You Make Me Happy

This is one of those cards that started off being inspired by just a couple of challenges, and ended up working to fit in many more! The main source of inspiration is the current Muse challenge (edit – where this was an honourable mention) which I combined with the colour palette from Color Throwdown. I then included a whole bunch of challenges with a thank you theme – Simon Says Stamp Monday, Pile It On, Perfectly Created Chaos, and CAS-ual Fridays. I also realised once the card was done that it would work well for Addicted to CAS‘s ombre challenge.

Travey McNeely’s Muse inspiration card

Right from the start I knew I wanted to use the tree from the Calm and Loving stamp set by CAS-ual Fridays. I would have wanted to emboss in gold but given the trouble I’d had with my rubbish gold embossing powder (ugh…) I decided to go for silver instead. I used my MISTI to line up all my components and then heat embossed them. The thank you is from Avery Elle’s Pixie Dust, but all the other stamps are from the Calm and Loving set.

Once I’d heat embossed all my elements I got started on the colouring. I used some watercolour paints and started by mixing up my colours. I wanted to include all three to colour my leaf area on the tree. Since red and green don’t work well mixed together I knew I would have to be careful with how I put the colour down. I started with a yellow-green at the bottom of the leafy area, increased the amount of yellow until I could transition into the orange, and then it was very simple to move on into the red at the top.

I applied a few different layers of colour, allowing each layer to dry naturally in between. I did consider using my heat gun to speed up the drying process but I didn’t want to warp the paper any more than it already was. At one point the transition between the colours did look a bit too sharp, given a striped look to the tree which was not what I was going for. Luckily with a bit more working on it I managed to smooth that out.

With all the colouring done I set the image panel aside and started considering what to do for the glittery strip down the side. It took me a while to come up with an idea, but I eventually decided to glitz up a bit of orange paper, helping to tie in the orange tones a bit more. Green and red could both have worked well too! I used my Wink of Stella pen (which seems to be running low… might need to invest in a new one!) to add glitter and shine to the thin orange strip.

The white panel was initially cut to be the same size as my card base, so I trimmed a little bit off of each side allowing the orange strip to show through on the side. I then used my Tombow Multi Mono Liquid Glue to adhere first the glittery strip and then the focal panel into place.

I’m pretty happy with how this turned out. It’s not exactly what I had in mind, but close enough! It was very nice to heat emboss and have it work, given the frustration I had trying to emboss yesterday’s card. I do really like how the colouring behind the tree turned out, and the silver embossing adds a nice bit of shine.

Love,

Lady Joyful