Decoupage on Die-cut Textured Birthday Card

Hello Friends, Welcome !!!...

Birthday's are suppose to be full of sunshine and rainbows

And love and laughter....
And off-course diamonds and roses are a girls best friend
Today and years after.....

So today I'm here with a birthday card

Which is very close to my heart,
As it's for my childhood best friend,
Who has been their in my life from the start.

Hmmm !!!!
What's happening today....everything seems to by rhyming.... 

"Funny Mamma!!!" as my daughter will say...

Anyway.
Now a days I'm having fun combining  different different techniques....

I started this card by creating textured background. With Martha Stewart's punch, 

I have cut strips of "Happy Birthday". 

Then pasted those strips uniformly on card stock with all purpose white glue. 

That created a non-ending textured background.
It was looking really nice.

What say ?!!

But my need to add color has prompted me to try decoupage on top....

So here I go....

I took a beautiful big rose printed decoupage tissue. 

Measured and cut out all the extra bits. 

Removed the 2nd ply of tissue. 

Applied Mod-Podge generously on my "Happy Birthday" textured background.

Pasted the tissue carefully, so there are no bubbles or  unnecessary creases.

  

Applied another layer of Mod-Podge on top as well. 

Pushing the brush in all the crevices and corners, 

so the "Happy Birthday" texture is well defined for my next step.

This is how it was looking when it was fully dry....

Beautifully wrapped around all the alphabets.

Once everything was dry, I applied distress ink on raised texture to enhance it more.... 

Can You see it ?? 

I had used "Peeled Paint" on leaves and "Festive Berries" and "Abandon Coral" on Roses

It really was looking superb. But...

Alas !!!
It was no go. As Mod-Podge is a sealant it doesn't allow water based Distress ink to stay on top. So the moment my hand touched the inked texture I got stamped ;) 

Can you believe that.....

(Good for stamping from your own die-cuts, that's the experiments for next post ;) ) Anyway!! Either I should have used permanent stamping ink or I should have applied clear Gesso before inking it. Gesso would have helped distress ink to adhere properly. *New Learning*  HmmmmI!

So I switched to Inka-Gold colors then.
Love the smooth thickness and rub-on quality of Inka-Golds.
Followed the same color pattern ratio as in printed tissue, in 1st layer of coloring. 

In 2nd layer of coloring added a bit more of pink, as it was working as neutral enhancer. 

Then in 3rd n final layer of coloring I used the complementary color
so the "Happy Birthday" texture pops-up nicely amidst the strong enough print.
Yaay!!! My textured background  was ready.

Next I stamped my Birthday sentiment on a small piece of card stock with archival black ink.

I really like this birthday sentiment stamp from Mudra stamps....You know WHY ??

Because this sentiment says "SPECIAL" in double lined font. And that gives me a chance not only to have my sentiment in strong solid black but also to fill in the color of my choice ,in my sentiment, to match my card..... Double Yaay !!! 

P.S. I filled the SPECIAL with watered down Inka-Gold color itself.

That done, I assembled the card together.

I pasted the textured and decoupaged background on aqua card stock.
And pasted them on my card with double sided foam tape.
Adhered my sentiment tag on top with organza ribbon and double sided foam tape.
And lastly added cute little 3D paper roses and leaves to finish the card.

What say !!!

Linking this card to 

MudraCraftStamps CHALLENGE #1 - ANYTHING GOES

Craft Stampers Take It Make It Challenge

Thanks for taking the time to stop by....

Do let me know how you guys like my card....

Cheers

Shilpi

Mixed-media crumpled tissue HEART

Follow your HeART, Believe in your DrEAMS & CrEATE.....

I remember in my school days we used to make card-board Science models or Papier Mache Art-projects. And to give strength and stability to our projects, we used to layer it with newspapers and tissues. Obliviously sticking it with PVA glue mixed with water. And once dry, it used to be really super-duper strong. But what I used to hate was the creases or the crinkles coming in my super smooth finish models, while applying tissue paper. And if you try to smoothen it too much, then you’ll end up spoiling it even more, as the wet tissue will lump-up.  Sob! Sob!

