Faith Is...

Felt a bit ill today so I wasn’t too productive around the house.  Finally felt up to making my way to my craft room to attack a card I have been working on.  Note that I did not use the word “play”.  If you saw my last post I talk about cards that you have to really work on to get what you want.  This was one of those.  It came out how I really wanted it, but I made a lot of mistakes on the way and had to redo quite a few things.  I had a really hard time determining the best layer colors to keep one from over powering the others or take away from the image.  It is finally ready to present.

I have a wonderful new set of stamps from Sparkle N Sprinkle that I have been playing with called Bird Swirl.  It has some of the sweetest images and I love the sentiments that are included.  The Faith Is…Bird sentiment was just asking to be used and I had just the technique to use with it.  I punched a small circle out of a Post It, using as much of the sticky end as possible.  I placed it in the middle of my white cardstock, which I cut extra large, and then sponged various inks around it.  I used yellow, orange, red, blue, and black in that order.  Then I removed the circle and sponged over lightly with yellow. 

I used the images Swirl Bird Bath, Swirl Branch, and Singing Bird from the set and laid them out to fit in the “window”.  I had made templates by cutting the window die out of a scrap piece of cardstock and used both the window area and the cut out frame to determine how the stamps needed to be place.  I laid the stamps upside down so I could simply press my acrylic block on top of them and they were ready to stamp with the correct placement.  Then I stamped them in Versamark on top of the inked cardstock and embossed them, using Midnight Madness Embossing Powder.  Make sure you give the background ink time to dry before adding the image.  I also used Static Free to make sure this ultra fine sparkly embossing powder only stuck to my stamped images.

I took a piece of decorative cardstock and cut out the window in the center.  I centered the window over the stamped image (use your cut out window frame to help you know where you want to place it over the image).  I taped the two pieces together and trimmed any access off the sides of the inked piece (remember that I made it extra large to help with this placement).  I layered this on dark brown cardstock, then on a layer of cream with the top and bottom edges punched with border punch.  This is then layered onto some decorative green cardstock and the dark brown card base.  I cut a window frame out of dark brown and cream.  I cut the cream frame vertically down the center, then place each side under the dark brown frame, slightly to each side, to give a cream “shadow” affect.  This helped it show up better when I popped it up with foam tape, centered over the “window”.  Oh, I almost forgot, I added some clear embossable acetate behind the frame to look like glass.

I stamped the Faith Is…Bird sentiment in dark brown on a cream oval and sponged the edges with yellow and just a little red ink.  I layered it on top of a green scalloped die and placed it on the bottom left corner of the window frame.  I added three small flower buttons around the sentiment, then added small orange pearls to the middle of each flower and slightly larger ones in sets of three in the top and bottom right corners.

This card was entered into the following challenges:

Simon Says Stamps Challenge – Emboss It
Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge – Some Buttons

Stamptacular Sunday Challenge #108 – Pile It On:  At least 5 layers

Aifactory Challenges AIF#077 – Flowers

CES Challenge #33 – Spring Colors/Images

The Corrosive Challenge #113 – Animals

Craft Your Passions Challenge #55 – Show Us Your Layers

Stamp Challenges – Recipe:  Flowers, Buttons, and Sparkle

Totally Gorjuss Challenge 77 – Bling It On
Basic Grey Challenge #42 - Easter/Spring (striped decorative paper)