Swing Card

This is a card which I made today for my cousin's birthday. She is an expert card maker so I needed to do something she would appreciate! It is a "swing" card - when closed, it is flat, and the matted card with the stamping and sentiment is to the front. When you open it, by pulling the left and right sides apart, the central portion "swings" around so that the back is visible, which is where the message is stamped. It stands freely in the semi-opened position.

The main card is made of heavy hammered white card which I heat embossed with clear embossing powder, after which I inked it with Tim Holtz Distress Ink (Wild Olive) which revealed the embossed leaves. The clear embossing therefore acted as a mask. I continued this decoration onto the inside of the card, and inked very lightly around the edge of the moving central part.

The central part is matted with scraps of my dreadful lurid duplex card (see previous post) - I never thought the bright pink and lime green would go together, but it's amazing what a bit of distressing will do to reduce one's own distress! I inked the lime green with Wild Olive Distress Ink, with a touch of Pumice Stone Distress Ink, and the bright pink border was inked with Victorian Velvet Distress Ink. The leaf and sentiment was stamped with Victorian Velvet, as were the sentiments stamped inside.

The embellishment consists of two of the remaining purchased paper flowers from my Explosion Box project - the upper one I cut down slightly. I then spritzed them with Tim Holtz DIY Glimmer Mist in Pumice Stone for the darker one, and Spun Sugar and a tiny touch of Wild Honey for the lighter one. I distressed the tips of the petals with the Wild Olive Distress Ink pad, and fastened both flowers to the card with a bronze-coloured metallic brad. The trails were cut from very thin strips of brown card from an offcut, and curled against a knife.