Long time, no postings...

I need to get better at posting my card activity here on my blog. I have been busy sharing on a page I follow on Facebook, and have not taken the time to put out any of my projects in here or on my netsite cardsbyheidiangelika.com. Since I last posted, I have created several cards, although I feel that the Christmas card production took most of my time.

I did make a card though, just because........

that really put me through the ringers....for the simple reason that the background die I was using didn't want to provide me with a clean cut. I managed to make a card, nonetheless. I decided to use the background die-cut result I got and work around it.

This is how the background was supposed to look, but I only got a partially cut result. I chose to color all the little inlays with metallic markers and replace them back into where they had originally been. Then I die cut out labels to cover up the part that had not cut out. I layered them and heat embossed a sentiment in white. 

When I was gluing all the little pieces back in to the background I found out that metallic markers are really messy to work with on tiny objects, as I got metallic ink all over my fingers which resulted in messes on my card stock. Therefore I ended up trying to "fix" the card by adding wink of stella in purple and clear. 

I am fairly happy with the result, although I wish that I had just taken the time to wash my hands instead of getting metallic ink everywhere.

Inside the card I stamped:

and on the envelope "long distance hugs" (visible on the picture with the card).

cardsbyheidiangelika.com

A well deserved break....

I am in the midts of exams, and I haven't really had the time to make cards lately. Yesterday I had my first exam, and today I decided I would take a day off from studying even though my next and final exam is on Thursday. Therefore I wanted to reward myself by finishing up a card I started working on  before I started cramming for the exams.

I decided to try out a technique I have not tried before after I had seen one of my favorite youtube card maker, Natasha Foote, making a card using acetate as part of the card. Instead of creating an acetate window like she did, I decided to substitute part of my card with acetate. Therefore I decided how much of the card I wanted to be see through, before I measured and cut the front panel of a 6"x6" card. Then I cut a piece of acetate that was just a little bit bigger than the piece that I had cut out of the card front and used 1/4" double sided adhesive to glue it in place.

In order to be able to write inside the card without having the writing showing through the acetate, I glued another 6"x 6" card with the opening turning the wrong way, on the back of the first card. The result was a long card that could be folded into a 6"x 6" card.

I blended some Worn Lipstick, Seedless Preserves and Dusty Concord Distressed Oxide Inks and sprayed it with some Grape Fizz Perfect Pearl water mixture, heat set it before I cut out pieces about 1/8" smaller than the 2 card front panels. I adhered both with double sided adhesive. Then I cut two pieces of matching dark purple ribbon so that it was long enough to wrap all the way around, covering up the place where the acetate was attached on the back of the card front. The ribbon is also held in place with strips of 1/4" double sided adhesive.

The next thing I did was to mask off most of the inside of the card so that I could blend some Cracked Pistachio and Mustard Seed Distressed Oxide Ink on the part of the card that can be seen through the acetate. This was then spritzed with Perfect Gold Perfect Pearl mist to create the oxidized effect.

I chose the colors for this card based on the butterflies on the front. They are die cut from some scrap paper I had practiced my ink blending on a while back. At first I kept the shadow of the butterfly white, but then I decided that it would look better if I ink blended them to mach the inside stipe of the card.

 I die cut the word Dream three times and layered them with a piece from a scrap piece of the purple front panel on the top, and blended some more cracked pistachio and mustard seed distressed oxide for the shadow behind the word. I then traced around the sides of the word with a matching metallic purple marker. Unfortunately I was a little sloppy, had a little accident and got some stripes on the purple front of the word, and decided to color the whole word with the metallic marker.
Next I glued the butterflies and Dream on to the front of the card. I finished the card off with some light purple diamonds form Little Things from Lucy's Cards.

 This is what the card looks like when you open the front. I would have liked to have had a better way of attaching the ribbon around the acetate, but it will have to do this time.

The card measures 6" x 18" when it is opened up all the way.