You’re A Star | CAS Card Design

You may have noticed I haven’t been posting a lot recently. This year, and even into a good portion of last year too, I’ve been dealing with a serious loss of crafty motivation. I used to be a very prolific craft maker. In 2018 I made 400 cards over the course of the year. In 2019 it was 286, and in 2020 211. We’re halfway through this year, and how many cards have I made? 18. Just 18. Wow.

Well, this is card 19! And you know what? This is actually the first time in a little over a year that I’ve made a card just for fun. Not for a design team, not for a hop, not for any kind of event. Just because I felt inspired to make it. It’s not a mind blowingly amazing card. It’s simple, but I had fun making it. And maybe, just maybe, this will be the start of getting my mojo back!

This design is one of those times that I used several challenges (which you can find listed at the end of the post) as a starting point, so I began by creating the central panel as called for in the sketch I had chosen. I found a snippet of white card, die cut three circles into it using my Altenew Mini Blossom die cutting machine, then trimmed down the outer edges to a size I was happy with. I could have trimmed the panel down before die cutting, but doing the die cutting first meant that if I did quite get them centred I could fix it during the trimming stage.

I chose to use a grey cardbase as the colour challenge I’d picked has grey as one of the colours. I then placed the die cut panel into position and held it there with washi tape, before arranging my images inside. I chose to use the jellyfish and starfish from Lawn Fawn’s So Jelly, along with the seahorse from Mermaid For You. As the seahorse is smaller than the other two images I decided I would also include the shoal of fish from Mermaid For You within its circle to fill it out a bit more.

When I had the layout decided I picked them up with the door of my MISTI and stamped with Hero Arts’ Soft Granite ink. I later changed to black lines, but had initially thought I wanted grey. I stamped the jellyfish, seahorse and starfish all in one go, then masked off the seahorse. I didn’t have to make a mask as I had one from a previous project. I usually stick them onto the back of the cardboard in the stamp packaging to reuse until they can’t be reused any more. Less waste that way! With the seahorse masked off I was able to stamp the fish into place. The fish stamp can face either direction, but I decided to stamp it so the fish are swimming the opposite direction to the way the seahorse is facing. I left all of my stamps in the MISTI so that I would be able to restamp them later.

For the colouring I decided to use coloured pencils. As previously mentioned I’d chosen a challenge colour palette, which had two colours along with the grey – a purple, and an aqua. I wanted to use both colours on each of my images to help tie them all together. I started with the starfish, colouring it as a kind of gradient from the aqua to the purple. It took a little bit of work blending them together, but given that they are both colours with blue in them it wasn’t too hard – colours that are opposite to one another on the colour wheel would be trickier to deal with!

I used the purple again for the head/body of the jellyfish, trying to shade in such a way as to give it dimension but also keep the light airy feel of a jellyfish. I didn’t achieve it exactly how I was hoping, but I think it looks good anyway. I tied in the aqua colour by using it on the spots and legs of the jellyfish.

As the jellyfish and starfish seemed to be mostly purple, I went with mostly the aqua colour for the seahorse, using that for its body and the purple on its fins(? spines? whatever they are!) I wanted to add some colour to the fish as well and went with grey as that kept with the colour scheme but also allowed the fish to remain in the background, whilst using one of the other colours may have bought them forward too much.

After I had everything coloured I returned the card base to my MISTI and restamped all the images with Versafine Onyx Black ink, being sure to mask the seahorse when adding the fish. The Onyx Black helped the lines to stand out more, and was better for the look I was going for than the Soft Granite ink I’d initially used.

As well as keeping masks in my stamp packaging I also keep extra stamped images and sentiments, and I used one of those for the sentiment on this card. I had a banner die cut that I had previously stamped with ‘you’re a star’ from So Jelly and the colour, whilst not a perfect match, seemed to work well for the design. I adhered the die cut panel into position then added the sentiment banner, slightly overlapping the edge of the panel. I added a narrow snippet strip of card under the overhanging edge to ensure it wouldn’t sag.

As a final touch I used a white gel pen to add some shine to the eyes on each of the focal images, as well as a couple of over places that I wanted to have highlights.

It may be simple, but I’m happy with how this card turned out. I enjoyed the time colouring, and putting together the card. It was a good reminder of how rewarding it can be to have an idea and see it come into existence! I don’t know if this is the start of my crafty mojo returning, but I hope so.

Love,

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

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Challenges:

Aud Sentiments Challenge – Anything Goes with a Sentiment

CAS Colours and Sketches – Sketch

Classic Design Challenge – Anything Goes

Creatalicious Challenges – Anything Goes and Optional: At/In The Water

Lawn Fawnatics – Little Things

Polkadoodles Craft Challenge – Anything Goes

The House That Stamps Built – All About The Boys