I am soooo behind this week! I've been doing cards but haven't had time to get them posted to the blog. Missed at least two challenge deadlines. :-( Oh, well, at least the cards are in the box for Operation Write Home and it will get mailed to the shipper on Saturday.
My card today is for the "Crazy 4 Cocoa" challenge where we have to use buttons or brads, and I chose brads. I want to share a new-to-me technique for getting brads exactly the color you need for your card. I used a sketch from The Sweet Stop, which I turned on its side.
I also am doing the challenge from Digital Tuesday, my first time playing that one. Their challenge is to Get Out the Gingham.
My card today is for the "Crazy 4 Cocoa" challenge where we have to use buttons or brads, and I chose brads. I want to share a new-to-me technique for getting brads exactly the color you need for your card. I used a sketch from The Sweet Stop, which I turned on its side.
I also am doing the challenge from Digital Tuesday, my first time playing that one. Their challenge is to Get Out the Gingham.
I used a Cocoa digi image from Sweet 'n Sassy, and I just love the lilacs he's holding. Those lilacs set the color palette for this card, but the fact that shades of purple are my favorites didn't hurt! I also chose the gingham check CS (DCWV) for the background and built everything on top of that.
The image is colored with markers, then cut and matted with deep purple CS. For the embossed panel, I cut up a pre-embossed, white card and matted it with lilac paper. I highlighted the piece with a few strokes of colored pencil to make the embossing pop out. I added the sheer purple ribbon, wrapped around the piece and adhered with double stick tape on the back. At that point, I added the image and layered that whole piece onto the gingham check CS, and added the gingham bow.
Before attaching everything to the card base, I added the mini-brads. I didn't have any brads the right color for this card so I took some plain, metal, round-top brads, heated them with my heat gun and then immediately dipped them into lavender pearl embossing powder! Another quick shot with the heat gun to smooth any bumps and, voila' -- once cooled, they were ready to attach. I used a pair of tweezers to hold them while I heated and dipped each one, and while they cooled (which only took a few seconds.) They give the same impression as pearls but brads are more securely attached than self-adhesive pearls. That EP technique is probably familier to many of you but it was a new one for me, and I really like the end result. I'm anxious to try it with other types of EPs, especially the textured or glittery ones.
Now that I've used this technique a few times, I'll be using it more for cards that go to Operation Write Home. Although it can be done with any size brad, for the OWH cards, I'll probably stick to mini-brads since the weight and bulk are much less. I also got better results with the round shape staying 'round' with the minis. The shape seemed to 'flatten' more with larger brads.
If you don't know about Operation Write Home, click on their badge on the right side of my blog and read about them. Fabulous organization doing great things to support our deployed troops. They can't do it without help from cardmakers like us.
Hope to get back on track this weekend with the crafting and cardmaking. Thanks for coming by. Feel free to sit and chat a bit. Love your visits. Happy Crafting. NanaConnie
1 Comments that I appreciate. Thank you.:
Precious card Connie! Love the colors and the image is adorable too. Thanks for that tip about the brads!! I had no idea you could do that and I'll try it now!!!!
Lynn
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