A very dear friend of mine celebrates her birthday soon and I was at a loss as to a design for her Birthday card. She loves late Victorian and early Edwardian style, is quite artistic and sews, but also enjoys anything mechanical especially her motorbike. I had thought about creating a card in the 'steampunk' style something I had never done before and this would be perfect for the mechanical/Victorian parts of her personality, but all the cards I had looked at to try and get some inspiration seemed very masculine and not at all suited to her feminine side. Thank goodness I picked up issue 91 of 'Simply Cards and Papercraft' they had an article on creating feminine looking cards in the 'Steampunk' style. They also had a wonderful article on using decorative pins and how to make them so here is what emerged as a result of reading those two articles.
I didn't really have a plan when I started the card, and in the end it came together surprisingly easily, it also gave me an excuse to visit my local craft shop and indulge myself in a new Tim Holtz cutting die, and the new printed book range of urban stamps from Papermania.
I started with a 8x8 in square card as I felt this shape and size gave the most scope for arranging the number of elements I wanted to include. The whole colour scheme was driven by the topper of the little girl which I fund in my stash and was left over from a previous project, it originally had a gold border but this was too bright and I cut it off.
I used Dew Drop brilliance silver ink to stamp the keyhole design from the birds set of papermania stamps, and the wings onto white card and left this to one side to dry. I also used silver ink on the edges of the backing paper which is from the Vive Gade 'Skagen' range of papers. It is a lovely soft grey and white lace design. I also used this paper for the dress form, I cut the shape 4 times using the Tim Holtz die and a sizzix bigshot. I then layered these up to give more rigidity and dabbed them all over with Tm Holtz distress ink Tumbled glass followed by concord grape, and finally edged the whole piece with silver.
Once the keyhole stamped image was dry I cut around it by hand being careful to leave an even border around the edge of the image, the centre was inked in tumbled glass and the edges with concord grape. I also decided that the silver wings I had stamped looked too flat so over stamped them using staz on ink in stone grey to give more definition before cutting them out.
I also printed off the image of a pocket watch from my computer and coloured this in silver, before cutting it out to use as a mount at the back of the sentiment which had also been printed on the computer.
I wanted to make the dress form stand out from the background so used an off cut of purple metallic card from my stash. The card was embossed with swiss dots and therefore gives interest.
I positioned the purple card panel the little girl topper and the key hole on the card without sticking anything down and then I raided my 'that might come in useful' box in my stash for embellishments. Which were sourced as follows.
The cogs were from the Tim Holtz range
The key was actually one of several I have which were originally sold as a necklace in Primark - it only cost a couple of pounds and broken down provided me with 8 lovely metallic key embellishments all different. They aren't heavy so don't over balance the card.
The flowers were from a local store that sells stems of silk flowers at very reasonable prices they were from a stem with over 30 blooms on it and work out at a few pence each.
The decorative pins I made myself using long jewellery pins and beads that I have recycled from old jewellery - Charity shops are a great source for these and there are some really unusual beads out there. The beads are stuck to the pin using glossy accents, by squeezing a small amount onto the shaft of the pin and then pushing the bead up over it and leaving to dry
The brads were from my stash and I used slightly different shades of the pale blue for the flower centres and the top and bottom of the key plate.
Once I had found everything I played for about an hour until I was happy with the composition and then I secured everything to the card. The embellishments were glued on using collal glue gel as this works really well with irregular surfaces and gives a really tight bond.
The finishing touch on the flower petals was to add 2 water droplets using glossy accents to the petals as shown below.
I really enjoyed making this card and am itching to make more in the same style. I have never been one for the less is more approach and love the way so many different elements can be brought together on this type of card.
