Inspiration by Gwyneth - July

Good Morning Everybody!

I thought it was time I went for a card suitable for a man this time.  I also decided to go "back to basics".

I know I've built up quite a collection of crafting consumables and equipment over the years, but I'm also aware that many are either starting new with cardmaking now, or are not as fortunate to be able to afford to build up a collection of crafting goodies.  So for today's post I decided to use very little to make a simple card, and to show you the steps I took to make it.

I'm sorry that some of the photos are not as good as they should be - I was working in the sitting room and shooting pictures as I was making, so the light was not consistent.

Stamping Dragon Designs Item:

• "Coffee Cream Papers" - found - Here - in the shop.

Consumables:

250gsm Super Smooth white cardstock; Glue; Ribbon

Equipment:

Scissors; Ruler; Pencil; Black Pen

This is how I made the card - I chose four of the backgrounds to print out onto white cardstock.  I then collected everything I needed for the project together. 

As the backgrounds in this case are square, and I'd printed them as "fit to page", I'd got white edges - I cut these off next, keeping the cut off white strips.

I took the unprinted sheet, used my ruler to find the middle point and put a few marks down the half way point.

I put my ruler down the central line and started folding the card against the ruler edge.  Pressing it against the ruler to give a straight line until it is completely over onto the ruler. 

 I then removed the ruler and used the back of my scissors to burnish the fold.

 I took the darkest of the backgrounds I'd printed and marked it on the back at 1.5", 3" and 4.5" to give me three 1.5" strips.  These were then cut out using my scissors.

   I took the other three backgrounds and marked on the back and cut 1" strips out of them, cutting 2 x strips of 1" out of the lightest strip.  I then layed these out on my created card to see how they looked.

 I decided that the paper ribbon strip across the middle needed something else, so I took the paper ribbon piece, my ruler and the black pen and drew a wiggly line down either side.  Holding the ruler on the cardstock while drawing the wiggly line stops the pen going all over the panel so helps get a controled wiggly line. 

When I put it back on the card I liked the look better.  But the paper ribbon is shorter than the card because there was a white edge when the background was printed out. 

 It's easy enough to disguise this - just slide the strip to one edge and then, looking at the downward hanging strip, cut the paper ribbon in two and pull apart where the break won't be seen under the downward haning strip.

 I then decided that the whole card needed something more so did a wiggly line along each side, again using my ruler to have the control of the line staying where I wanted it just in from the edge. 

Now it was time to start sticking.  To get the paper ribbon strip level I put my ruler against the bottom of the card, put a line of glue along the back of both pieces of the paper ribbon, and stuck them in place.

  I then put a line of glue along the centre and put down the ribbon, leaving the ends hanging over the edge for the moment.  This required pulling and pushing down hard.

I cut the strips that hung down the card, making the largest 5.5", with the strip on it being a quarter of an inch shorter.  The next strip was three quarters of an inch shorter and the next again three quarters of an inch shorter.  These were stuck down onto the card front, again I only put a thin line of glue down the centre of each strip.

  I then got to work at cutting out the greetings panels.  The bottom, mat, layers of both are 1" wide strips of the darkest background, cutting them to size by putting them over the card to see what looked best.  The top white layers being a little over 0.5" deep cut out of the spare, unprinted, area that I'd cut off the background edges at the start - but I didn't stick these down yet.

What I did was take a bit of "waste" cardstock and write out my greeting.  I then held it up to of the white, trimmed, greetings label and roughly centered the wording.  I could then see where I needed to write the greeting on the trimmed piece.

 I then did the same for the second greeting. And by writing before sticking, if you are not happy with how your wording looks you can cut another greetings panel strip from the white bits of cardstock and try again. The greeting "Penblwydd Hapus" is Welsh for "Happy Birthday".  Writing your own means that you can make your card in whatever language you want, and being in your writing makes it even more personal. 

By the time I'd finished writing and stuck the greetings in place the glue holding the black ribbon had dried so I just finished off by trimming off the ribbon ends at either side of my card. 

And here you have my finished card -

-oOo-

And that is it from me for today.
Please keep coming back regularly to look at new posts as over the next few weeks you'll find various "Inspiration by ..." posts appear on this "Dragons Den" blog, as well as colouring tutorials and other posts by different Design Team members.  I'll be back with more posts over the coming months as well, so keep an eye out for those.

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Till next time - Have Fun Crafting!

Gwyneth

DT Member

(And if you are wondering "who's Gwyneth?" - then you'll find an "About Me and My Blog!" piece on my blog.)