Just For You.......Happy Birthday.............

Good morning!

This card was made very recently for a friend of my daughter who is at uni (Yes, I have to send my creations to University!!!).

I only took a couple of photo's as I didn't think about blogging the card at all until Hayley said "Mum, you've got to put it on your blog!" so I'll talk you through it and we'll take our usual journey.....

This creation is highly sparkly but that was almost impossible to pick up on the camera so unfortunately it has come out a lot darker than it actually glistened - you get more of a feel for the shine on the second photo!

OK, I started with a piece of yupo paper this time (the central piece that you see here) and dropped three colours of alcohol ink on to it, let them bleed and then added a tiny amount of blending solution to make the ink move around a bit then left it to dry (which doesn't take very long at all).

I then cut my white mat and then a larger mat from sheena stamping card.  The second mat I wanted to leave white and the third one I have blended distress inks around it and stamped with the same distress ink some little butterflies so that they sort of blended in with the background.

With me so far?

As you can tell, this card had lots of separate components so it was a matter of making each part as I went and assembling everything together at the end!

I then stamped the number 21 all along a lovely piece of teal ribbon.

Now for the main butterfly, this is a stamp from Daliart and it's so intricate - it's really beautiful.  First of all I wanted it to have some texture so I ironed some Angelina Fibres to roughly the same shape as my butterfly.  The stamp isn't deep enough to get a crisp image on the fibres but I did use it to flatten the fibres to the desired shape. I used three different colours of fibre, two blues and a silver.

I then stamped my image on to acetate with stazon ink and glittered the individual parts of the butterfly from behind. (This does take longer to dry as the glue cannot be absorbed by the acetate and prolongs the drying time - I actually gave it an extra day to ensure it was dry).  I then used some glitter glue (cosmic shimmer twinkles) and popped a few drops in a couple of different colours on the top of the butterfly too.

When I was happy the butterfly was dry I glued that to the fibres and cut and teased around the butterfly shape.

I added some pearl glue down the centre of the butterfly and added glitter to the top of that and some glitter glue up the antennae of the butterfly.

A few small butterflies were stamped out - again Daliart and cut around and glittered.

Phew - there was a lot of work in this one by the time I was approaching the final hurdle!!

It was now a case of assembling everything together and attaching the silver peel offs showing the number 21 and stamping the sentiment of "Just For You" at the top and "Happy Birthday" (Phil Martin Sentimentally Yours) at the bottom.

There, I think you can pick up a bit of how shiny this was from this side shot.

So there you go, this card was posted quite a long way, received unscathed and (I'm told) very much liked!

Quite a few techniques thrown in to one card here but when you are asked for pretty - what choice have you got!!!!

"Happy Birthday Sarah" - I hope you had a wonderful day!

Thanks for stopping by and seeing what I'm up to,

Leanne xx