May 08, 2010

Extreme Guitar Birthday

Hey!  Remember me?  I know.  It's been a long time, right?  Well, here I am with a card for you.  This one is totally out of my comfort zone, but I had a lot of fun experimenting with some new stuff and ideas.  I'm really loving all the wonderful silhouette stamps we have now from Stampin' Up! This one is called Extreme Guitar.  The background behind him was made with the sanded background and the En Francais background stamps.  Now, here's where the experimenting comes in.  I made my own template for the oval part by cutting out an oval from acetate with the die cut machine.  I kept both the oval and the negative. Using the negative, I sponged the color in the background where the guitar player would go.  (I used a dab of 2-way glue on the back of the acetate to hold it in place while I worked.)  After all the sponging was finished (and without moving the acetate), I inked up the background stamps with Soft Suede and stamped one background on top of the other. Then I stamped in the guitar guy.  After removing the negative acetate, I placed the oval cut-out on top of the oval part of the design making sure to line it up as carefully as possible. I took a night of navy stamp pad and dabbed the ink pad all over the part of the card stock that wasn't covered.  It makes a really cool texture!  You can make it as heavy or as light as you'd like.  then to get it to fill in, around the oval cut-out, I took a sponge and moved what was on the acetate onto the card stock.  Then I removed the acetate and I had this really cool image element without the added weight of cut layers for the image.  I distressed the edges a bit to match up with the image.  Then I took a piece of so saffron card stock and stamped it the background stamps I used on the guitar part.  After the ink dried I ran it through the crimper.  Then it was time to assemble.  The stars are star punches layered and off-set. The twill tape was  ravelled to keep the distressed look going, and all was assemble askew to make it more balanced and keeping the grunge kind of look going.