Birthday Cards - With Bee Arty!

Hi Lovelies!

I'm so excited to be part of the Bee Arty Creative Team and today is my first blog post!

As part of my DT kit I received some jars of Colour Shimmer Dust (amongst other fun goodies) so I wanted to experiment using them. I created lots of backgrounds that were perfect for making birthday cards.

I like to use 15cm (6") square card bases so I cut white cardstock into a heap of 14cmx14cm squares ready to use for the backgrounds. I don't stick to a single brand of white cardstock. I go through a lot so I like to buy it in bulk and I'm happy to use the cheapest available. The basic Kaisercraft one is fine, American Crafts, or lately I've found a great cheap Poppy Crafts one. Also, I do not gesso my paper. I get the effect I like by just being careful with the amount of water I use.

I start my backgrounds with the shimmer dust - Passion, Paris, Peacock in this case. I use a fan brush to sprinkle small amounts of each colour on the card. Then I gently spritz with water. I love the randomness of the shimmer dust - you can never repeat the effect. I would recommend to just try this with 6-10 backgrounds and experiment. You can even try spritzing the card with water first then adding colour - a bit at a time.  

look at all these fun backgrounds!

I wanted to add some muslin to my cards so I coloured it using some Peacock coloured shimmer dust mixed with water.

I added colour to chipboard using embossing powder (Apple of my eye, Just Blue) and a versamark ink pad - I just love watching the powder melt with the heat gun!

Once my backgrounds were dry I added some background stamping using the Brick stamp from the "Life Is Tough" stamp set. I also stamped on some white String Wreath diecuts.

The LHS card background uses Passion, Paris, Peacock shimmer dust , while the card background on the RHS uses Cobalt, Midnight and Passion shimmer dust.

 

I then added some stencilling using the Circulate stencil with Colour Pastes in Deep Water and Stormy Weather.

 Here is the first of my completed cards. This card is more masculine. I've kept the design simple to show off the mixed media background.

Here is the second of my completed cards. This card would be perfect for teenagers.

Thanks so much for stopping by

Crafty Hugs xx

Karyn