Friday, June 19, 2009

It's FRIDAY, all right!

Hi, friends of the blog-world! Happy Friday to you and yours! It's for REAL summer now, folks, as we are FINALLY getting some warm up, here in Northern California! The kids are out of school, we've finished our "fine art" portion of fair entries and WAHOO! Plus, E-stir finally got a chance to crank out a card for the CPS 120 sketch! Yee Haw! I hope you like! I am REALLY celebrating my good fortune with Stampin' Up! this round, where I survived "elimination" via the "retirement list" without too many scrapes and bruises! Most of the stamps where I've begged good mojo and faith from my favorite blog readers MADE THE CUT! So, thank you! Whether it was conscious or not, just by you visiting and in some WONDERFUL cases, following me....! (And boy do I love to see your happy little icons!) You helped me keep the faith! I'm very spiritual about my stamps: they all need to be loved!!!! Tee Hee So this card is a celebration of a rather breath-taking set and coordinating Stampin' Around Wheel, "Friends 24/7 "& "Friendly Words"...This gorgeous set made the cut, stayed in the game and I need to remember to let it out to RUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNN every now and then! Isn't that why we're all here: to love our arts and crafts! The finished and the to-do list and let's never, ever forget THE RAW MATERIALS! We love it alllllll! Anywoo, here's the card of the day!

Cute, little, supportive blue bird... Card design inspired by this great sketch:

Here's a close-up of this sweet, little bird, perched on his little twig! Ahhhhhhh! I stamped the bird onto a piece of Hambly, Clearly Heavy, with brown Staz On... Then, I used the "Friendly Words" wheel with "Stone Grey" Staz-On, direct to pad and then onto another, identical sized piece of Clearly Heavy to LAYER! Since the branch from the drawing wasn't as long as the rectangle I wanted to cover, I simply inked the edges of the branch image and butted them up to either side to extend the branch (or twig!) to the edge of the transparency. This was EASY, especially stamping on CLEAR MATERIAL, because I could see exactly where I was stamping! Plus, the artwork lent itself to the "blend" very well! I added some caramel colored acrylic paint to the little twig on the back side of the transparency, knowing that I'd made the perfect place to hide glue! Then I re-stamped the bird onto Very Vanilla C/S with Ballet Blue Classic Ink, pausing for a moment to use a Basic Brown pen to add extra ink to cover the beak, eye and talons... Blew on the ink and then stamped! Yipee! I added some black and a spot of highlight with a Uniball Opaque pen to give the eye a little more life, and then cut the whole thing out. I glued it right on top of the original bird, knowing that some would hang over the edge, as the bird image was bigger than my piece of Clearly Heavy! "I meant to do that, dude!" Just to give it some more visual excitement and more places to "hide glue!

After choosing and stamping paper to run lengthwise on the card and gluing them down, I then cut my rectangle and approximately 1/4" smaller so that a window would be created! I loved the idea of the two "stacked" rectangles from Tami's sketch, and I wanted to create extra special emphasis on the top rectangle! I found a previously embossed panel of Chocolate Chip C/S for my next rectangle and used it to frame a smaller rectangle of Very Vanilla C/S that was also stamped with "Friendly Words" but this time in Ballet Blue (ALSO DIRECT TO PAD!) and then stamped again with Chocolate Chip Classic Ink with the Damask stamp from the "Friends 24/7" set. After lightly adhering it to my C/S base, I re-cut the rectangle to preserve my "window". I added some organza, bow-tied ribbon to the left side of the vanilla panel and then glued everything down. In order to glue my two pieces of Hambly together I added VERY SMALL dots of adhesive along the painted underside and behind the C/S bird... Once that was dry, I glued the whole piece of transparency to the front of the card, again, by adding glue only where it won't show...


The sentiment was stamped in the upper left corner of the card and the bird was HOME! I have a friend who's been having a tough year: I'll be sending her this little guy to bring her some love! I'll send some love YOUR way, too: that's something we can NEVER have too much of in our CRAFTING inventory! Have a great start to your weekend, friends!

Supplies:

C/S & D/P - Stampin' Up!
Ink - Stampin' Up! & Staz On
Stamps - Stampin' Up!
Scallop Edge Punch - Stampin' Up!
Embossing Plate - Stampin' Up! & Sizzix
Acrylic Paint - Liquitex
Clearly Heavy Transparency - Hambly

6 comments:

Karen said...

Oh my heck, Miss Elise!!! Are you kidding me?! You've got more talent in the tip of your little pinky and it simply blows me away and delights me to my toes when I get to be the beneficiary of it!!! Thank you! She will love it!:> Goooooooorrrrrrgeous!! :>

Rosemary said...

Wow, you never cease to amaze me with your ability to use all kinds of different mediums and produce such wonderful cards! This is no exception! A super great card! I am in awe!

Kate Riley said...

Little birdy? Fly directly to my house, plant yourself inside a frame, and sit on my wall for eternity.

Gorgeous, dear.

Tracey said...

Hi Elise, this card is beautiful!!

Meg said...

Wow...beautiful card! I love that window look!!

Linda aka Oz said...

Ok, so I read and re-read the description and am still a tiny bit lost on exactly how you put this together. BUT, I am not confused at all on how it turned out...and that would be fantastic! I received your card in the mail yesterday, bless your heart it is wonderful and so made my day go from gray to rainbow! Linda aka Oz