I always try to make DH cards special!! He loves music and coffee so I try to incorporate those two themes into them if I can. This year, I started with a sheet of music from a choral book which was water damaged. It was already crinkly so I ripped the page into strips and wove them back together to create my background. I stamped the weaving with a mosaic background stamp which I created using rubber cut offs (when I mounted stamps). I stamped in two different brown colours and then washed over them with water to spread the colour a bit. Very happy with how that worked out. Next, I decided to use a feather sticker from the above sheet which I bought at DollarTree. The beautifully detailed stickers are made of some sort of soft foamy material and take colour very well. I used markers to colour my feather and added a bit of orange using a Sharpie marker!! I adhered the sticker to a piece of acetate which was printed with "Happy Birthday" and then trimmed around it. The printing was a bit too prominent so I just scraped through the ones that were visible which sort of distressed them and that was much better. Next I stitched the feather element to a coffee themed tissue paper leaving "cafe" showing in several places. I used white thread but once I was finished I thought it would have been better to use darker thread so I just ran a marker over it and that was enough to dye the thread. I simply wiped the spare ink from acetate with a cloth!! I ripped off the extra tissue paper to finish off this element. Once I laid the feather element over the background I realized that I would have to create an over sized card to get all my elements on the card. I created a dark brown card, stamped the outside front edges using cream craft ink and the same handmade mosaic stamp I used on the back ground and then rubbed in a bit of gold mica powder to create an interesting border for my card. I glued my background to my card front. I used a flag ended laser printed greeting over my acetate adhering it with double sided tape. I layered a burnt orange strip which was also flag ended below the feather element and adhered it to the back using double sided tape below the greeting so it would not show. I trimmed all the ends and then adhered this whole element over the woven background using double sided tape behind the feather and the orange strip. I added a brown brad through all the layers to the right of the greeting. Very happy with how this card worked out. Just need to add a gift card and it will be ready to go!!
Therese
