TMR 144 | Dinosaur Camera | Toys

The first Wednesday of the month means it is time for a new challenge at The Male Room. This month our theme is toys and as always that’s open to your interpretation. I got quite elaborate with my project and created a card that has a removable toy attached to the front!

I started by working on the design for the camera toy element. I found a piece of white card which would work for the size of the camera (though I should have chosen a different one as it wasn’t really meant for using with alcohol markers, which caused me some trouble later!) I used the camera die as a guide then positioned two of the dinosaurs from Pink and Main’s Dinomite stamp set and stamped with MFT’s Black Hybrid Ink. I then masked the images off.

With the masks in position on my little images I started working on the background. I used the Clouds and Grass stencil from a Create and Inkspire Card Kit for this. I blended the sky with Altenew’s Caribbean Sky ink, and used Forest Glades for the grass. I kept the blending fairly simple as I wanted the design to have a childish feel.

Removing the masks from my dinosaurs I started working on colouring them with my Spectrum Noir Illustrator Markers. This is where the paper choice came back to bite me. The paper was too thin so got saturated very quickly. I was able to avoid having too much bleeding just by being careful with how I applied colour, but still got some. I also had a bit of trouble getting the colours to blend. Luckily it worked out well enough in the end.

As I want the camera element to work as a toy I wanted it to be relatively sturdy. I found a piece of chipboard (leftover from some packaging I’d received) and adhered my dinosaur panel onto that. I then die cut it with the Lawn Fawn Camera die. The chipboard is quite thick so the die wouldn’t cut the whole way through and I did have to use my craft knife to complete the cutting.

I of course wanted my camera toy to have an interactive element for which I used the Magic Iris die. I cut all the pieces from snippets of blue card and assembled them. You can see how to assemble it in the video. I adhered it onto the back of my camera then added a piece of acetate to the back of the Iris to create a viewfinder that can be used when playing. I had originally intended to turn it into a shaker but decided that would be too much as the process was already fairly time consuming.

I decided as the camera part was so involved I would keep the card base very simple. I used the camera as a guide and white heat embossed a sentiment from The Cat’s Pajamas’ Banner Days onto it so that it would be behind the iris opening when the card is on the card base.

The next part of the plan was to attach the camera to the card base in a way that it could be easily removed. I spent way too long trying to work out how to do this! In the end I settled on using magnet tape. I attached three pieces directly to the card base. For the pieces on the camera I wanted them to be removable so as not to interfere with the toy aspect of the camera, so I used quite a lot of washi tape to securely hold the magnet tape onto the camera. I eventually got it to work, though it’s still to be seen whether it will remain intact after being posted across the continent!

This card was definitely time consuming to make. I like how it turned out and having worked out how to solve some of the issues (primarily attaching the camera to the card base) I imagine it would be much quicker to recreate in future. I did notice when editing the pictures that the sentiment is not entirely centred within the aperture… I made sure to check and line it up properly before sending the card but I expect the camera will shift in transit. Oh well! I hope this inspires you to come and play along with our challenge. You can find further inspiration from the rest of the team, including our lovely new member Shahi, over on the challenge site or directly on their blogs via the links below.

Love,

Charlotte E (Lady Joyful) Email thejoyfulsoulcreates@gmail.com

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Challenges:

AAA Birthday Challenge – For A Child

Allsorts Challenge – For Children or Teens

Art Impressions – Surprise!

Creatalicious Challenges – Anything Goes

Lil Patch of Crafty Friends – Anything Goes

Polkadoodles Craft Challenge – Anything Goes

Spectrum Noir Challenge – Anything Goes

STAMPlorations Stencil Challenge – Anything Goes

Sweet Stampin’ Challenge – Children’s Birthday

The Male Room – Toys

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Check out what the rest of the DT made:

Andreja

Clarissa

Faith

Goga

Granne

Helen

Lady Joyful (that’s me!)

Ma-Mi

Shahi