Who would have thought that the things I perceived as mistakes in my childhood, would be turned around and used as techniques in creating textures, in my ART today.

So from Sob! Sob! – to- Lol! Lol!

For my ART- JOURNALING nowadays, I’m using Bilt’s matrix premium notebook, it's in B5 size, and has natural, ruled, 75 gsm paper, though I could have done better with higher gsm but I absolutely love the natural off-white color of the paper.

As the title suggests, this is a crumpled tissue Art-Journal page. 

                                                                             

So I have taken 3-4 tissues (normal facial tissues, that comes out of a box or any old tissue paper will do, even the ones from shoe boxes.) Another reason to hoard all the junk ;)                                           Anyway ----- I had crumpled all the tissues nicely, so they have lots and lots of creases.                        The More the Merrier!!!

Then I applied the PVA glue mixed with water (2:1 ratio) on my journal page, and glued the tissue, creasing them even more, so that I’ll have this beautiful texture to play around with.

Let it DRY overnight, though drying time may vary. In summers it will dry within 3-4 hrs. But in Winters, it can take up to 24 hrs. And if you are as impatient as I am, I’m pretty sure you’ll end up picking up your heat-gun/hair dryer to fasten up the drying process. Be careful! As heat-gun can burn tissue easily. I almost did. But, do make sure that you blow hot air on both the sides of your journal page for proper drying.

When it was completely dry, I painted over it in shades of Yellow and Orange acrylic colors. I used Pebeo’s high viscosity acrylic, so I needed to dilute it a bit, but not too much, as I like the dry brushing kind of effect.

I love the bit of white peeping underneath the yellows.

Once the base coloring was done it was time for my big HEART.

                                                                                                         

Well it’s season of hearts!!!!

As it's 2 page spread, I drew my heart in such a manner, that a bit of it is on the 2^nd page as well.       Really like the holes punched on the page, it adds another dimension to it. For coloring my heart, again I have used my Pebeo’s acrylics but this time I didn’t dilute it at all, as I wanted to see through all the layers of color. From Yellows – to – Oranges-to – Reds – to Maroons –to- Black. It’s a dry- brushing technique that I have used on my heart. Started with the lightest color in the center and ended with the darkest color at the edges of the heart. Reducing the area of each dark shade applied towards the edge. Hmmmm ! Not bad !

 

Hearts done, I started fooling around with my GELATOS (wonderful gift from my sis-in-law). Very lightly I rubbed the orange and red gelatos over the parts of my textured journal page. It highlighted all the beautiful creases and folds. 

O ! I love it ! 

Next time I am definitely gonna do the same bit with contrasting color gelatos. That will be AWESOME !!!!!

I so very much wanted to stamp some flourishes. But as luck would have it, my permanent Archival Ink was running dry (that reminds me, I need to add reinker in my art supply list) And I guess the tissue texture too, is too strong to take the stamped impression properly. Though I was not hoping for the perfect image but still better than what I got on my sample piece. So, after a few trials-n-errors I ended up doing freehand drawing of flourishes with 0.5 tipped permanent marker.    

                                               

Huff ! Huff !!  

Trust me, it was not easy to have free flowing curves on textured background.

Almost done. Just need to add a sentiment and my page would be complete.                            

Earlier I made a tag,but somehow it was not going with the layout, so again I ended up writing the sentiment as well. Though I have used 0.1 and 0.3 calligraphy pens to write the sentiment, but because of the background texture it doesn’t look like much of calligraphy.    
                                                             

But I’m happy with the overall composition.                      

                                                                              

What say !!!!                     

Do let me know, what you guys think about it. Your feedback means a lot.
Thanks a lot....do drop in again n see what all I'm doing in coming months....

Linking it to...
1. More Mixed Media Challenge - "Red"

2. Lulupu's   Challenge #58: Hearts And Arrows