Hi!
Today I’m so excited to be a guest designer for Scrapbook & Cards Today Magazine, for their Spring Issue challenge week!
Eeeep! It’s absolutely thrilling to be asked! Especially as the challenge graphic is so lovely too. Just look at that pastel yumminess.
This card making hobby has turned into such a big part of my life and I am so grateful for having found a huge community online, especially on Instagram, and made so many friends along the way.
Among those friends are Tasha, Jo and Verity. With the recent crisis in the Ukraine, we put our heads together to do something positive in a terrible situation. We decided to hold a card auction and asked some friends to join in, who also asked some friends, and so on. All of a sudden we had over 200 cards to auction off!!
The response has been so fantastic and overwhelming, it’s just mind-blowing! So far we have raised over nine thousand dollars for various charities working in the Ukraine, and on their borders. If you want to check out that Instagram account, that’s Ukraine Card Drive. There is a third part of the auction coming up, but we are going to take a short break to recover from the whirlwind of the first two, before we go forward with the next one.
For my card today, I really wanted to use the Sunflower washi suite from Pinkfresh Studio. This set is not only fabulous, for the month of March 100% of the net profits from this will go to Save The Children Organization, one of the charities helping children affected by the war. Every little helps, and why not treat yourself to some fun crafting goodies, while also knowing that you are helping?
With the war in Ukraine, we all need to show our support and even if it’s just a card, that can make a small difference for someone feeling lonely. If you post on social media, use the hashtag #cardsforukraine. I have heard from Ukrainian friends that their family and friends there are uplifted by the support.
Right, now that I have blabbed on for quite some time, if you are still here, let’s get down to the card making itself.
As I mentioned, I have used the Sunflower Washi suite, which has a washi tape, a coordinating stamp set, diecut and layering stencils.
I decided to use the Sunflower washi tape, and after adhering this to sturdy card stock, I used Neenah #110 Solar White, I also ran a mixed media scraper over it to make sure it was really flat. After cutting out the flowers, I started to work on my background.
In the challenge graphic there is a gorgeous knitted sweater with a chevron pattern, and lovely colours. I tried colour matching that sweater to inks, also from Pinkfresh, and settled on Ocean Breeze, Mermaid Cove, Sunshine, Coral Reef and Sparkling Rose.
The chevron pattern itself was east to get, using the Essentials Nested Chevron cover plate, also from Pinkfresh. I used the cover plate on two different pieces of card stock. On a card panel I glued down the negative pieces and on another card panel, the positive ones. Over these I have ink blended the inks mentioned above, and the reason for ink blending after diecutting and not before, is to add extra colour to edges, to make the pattern pop a bit more.
When I was happy with the colour added, I simply glued in the Chevron diecut pieces to make a whole background again, another reason for doing it this way was to create clean white lines and give me choices. I ended up with two lovely backgrounds but picked the one with more colour on it for my card.
After trimming down the background a little, I adhered it to a card base which gives that lovely white border. On top of this I have adhered the Sunflower washi pieces and finished it off with a diecut ‘you’ and a stamped sentiment to say ‘you make me try better’. Which I am now thinking doesn’t make sense, but I am a foreigner so I will claim language barrier, LOL! I am rather fluent in gibberish after all.
I am also a self-confessed over-sequinizer, so I couldn’t not use some lovely Jewels from Pinkfresh. These are colour coordinated to the area where they are added. Using an Embellishment Wand makes this super easy too.
Using a coverplate to add texture and help you divide up colour areas is a great way to stretch your supplies! Washi tapes are also a fab addition to your craft room, especially if you like the look of water colouring but don’t have the time or the patience to practice.
Well, with that, the card is done and I hope you like it! Thank you so much for stopping by my blog today, and thank you to SCT Magazine for inviting me. Don’t forget to enter the challenge too and if you want to comment on their post, you can use THIS LINK HERE.
I have used some compensated affiliate links in this post, but bear in mind that the Sunflower Washi suite isn’t affiliate links as the profits from that is going to Save The Children. Which in itself is a great reason to treat yourself to that gorgeous set.
Lots of love and happy crafting from Erica
If you want to see more of my work, you can find me on various social media platforms.
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