Papertrey Ink November Blog Hop–Life is Good Congratulations Card

This month’s theme is to use some sort of cover art as inspiration for your card or paper crafting project. Funny, when I told my hubby about it, he assumed it meant music album cover art! He used to be a semi-pro/paid hobbyist musician so of course that’s where his mind went first. But I reminded him this was all about girls and paper crafting. Cover art to us is books and catalogues! Of course, you could think of it as any cover art you like!

I couldn't think of any books or catalogues I thought were particularly inspirational, I buy mostly online, so few catalogues, so I asked my mom. She actually bought a book once because she thought the cover was so beautiful. I agreed!

I’m sure you can see how I was inspired by it! There is a bit of technique needed to get this look. First, stamp the palm trees, trunks and colour them in. Then using an embossing ink pen, colour the trees and clear emboss them. This protects their colour from the next steps and adds some shine to an otherwise flat background. (You could cut masks if you wish but it can be hard with 4 stamps to line up, 2 tree tops and 2 trunks)Tear a scrap of paper to use as a mask – I use copy paper and add temporary adhesive. I specifically use this because you not only need a mask but also need the opposite piece later. If you use a sticky note, the remaining piece won’t be large enough to use later. Use half of your torn paper to mask off the top of the paper and sponge the bottom using a ground colour. I used frayed burlap. Now take the opposite torn paper, line it up so no white background shows and sponge in your sky. I used apricot, lemon tart, aqua mist and broken china. Work your colour in slowly so you avoid lines. You can always add more. Be especially careful when using any ink other than Distress inks as they don’t sponge as smoothly.

I added some opaque white to the highlights of my car. Cars are so shiny that it is very hard to accurately portray the finish but I did my best with the white highlights. I am not entirely happy with the left side of the body of the car. I may rework it with some more shading and some blue-violet too. I just realized too that there isn’t any shading under the car. As it is up on foam dots, it does make its own shadow somewhat but I may add a bit more under the tires. I may also add some glossy accents to the bumper for shine. I’ve STILL got a cold so things that might normally seem obvious take more brain power when my head is full of {{redacted for politeness}}.

I hope you liked my card, want to see more of my work? Feel free to sign up using subscription thingies on my sidebar; I have both email and RSS. Have fun on the rest of the hop!

Enjoy, Rebecca

RECIPE
Stamps: car, congrats-PTI, trees, life sentiment-Verve
Ink: Archival black-Ranger, Memento black, lemon tart, aqua mist-PTI, apricot, artichoke, old olive-SU!, broken china Distress
Paper: coloured, clear CS-PTI, white CS-X-Press It
Accessories: foam dots-Jody Morrow, embossing ink pen, clear EP-SU!, Copics, opaque white-Copic