My daughter Maya was turning ONE on Oct 14th this year and I thought I'd put my latest craze to use to make a card for her. It was a point when I had bought the Silhouette Curio die cutting machine. I had bought it to primarily make my own stencils but I realized that the possibilities were endless. What I got hooked onto most was Card Making. One thing led to another and soon I ended up furiously reading upon various mixed media techniques. What caught my fancy most was the wonderful Distress Inks! I was in love with what all you could do with them and Tim Holtz, the man behind Distress Inks was my new Hero. I was so glad to see most of the online craft stores in India had these in stock and I ordered my first few set of distress inks - mini ink pads (More on the craft stores and various products in another post!)
So back to the card I wanted to make for Maya. I wanted it to match the color theme I had planned for the birthday - White, Light Pink, Lavender/Lilac and Gold. So I started with the background for the card. I had planned to have circles in the shades above and a big heart with a watermark effect and so created my own stencils with a simple pattern of circles and hearts using my Curio. I then taped the heart stencil onto a white cardstock of 5x7 inches and started blending in with distress ink using the mini blending tool. The color I used for the heart was the lightest pink I had - Spun Sugar. I didnt want it to pop-out so I made it as light as possible while blending. I then taped the circles stencil and blended in with more colors - Spun Sugar, Milled Lavender and Dusty Concord.
The initial background looked liked this. I later added more colors and also added a bit of gold here and there to adhere to my color theme.
I then began to work on the front panel of the Card. I designed the panel using the Silhouette Studio software and used some existing studio files purchased from the Design Store and customized it to my liking. I then cut it out using the Curio. I used Distress Inks to color in various objects - additional colors used were Picked Raspberry, Festive Berries, and Seedless Preserves. I also used small foam adhesive squares to mount a few cutouts of balloons and gifts to give a 3D effect. I then added a touch of gold using the Deco Art Gold marker - I drew a border around the panel with Gold and added some designs in gold on the different objects. I also used Ranger's Liquid Pearls - Gold to create small gold pearls on the circles. I finally adhered the panel to my background using some craft glue and my simple Card was ready.
Here is the finished card.
I didnt dare give it to Maya yet as she would've ripped it into pieces in no time :D I plan to make cards for her on every birthday and hand it over to her when she's a little older :)
Here's a look at Maya on her birthday!
Supplies used
- White Cardstock
- Silhouette Curio - for stencils and designing and cutting out the front panel
- Rangers Tim Holtz Mini Distress Inks
- Ranger's Mini ink blending tool
- Deco Art Gold Marker
- Ranger's Liquid Pearls - Gold
- Masking Tape
- Craft Glue
I'll write a detailed blog on the Silhouette Curio and the Silhouette world in a different blog and will also have one on Distress inks later.
Hope you enjoyed my first post on something I made. Since I made this 3 months back I did not take sufficient pics to show the step by step process. Will ensure I do that next time! :)
Please do leave any suggestions for improvement in the comments!
