TWO CARDS FOR MY HUBBY
A busy month
May is a busy month for celebrations. The first to come was always 4th May for my hubby’s older brother, sadly no longer with us. We always used to wish him a happy birthday and then say, “May the Fourth be with you” haha! My hubby’s twin brother has also died, and of course my parents who celebrated their wedding anniversary at the end of the month, so the number of May celebrations is somewhat reduced. However, we still have my hubby’s and my birthdays, and our wedding anniversary, not to mention the kitties’ birthday which happens to fall on our wedding anniversary!
I have made two cards today, one for my hubby’s birthday on 19th, and the other for our anniversary on 24th. In both cases, I have used ATCs (Artist Trading Cards) that I made ages ago – they turned up during my ongoing studio tidying and I thought I could use them!
Birthday card
We both love platypuses. I drew this little Zentangle one a long time ago and it’s not seen the light of day since then. I tore a piece of quite thick handmade paper that I’d bought on Ebay, using my DIY deckle ruler to tear against, to preserve the deckle edge on the whole sheet. I rubbed gilding wax all around the edge. I wrote the text with a fine permanent black liner pen.
For the 7 x 5 inch card base, I brushed on some Broken China Distress Ink with a blender brush, and then spattered it with water. After leaving it to sit for a minute or two, I blotted it off to create the white spots, and repeated the process till I was happy with it. Then I added the topper and it was done.
The inside of the card
Practising my calligraphy skills! I wrote the text with my new calligraphy fountain pen on two curved lines, and did the rest of the text with the same black permanent marker I’d used on the card front.
Anniversary card
I made the ATC for this card many years ago as part of an ATC challenge on a craft forum I was on at the time. The theme was Valentine’s day but I thought it would do very nicely for our wedding anniversary.
Here are a couple of detail shots.
Layering and collage, punched heart shapes, the clock face deliberately without hands to depict timelessness, scrim coloured with ink.
I matted the ATC onto a slightly larger piece of card (also from my ancient stash) which had been embossed with a script text embossing folder and gilded. I did it so long ago that I can’t remember exactly how I did it but I think I embossed gold card, then painted it with gesso, and rubbed it off the raised areas, but I may have done this with gilding wax.
I covered the whole of the front of the card base with some more of the hand made paper I used for the other card. After cutting it to size, I ran it through my die cutting machine with a piece of mount board slightly larger than the topper, and a rubber embossing mat, to produce the debossed frame effect.
The inside of the card
Unfortunately you can’t see the full effect of the calligraphy because I have blurred out part of the message to preserve anonymity, but you get the idea! I drew the rough shape of the lines lightly with pencil and used these as a guide for the calligraphy. When it ws done, it looked a bit stark, so I added the tendrils and leaves with a fine black permanent ink pen and added a suggestion of colour with pink and green coloured pencils.
I also wrote my hubby’s name on both envelopes with calligrahy to match the cards.
The kitties’ birthday
This year they are going to be 8! I can scarcely believe it. It seems like only a couple of years ago that we brought them home as kittens.
(They refused to use that nice new kitten bed we’d bought for them!!)
When they were 3, I made this birthday card for them.
I haven’t made any other cards for them, I’m afraid!
