TMR 138 | Awesome Squares | Sketch

There’s a sketch challenge starting today at The Male Room. When I sat down to create this card I had no idea what I was going to do, but after some thought I came up with a quite literal interpretation of the sketch which was entirely made of snippets.

I started by digging through my folder of snippets and chose five different shades of blue card. I die cut them with some square dies from Memory Box. These particular dies are no longer available, but any nesting square dies would work well for this. For example, Kat Scrappiness has these Never Ending Square Dies which are currently 33% off.

In order to make sure that each of the snippets would be cut in the same way, I laid the dies on my cutting mat in the position I wanted them, then used washi tape on the back to hold them together so they couldn’t shift. I then ran them through my die cutting machine. I tried doing multiple sheets at once, but one of the snippets didn’t cut through. When I tried to run it through again to finish cutting that snippet I slightly misaligned the die, so I ended up not using that particular snippet for my card.

Once I’d cut out all the blue snippets and created lots of blue frames I used the largest of the square dies to cut a piece of scrap white paper to use for assembling the square panel. If I was going to redo this I would probably use blue for the backing paper too, because that would better disguise any gaps between the squares.

I assembled my focal panel by using Tombow Mono Multi Glue to adhere the square frames down one at a time. I started with the largest frame, and worked my way towards the smallest, alternating shades as I went. I hadn’t paid attention to which way around the frames needed to go as I’d assumed that, being square, they should fit in any orientation. If I were to redo this I would pay more attention as there does seem to be some slight variation which lead to some white gaps peeking through in some places.

I set my focal panel aside to work on the sentiment for my card. I die cut a snippet of silvery pearlised card with the shadow portion of the Awesome Jotted Script die from Memory Box, and cut the word itself with one of the blues I had used in my squares. I used the Nuvo Smooth Precision Glue Pen to adhere the delicate word onto the shadow layer. I completed the sentiment by stamping “you are” with Versafine Onyx Black ink onto the middle square of my focal panel. The stamp I used is from Simon Says Stamp’s Beautiful Flowers, but many other stamp sets have this phrasing in them, too.

I used my paper trimmer to cut down another piece of the pearlised card to use for the background banner element of the sketch. I then adhered it onto a piece of blue card, and used my Cut Align and craft knife to cut an even border all the way around the pearlised card.

With all my elements ready, all that remained was to assemble the card. I hadn’t actually considered the size of the focal panel in regards to the size of my card base, and quickly realised I needed to make a bigger card base than usual, so I created one that was 5 1/2″ square.

I then used my T-Square ruler to help me line up the banner portion onto my card base. I wanted to make sure they were straight so that they would look continuous, whereas it is actually two short pieces. I adhered them into place with the Tombow Mono Multi Glue, which I also used to adhere the awesome sentiment onto the focal square. I popped the square itself up on foam tape, making sure not to avoid any areas that it overlapped the banner pieces, as I wanted to ensure it would lie properly flat.

I really like how this card turned out! It’s such a great way to use up snippets, and makes a really fun design. The colour palette I chose works nicely for a traditionally male card, but the colours and even the focal panel shape could be changed up quite easily to personalise to the recipient. I hope this inspires you to join in with our sketch challenge over at The Male Room. You can find more inspiration from the rest of the team over at the challenge page, or directly at their blogs via the links below.

Love,

Lady Joyful

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Challenges:

CASology – Father

Dies R Us Challenge – Father’s Day/Masculine

Double D Challenge – Use Your Scraps

Double Trouble – For The Guys

Kat Scrappiness Challenge – All About The Boys

Papercraft Challenge – Father’s Day/Male

Pixie’s Snippets Playground – Use Snippets (edit – where it was a top pick!)

Simon Says Stamp Monday – It’s A Man Thing

Sweet Stampin’ – Masculine/Father’s Day

The Male Room – Sketch

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Check out what the rest of the DT made:

Ana

Andreja

Clarissa

Crafty Linby

Faith

Goga

Granne

Helen

Lady Joyful (that’s me!)

Lise Mariann

Ma-Mi