“Bejewelled” Card Inspired by Helen Allen

Now updated with videos.

My blogging and Youtube buddy, Helen, has again inspired me to make a card after she’d uploaded one. This time it is her “Bejewelled Card” – this is not really my style at all, but I decided to try it because I needed to make a birthday card fairly quickly, and it’s always good to stretch the envelope occasionally (no pun intended!), to think outside the box, and to make something one wouldn’t usually make.

As Helen says, this card design is easily adapted to different styles, with different colours, for different occasions. I decided to make a pretty girlie version.

The first picture shows the materials I used for this card – I forgot to put in the titanium white acrylic paint.

Following Helen’s instructions, I spattered the base card and the piece for the topper (far right and centre in the following photo) to create an interesting background. I didn’t have the iridescent paints that she used, but I mixed some acrylics with iridescent medium.

The result wasn’t all that shimmery, but once the card was finished it was fine. I didn’t find the spattering as easy as Helen – I didn’t have a nice long-bristled soft paint brush, and I think my paint might have been a bit too thick. When I’d finished, I found a lot of spattering all over the stuff at the back of the work surface – I hadn’t realised I was missing the card altogether a lot of the time!! I think I definitely need more practice at this.

On the left in the photo above is a piece of the purple card, that I used to clean off all the excess paint from my palette and brush. The blue was a very strong colour so there’s very little purple in it, but I like the waves, or clouds, that the pattern has generated, and this piece will go into my backgrounds folder for future use.

The following is a closer shot of the topper piece, with its spatters.

This is the spattering on the base card.

Here’s a close-up of the waves/clouds background piece – I’m really pleased with how this turned out!

As well as creating that piece, I cleaned off the brush on my scratch paper, which is now looking like this.

It needs a few more layers before I’ll be satisfied with it!

In my stash, I have quite a collection of used gift wrapping paper – I keep this if it’s interesting, or has motifs that can be cut out. This is one of my favourite sheets, which you can see I’ve already used – it is slightly shimmery and has lots of gorgeous cut-out-able butterflies! I decided to cut some out for this project.

Here is the topper piece, complete with its sparkles – a mixture of tiny cup sequins, little silver stars, magenta-coloured gems, and Stickles. It really is very sparkly indeed, and of course this doesn’t show up properly on the photograph!

Here’s a detail of the sparkles, and they do look slightly more sparkly here.

Ages ago when I was having some fun with my Dylusions sprays, I saved some scraps of kitchen paper which were gloriously coloured with these inks, and I decided to use some of this on this project. Some of the pieces were quite stiff, as I think they have got some gel medium on them. Also in this photo, you can see the butterflies that I cut out of the wrapping paper.

Before cutting the butterflies out, I stuck them down onto a piece of scrap card to give them a bit more body, using regular matt gel medium. I painted some iridescent gel medium over the top for some extra pearliness, and then cut them out.

Before attaching these embellishments, I matted and layered the topper onto some greenish-grey shiny card. I didn’t want to use mirror card or anything to dominating, but just wanted a subtle border for the topper.

Here is the finished outside of the card, with the butterflies and Dylusions papers attached. I stuck all of these down with hot glue. I flipped the butterfly wings up off the surface, and I then added a good blob of Pinflair gel glue under each butterfly wing, to stop them getting flattened, and left the whole thing to dry overnight. (By this time the birthday was over, so I sent her an e-card and promised the “real” card would be on its way soon!)

The next day I completed the inside of the card and the envelope. For the sentiment, I chose one of the Stampin’ Up “Perfectly Penned” sentiment stamps.

After inking the edges of the inside of the card with Picked Raspberry Distress Ink, I stamped the sentiment using the same ink.

I chose three butterfly stamps from the Stampin’ Up “Papillon Potpouri” set.

I used the Picked Raspberry Distress Ink to stamp a couple of these inside the card.

I inked the edges of the envelope and stamped some more butterflies into the corners. After this I sprayed the envelope with some fixative just in case it got rained on in the post.

I made an envelope liner from some more of the butterfly wrapping paper.

Here is the finished card and envelope.

Helen – I hope you like my interpretation of your “Bejewelled Card” – I was pleased with how it turned out, and who knows, I might do this again! It was fun to do, and the result is beautifully girlie!

I have made two videos on the making of this card: