Steampunk Gears Birthday Card

It’s my dad’s birthday on Friday, so I’ve made him a card. He is very interested in clocks, so this year I’ve made him one with gears and clock parts.

The card base is plain white inkjet card which I printed with an elliptical transparency fade (which doesn’t show on the photo, unfortunately). Onto this is matted and layered some black cardstock over some dull gold (not mirror card, as I didn’t want anything too shiny on this card). I did the same with a smaller piece of each, heat embossing the sentiment, and sticking this down over a small piece of brown ribbon with a fleck of gold in it. The ribbon and the small piece of card were stuck down with Pinflair gel glue.

When I was making my stencils the other day, and made a mess of the clocks and gears one, I kept all the bits that fell out, to use as small masks. I used a few of these, rubbing over them with Versamark, using a piece of Cut ’n Dry foam, and then gently brushed on some gold Perfect Pearls (mica powder) with a soft brush, and shaking the excess back into the container.

I used a couple of the cut out acetate pieces as embellishments, stuck down with Crafter’s Companion Stick and Stay spray adhesive, and the rest of the embellishments were some of the Friendly Plastic gears and clock pieces that I made last year, from the moulds I’d made. Before sticking these down with Pinflair gel glue, using my new fine nozzle syringe, I rubbed on a little Treasure Gold (like Rub ’n Buff) to give them a nice vintage metallic look.

For the inside, I made a card insert by printing the same elliptical transparency fade and some printed text, adding some gear and clock part images under the transparency fade layer. I created this in Serif PagePlus, my desktop publishing software.

I think the black, brown, cream and dull gold, combined with the steampunk theme, makes a nice card for a man. Hope he enjoys it!