Circles and Sparkles

Today I’ve had a nice relaxing day of card making – five cards so far and I may make one more once I’m done with writing these posts! This card was actually made last night. It’s the first of two cards I’ll be sharing with you today.

My main inspiration for this card is Fusion‘s current challenge – birthday bash. I decided to use both the sketch and the inspiration photo to make my card. I decided I would also enter this card to Craftyhazelnut’s Patterned Paper challenge, and TCP Tuesday‘s challenge to use at least 3 patterned papers.

I started by going through my huge stash of snippets (I have to fight to get the folder closed!) to see what I had that would be suitable to use on this card. I found a few different options but the only one that seemed right for what I wanted to do was the black and white stripe pattern. It’s not quite as bold as the stripes in the image but I think it works well enough for it. I cut down some snippets of gold to go along behind as if it were a mat, pulling in the gold elements of the image in the process.

For the circle part of the card I found a patterned paper in a 12×12 pack which had these lovely concentric circle patterns. The pink and teal seemed appropriate based on the colours in the inspiration image. I carefully cut down the paper sheet so it would fit through my Big Shot and then used a basic circle die to cut out the part of the pattern that I’d selected. I offset the circle slightly so that it would leave the pattern a bit unevenly in the centre (as you can see in the picture) because the pattern is aligned off-centre anyway. I then used a circle die in the next size up to cut a piece of black paper which I coated with clear Wink of Stella to add sparkle for the pink circles mat.

For the banner I was initially thinking of just using the plain teal paper but then I remembered the TCP challenge and decided I would add another patterned paper to enter for that. I found the teal paper with the subtle circle pattern which seemed like a perfect choice! I cut that down to size and mounted it onto the teal paper.

Laying out all my components on the card base I felt as though there was something missing. I decided I wanted to add a subtle pattern to the background, taking the dotted background from the image as a reference point. I looked through my stamps to see if I had any small circle stamps, which I don’t, but I did find the bubble stamp from Lawn Fawn’s Lovable Legends which worked nicely for what I wanted to do! I used a few different pigment inks – pale blue, pale pink, bronze and gold – and stamped kind of randomly across the card base.

Finally I adhered all my matted patterned paper elements in place. I considered adding a sentiment but decided to leave it as is.

I’m quite pleased with how this turned out. Finding the circle patterned paper was certainly a stroke of fortune! I’m really pleased with how I managed to pick up so many of the different elements of the inspiration image and work them together cohesively. It turned out nicely!

Love,

Lady Joyful