Anniversary Card for Marlene

Today is my friend Marlene’s wedding anniversary so I have made her and her hubby a card. I wrote this post on Wednesday but had to hold it in reserve until I knew she’d received it so I didn’t spoil it for her! This is the sneak peek on my previous post, and I can also reveal what the “funny stuff” is too!

This card is made from part of the masterboard I made recently with the gold embossed seahorses on it.

The layout of the card and its basic design were inspired by a gorgeous birthday card I received from my friend Shaz a couple of months ago – she had made a fabulous background using the new dragonfly stamps we both recently got, with a fresh green colour scheme, also using the water droplets stamp from Designs by Ryn which I have used in my masterboard. (I love this stamp!) She stuck the stamped strip onto the base card and ran a scored line down either side of it which really set it off, and placed her stamped sentiment on the bottom right of the card. I thought this was a really cool layout.

I cut my base card from two-thirds of a sheet of A4 white cardstock folded in half vertically. Before sticking down the strip of masterboard, I scored my lines from behind and then inked the base card with Peacock Feathers distress ink which exactly matched the colour of the masterboard. I like the way the scored lines pick up the colour more boldly.

These are my two sets of shell stamps that I used for the masterboard and for this card.

I stamped the seahorse to the right of the design using sepia archival ink.

Here is a detail of the embellishments on the card.

I lightly coloured a scrap of white cardstock with Tea Dye distress ink, using an Inkylicious Ink Duster, and stamped several shells on it, using sepia archival ink. Using my glue pen I picked out the highlights on these shells and heat embossed them with gold. After fussy-cutting them out, I hand-embossed them from behind into a piece of fun foam, using a ball embossing tool, to give them a bit of dimension.

Now for the “funny stuff.” Despite what one or two people may have thought, this has nothing to do with angels! Years ago we were given some pot-pourri which used to be in a large bowl on our sitting room table. It consisted of quite large lumps of stuff (shell fragments, bark, pumice, wooden fish etc.) and once the smell had gone, I recycled some of it for other purposes, and included in it was this tangle of red dyed twiggy stuff which I thought was too good to throw away and could be used for embellishments.

I teased out a small quantity of this to represent either coral or red seaweed on my card.

Last Christmas my hubby bought me several small panettone loaves from Lidl. Each one came in a box with a little ribbon handle and I saved all these ribbons! (I do love recycling stuff to use in my projects.)

They are not very long, but ideal for embellishing once the plastic tags are cut off. I stuck this down around the masterboard strip with double sided tape, using it to anchor the funny stuff, and was delighted that the two colours in the ribbon co-ordinated so well with my card design. The sentiment was from the Memorable Moments set by Stampin’ Up, stamped onto a small oval die-cut from my stash that somebody had sent to me. I embellished the edge of this by rubbing it with my Versamark pad and gold heat-embossing it.

To cover the lump in the ribbon over the funny stuff, I stuck down the embossed shells using Pinflair gel glue.

Here is a digital montage of the card resting on the masterboard.

Happy Anniversary Marlene! I am glad you like your card!!