Since buying my die cut machine I’ve been re-invigorated to keep creating cards. Knowing that I wanted one of my next cards to feature a seahorse theme, I headed out to take advantage of a great craft store sale and fill the gaps in my cache of materials. Having the seahorse in mind, I was excited when I came across a collection of colored jewels. The way they were arranged in the packaging, and the varying sizes and aquatic colors, were a natural inspiration for undersea bubbles.
When creating designs for die cutting, you are forced to consider the negative space, which is something I understand but am not entirely accustomed to. While there was nothing technically wrong with my first layout, I wasn’t completely happy with it. The vertical lines didn't speak to the undersea theme. More importantly, I noticed that there wasn’t enough separation between the star of the project, the seahorse, and the other elements. You can see
(below right) that the revised design feels much more “watery” and the seahorse is more obvious.
My first and final pattern drafts
The size of the card was determined by the envelope I chose and would be made up of a handful of elements:
- A card front with a seahorse die cut from a lime green card stock (linen finish)
- A bright blue stock to back up the die cut area
- A tag with "Thank You" rubber stamped and finished with black embossing powder
- Some aquatic-colored glitter gems (bubbles)
- A fun blue liner with different sized circles that also reminded me of bubbles for the inside of the card
Materials selection for the card
After selecting my materials and die cutting the card front and message tag, the next stage of the project was to rubber stamp the "Thank You" message with black embossing powder and let the heat gun perform its magic. Then I assembled the layers. Once everything was put together I scored and trimmed the card and got ready for the second stage...applying the gems.
Assembly stage 1 completed
I sat down with a glue pen and pair of tweasers and began painstakingly laying them out on the card front. I wanted to be absolutely certain of their placement before gluing them down. Once I was satisfied I started applying the glue. I can't tell you how many times the gems shot out from the tweasers and flew across the room. It was annoying at first, but by the time the fifth or sixth one pinged off of the wall it was almost hilarious. I was still giggling to myself when the last gem was affixed and I called this project finished.
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