Card Factory 2015–Three Florabunda Cards

 

I have started colouring some of the Florabunda drawings that Lucy printed out for me. For the top one I used coloured pencils, and for the other two, Inktense pencils.

I kept the colour palette fairly limited in each case, and added a little background shading. For the third one, I ran a wet brush back and forth across the drawing after colouring it, which activated whatever Inktense had not been activated while I was colouring it – I quite like this streaky background. Using a coloured pencil for the background, as on the others, gives a bit more control, and this is probably what I shall do in the future.

Initially I was a little underwhelmed by the results but they did grow on me, and I had confidence that they would be improved once the drawings were mounted, with the matting and layering picking up the colours I had used on the drawings, and I was not wrong. I am actually quite pleased with the results now.

Before I began, I had a good look through my stash for some decorative paper and card to use – I am determined to make inroads into my huge stash, most of which I have had for years and have never got round to using – and ended up sorting out a lot of muddle, and my paper shelves do look a lot more organised now! This took longer than making up the cards, which were really quite quick. (So nice to feel sufficiently better to do enough to get a sense of achievement!!)

For the first and last cards, I found a pad of gorgeous decorative card that I’d forgotten I had – it is printed in different colours with flower and leaf designs, and each one has a little sparkle in it. I was very pleased that this did show up a bit on the photos – not much on the purple one, but certainly on the greenish one.

Each card was matted with some co-ordinated plain card before sticking down onto the wider patterned card, and then the whole thing was mounted on plain white card which formed the card base.

For matting this second card, I found a piece of teal coloured card that had been the cover of a brochure. There’s quite a lot of useable card in this piece. The background layer was created with some paper with a slight texture and an embossed leather finish.

The final card is matted onto dark red, which is the accent colour in the design. See the shimmer in the background layer.

I spent a long time experimenting with different papers and cards, different layers, and different orders until I was happy with the results.

I am going to leave most of the cards blank inside for now, with no sentiments. It will be an easy matter to stamp a sentiment inside each card as I use it – much quicker than making a card from scratch!

I made plain white envelopes for them all with my Envelope Punch Board. These cards are safely in my new card stash which now has four cards in it! Not a great deal to write home about as yet, but I’m working on that! While sorting through my paper stash I found a few bits and pieces that can be used to make cards – the results of some faulty cutting with Sheba, my Cougar cutting machine, which can be salvaged and parts used – I am now very glad I didn’t throw these bits away!

Watch this space for more cards in the Card Factory.