Hello! It’s the start of April’s Challenge for my own A Perfect Time To Craft Open Challenge Blog. This month we have the amazing Sparkle’n’Sprinkle as our sponsors.
For my inspiration, I’ve chosen to use the gorgeous Lovely Magnolias Digital Kit to create my own background paper and create my card. I started with a blank file on my computer screen on which I overlaid multiple flower and leaves. Each flower and leaf file I added had to be positioned, rotated, flipped or resized to work in with the other images surrounding it which took quite some time to complete. It amazes me just how long one can spend adjusting and tweeking the images when building these background papers. This one took me a good couple of hours.
Once I was happy with my arrangement, I decided I wanted to create an extra layer to fussy cut and mount onto foam tape after it was printed. I created an elongated hexagonal shape in a matching color to add to the centre of my piece. I added it behind the bottom left flower, added a sentiment and saved the file with just the banner and single flower visible. I then went back and made the rest of the elements visible again so I could save them all as a jpeg file. Both files were now ready to print and I knew they would easily print at the same size, ready for me to cut and add to a 5″×7″ card base.
It was at this point I decided to just print the background panel directly onto a card base. Once printed, I simply folded the card base in half. I printed the 3D layer onto another piece of cardstock, fussy cut it out and added it to my card front with foam tape.
The card could have been considered complete at this stage, but I always like to add a little extra something by hand. I decided to add peel off border stickers around the outer edge of the card as well as on the edge of the sentiment banner, to give the whole card a little bling. Adding these fine details always gives a great look to a digitally created card.
To finish off, I added two small peel off sticker butterflies to a scrap piece of acetate. I carefully cut around the outer edges of each butterfly and added a little extra glitter with a clear Sakura Glitter pen in some parts of the wings and the body of each butterfly. I bent each wing upwards and glued each butterfly by the body to either side of the banner.
I love how relaxing the creation of my own digital elements can be. I can spend hours playing with different ideas without wasting any crafting supplies and only print and create when I’m happy with the results. It makes for a very economical card that still has my own original and personal touch.
I look forward to seeing your entries into this month’s challenge. We have some great digital kits up for grabs this month so get crafty and good luck. Don’t forget you can enter any project with any theme, any month! Thanks so much for spending time with me today. I look forward to next time…😊
Constantly Carding 