Making Shapes

The brief for my Visible Image DT post this week was to make shaped card and to use stencils.  My last post used stencils to do embossing but this time, I’m using them in their traditional role.  For the shaped card base, you can use almost any shape and layering die sets are particularly useful for this.

To begin, I selected two dies for each card, one for the card base and the other for the decorative panel.

I cut the heart panel and blended Wild Honey and Picked Raspberry Distress Inks through the Entwined Butterflies stencil and set it aside to dry.

For the next panel, I blended Spiced Marmalade Distress Ink through the Lava stencil.

The next stencil, The Cat’s Whiskers was placed over the top and Gathered Twigs Distress Ink blended through the gaps.

After peeking under the stencil, the cat’s face didn’t seem to stand out enough so I went over the face using texture paste in black for the face and gold for the eyes.

Once the pastes were dry, I outlined the eyes and coloured in the centres.  I also coloured the external parts of the whiskers.

For the card bases, there are two ways to make them.  If the shape has no straight lines, the easiest way is to die-cut two pieces and score a line on one of them about ¾” from the top to form a tab.  This will form the back piece once glue is applied above the scoreline and the front glued in place.  If the die is curved, like mine is, or if you’re using a circle or oval, trim a sliver off the bottom of the back to prevent the card rocking.

If the shape has straight lines, you can use the above method or die-cut a ready-made card base.  To do this, tape the die in place ensuring that the die is just overhanging the folded edge so that it doesn’t cut, and run through the die-cutting machine.  Voilà! A shaped-card base.  (You can use this method with the other shapes too but it will give a flat folded edge.)

To finish the cat card, I stamped and clear heat-embossed the sentiment from Happy Birthday and added some gemstone for highlights in the eyes.

The heart-shaped card was finished by stamping and clear heat-embossing the sentiment from Happy Anniversary and a scattering of gemstones.