A Sketch with a twist.

I really do like working with sketches, so decided that as I had a bit of spare time this weekend I would seek out and enter a sketch based challenge.

So the obvious choice for me was http://sketchsaturday.blogspot.com, I wasn't disappointed I found this sketch there for this weeks challenge.

As currently my crafting space is a sea of festive themed papers and I am still making Christmas cards for family and friends I decided I would use the sketch to create a Christmas card design. I also decided that having just made up a batch of flat square cards for Christmas I wanted to challenge myself. I flipped through a few magazines and noticed that there were several cards using the 'twisted easel' design so having never made one I decided that I would give it a go and use the sketch as the basis of the main face of the card. Here is what I came up with.

The base card was created by using a 6x6" cream card blank and having folded the front of the card diagonally across the middle I cut another 6x6" square of cream card to act as the face. The main backing paper and the image of the poinsettia on the main card face were free papers in the November issue of making cards and designed by Nancy Watt - one of my favourite designers. I made up the decoupage panel an gave the flower a very thin coat of glossy accents to make it shine. whilst that was drying I went through the pile of off cuts of card and paper I had from other projects. I found the gold card, the vellum script and the lace in my off cuts pile.

I used an embossing folder on the gold card and ran it through the sizzix bigshot to get the musical notes pattern, this matched in with the background layer of the decoupage which has both musical notes and script on it. I aged all the panels by tearing thin strips from the edges and then used a dabber to add Tim Holtz distress ink in tea stain and a mixture of gold and copper metallic pigment inks to the edges.

The vellum looked too white against the other papers so I inked the back of this with the tea stain and wiped it on a paper towel to take off any excess to give it a more aged appearance.

I layered the gold musical note strip and the decoupage panel onto the background paper and added a corner element of torn vellum to the top right.

I then wrapped the lace around bottom securing it at the back and used some pretty red and green ribbon from C Art to add a border to the top of the lace.

Once the panel was completed I used a piece of gold card that was recycled from packaging and mounted the whole panel to this before using double sided sticky tape to fix it to the card blank.

I used a bow maker to tie a bow using the same ribbon and I used a small greeting tag which I brought in Lakeland a few years go, the bag contained about a hundred of these tags and they are lovely for just adding a small detail to a card.

The Holly leaves I made myself a few weeks ago, I had used some silk roses in a floral arrangement I had made for someone and had a bag full of silk leaves left over I sat and cut the edges of the leaves to turn them into holly leaves and coated them with 3 layers of glossy accents to give them the tough prickly feel of holly.

The inside of the card was also covered in the Nancy Watt backing paper which has again been torn and distressed using Tim Holtz inks. To keep the continuity of the design I added torn vellum as a corner accent to the base as well, the pine branches are from 'Craft Planet' and whilst intended for children's craft projects I find them really useful for Christmas themed cards. I added a velvet poinsettia to the base to act as the stopper for the easel.

I am quite pleased with the results and having made one I now have several other ideas for twisted easel designs, not all of them for Christmas either.

I am entering this card in the following challenges
http://sketchsaturday.blogspot.com
http://craftycatzweeklychallenge.blogspot.com/ - Anything goes
http://thesecretcraftersaturdaychallenge.blogspot.com/ - Flowers ribbons and lace
http://abcchristmaschallenge.blogspot.com/ - vintage

and have also used it as my entry into the design team call at
 http://ooh-la-la-creationschallenges.blogspot.com/