CCM #205 Love

Our challenge at Crafty Cardmakers today is Love and Romance.

My ‘card’ is for my Daughter to give to her Hubby. I had a different idea in my head when I started but if it could go wrong and not work out it did!

So I started with a sheet of construction acetate as I wanted to make a card with a completely transparent centre and just the roses design around the outside. After much faffing about and finding a different die to cut the acetate (the roses design caused too much pressure and kept splitting the acetate putting great cracks across the middle of it) I settled on a Crafters Companion new easel die to cut the acetate. Sadly this has a scalloped edge and I wanted it to be plain and not be able to be seen. The largest and outside die is the one from the Today is the Day from Tonic’s Floral Affections range. The next level in is from the Hello Posey in the same range and the middle is back to the Thank You range. As you can see all the dies mix and match which is fabulous.

I cut them all from red satin cardstock which I had first adhered to Dawn Bibby’s huge roll of double side film as I figured it would be much easier, and cleaner to stick onto acetate with card this way rather than fiddly little areas of glue.

I only put the middle two layers in (and you can see from the photo that they were actually cut from the waste that I would have had from the middle of the largest die), because when I stood them up against the Ornate Easel stand (also from Tonic) it looked awful behind. Even though it’s beautifully decorated it didn’t look right seeing it so obviously through the acetate layer. The easel stand has an outside layer of acetate and an inside layer of the red satin card.

Before I turned it into this single layered card I did try to make an easel card from it using the easel set from Crafters, mentioned above, but nothing was strong enough to support the acetate layer and still make an easel. Either I folded a piece of acetate in half as you would normally to make an easel, but then it looked like there was a dirty big crack across the centre of the heart, or I tried to cut a sort of strap, but that didn’t have the strength in it and in any event, even had I been happy with the half fold the acetate disliked all that folding and simply cracked clean in half!

The valentine sentiment was cut from silver mirri with a Simon Says Stamp die that if used in full says ‘Be My Valentine’ but because the word Valentine is so long I couldn’t fit it all in the centre of the heart and still be able to read it due to the intricacies of the decorated red satin card area!

I am sure there must be a way to create what I wanted to create, but at this moment in time my brain hurts and I am content with what I ended up with. Just hope that Son-in-Law likes it too!

I am entering this into:-

Bastel-Traum - #61 Valentine/Love
Card Mania Challenge - #101 Red and Hearts
Cards In Envy - Love You So Much
Country View Challenges - Feb: Anything But Cute
Creative Craft Cottage - #104 Love Is All Around
Daisy Chain Challenges - #16 Add a Heart
Dare2BArtzy - Feb: Love
Delicious Doodles - Feb: Valentine/Love
Die Cut Divas - Feb: Love Is In The Air
Dies R Us - #90 For The One I Love
Dragonfly Journeys - #111 Love
Naughty Or Nice - #48 All Loved Up
Noor UK- Feb: Celebrations
Paru’s Card Making Challenge - Feb: Love
Pearly Sparkles - #25 Love, Love, Love
Sheep Ski Designs - #11 Red/Hearts/Romance/Love
Use Your Stuff - #299 Love Is All Around