Penny Black - A gift for you - BIL's birthday card

Hi blogging friends

First up:  a special welcome to my new followers - it is fantastic to have you onboard   - that's me jumping for joy!

Today, I am sharing a card I made for my brother-in-law's birthday.  If you have followed my blog for a while, you will have seen this dog image by Penny Black quite a few times before but I just love him for masculine cards for any age group.  He is so quick and easy to colour too which is a bonus.  And isn't it good when you have a stamp that you get plenty of value out of?!

 

I stamped the image with Versafine Vintage Sepia ink onto KW Doggett Knight white smooth cardstock and coloured it with Odourless Mineral Spirits and Prismacolor + Derwent Coloursoft pencils and paper stumps, then chalked around the image with blue, brown and grey chalk for the sky/ground.  To make the tail look like it is wagging, I added a few strokes around it with a Staedtler Lumocolor 313 permanent waterproof brown pen.  I added a little bit of Kindyglitz Crystalina glitter glue to the green part of the present.  This main image panel is up on dimensionals.

 

The gorgeous background designer paper is by We R Memory Keepers - Friends Furever - Making Tracks which is layered onto kraft then brown cardstock.  I trimmed the edges to 1/8" with my Perfect Layers Tools.

 

As I had no matching brads in stash to put on my card, I made my own.  I saw a demonstration at a Craft Show late last year at the Alison Ellis Stand of how to colour your own brads to match your project.  I wrote the instructions down but can't find my book but from what I remember there are several ways of doing it.  Anyway, to make mine, I held the the prongs of a silver brad with a pair of closed tweezers, dabbed on some Versacolor Bark pigment ink then poured on some Alison Ellis clear detail embossing powder, tapped off the excess and heated the brad with my heat-gun.  Because I could still see a bit of silver, once the brad had cooled, I repeated the process 2 more times until I was happy with the look.   Probably the only downside, is that you need to be careful how much you handle the brad afterwards because the coating scratches off quite easily as I ended up needing to re-do one of them.   Maybe I should have left the brads for 24 hours to see if they hardened up a bit?  Or I might try coating the brad with clear nail polish or perhaps some spray varnish to protect it next time and see if that helps. 

 

Lastly, I added the ribbon and sewed on a red button.  I added some Fray Stop to the edges of the ribbon to stop them from fraying.  I couldn't figure out where to put a sentiment but I figured the image is self-explanatory anyway.

 

As I did with my last card, I did a quick and simple card inside:

 

 

The sentiment is by Penny Black and was stamped with Versafine Vintage Sepia ink.  I used a Fiskars Scallop border punch along the bottom.

 

Finished card size is 120mm square or about 4-3/4".

 

Challenges:

 

I am entering my card in the following challenges -

 

The Pink Elephant Challenge - TPE188 - Anything Goes

Allsorts Challenge #195 - Animals 

 

Thanks for stopping by!

 

Jocelyn

 

 

Card Recipe:

 

Stamps:  Penny Black 'For You!' 3446E wood-mount, Penny Black 'Dog-gone Birthday' 1709E wood-mount - inside sentiment

 

Ink:  Versafine Vintage Sepia, Versacolor Bark pigment (for brads)

 

Designer Paper:  We R Memory Keepers - Friends Furever - Making Tracks

 

Accessories:  Big Shot, Spellbinder Square and Scalloped Square Nestabilities, brown grosgrain ribbon, Fray Stop, Kaisercraft chalks, silver brads, heat-gun, Alison Ellis clear detail embossing powder, closed tweezers, Prismacolor + Derwent Coloursoft pencils, paper stumps, Odourless Mineral Spirits, red button from stash, red sewing thread, Kindyglitz Crystalina glitter glue, dimensionals, Staedtler Lumocolor 313 permanent waterproof brown pen, Perfect Layers Tools, Cardstock - kraft, brown earth, KW Doggett Knight white

 

Punches:  Fiskars Scallop border (card inside)