Wish I Was Here

Hi everyone.  With all the terrible weather we have been having here in recent weeks I thought I would cheer myself up with something sunny and bright and this month's theme over at the Group of Cardmakers is Layered Scene Cards.  I used a new set of Spellbinders dies bought in the recent sale and called Summertime Vacay, and also I used another new die bought from Temu with a bold sun and some seagulls and I made a stencil of it to make the background of this shadow box card.  I cut the front aperture using a square die.  I ink blended the background using some brushes.

This card is quite easy to make and I made it the right size to fit into a 6" envelope.  It isn't quite square as I made it a bit taller to give myself room to make the proportions of the scene better.  Unfortunately I had to take a photo later in the day with a daylight lamp and there are rather a lot of shadows.  You can make this to any size you like and the two pieces front and back were cut from an A4 piece of card, and you just make two embossed lines and mine are spaced 1/2" apart, and make a mountain and then a valley fold and I used a square die to make the aperture in the front piece.  I made the background using Adirondack Sunshine Yellow and an orange which I think was Spiced Marmalade Distress Ink, and Salty Ocean DI for the sky and a mix of Stormy Sky and Salty Ocean DI's for the sea.  The shadows on the water were made with Blueprint Sketch DI.  The die is a cut into the card one with the sun and the shadows over the water and the the birds all in one die.  I cut it into a piece of card and cut the birds off flush with the edges of the sun and I masked off the water line and added the sun.   I then used the waste piece with the pieces of bird placed back in to complete the circle shape and taped them in place so that this would mask the sun so I could add the background sky, and then I masked above the water line so I could add the sea, and finally using my home made stencil I added in the darker shadows beneath the sun.  It worked better than I thought as I wasn't sure it would be any good but luckily it worked a treat.

I then die cut the pieces for the deck chair and parasol using snippets of white and red card and used some Hickory Smoke DI to shade different parts of both items, but not sure that it shows in the photo.  I also cut the piece of sand which also comes with the set using another snippet of white card and coloured with the Sunshine Yellow and also added some darker bits using Brushed Corduroy and Tea Dye DI's.  Before adding the front piece I added the background and made it just a very little bit smaller than the width to the first folds, and then I stuck the front side bars to the back.  I added the piece of sand onto the front of the card and placed the parasol and deck chair fixing them to the bottom and the very narrow edge of the aperture, and then I cut another of the background dies from white card and totally cut the birds out.  I shaded them with a bit of pencil and added an eye to the two larger ones, and fixed them in place.  Stupidly I should have added the sentiment to the front before putting it together but I managed to get it to lay flat in my stamp positioner and I stamped it using Versafine Majestic Blue Ink.  

I hope you will check out the Group of Cardmakers post as there are a few different ideas for layered cards with some links to several beautifully made examples, and then some sketches with measurements and also some brilliant cards from the rest of the team.  There is also a linky at the bottom of the post and we would love you to add any cards you make using this technique for us all to see and enjoy.

Thank you for stopping by today and I'll see you again soon.