Create A Pretty Card 🌸 Complete Craft Tutorial

Hi everyone, it's Lou Collins. Thank you so much for joining me. Today I'd like to make a card. I'm just going to make a really pretty card. There's no specific technique as such in here, but I've got a vision of a card. I thought it'd be really good for you to see from scratch how I go about creating one. So I haven't even cut my card base down. I've not die cut, stamped or inked anything yet. Obviously I will speed through any areas that take a little while, but you'll get the gist of my thoughts, thought process from start to finish. So I'm starting, I'd like a top fold five by seven card base. Unfortunately, when I went to my stash, I've run out of them. I've only got the side fold one. So I'm actually going to trim down an eight by eight inch card base. Now this is fine because I can still use the additional strips that I cut away. Things like my ink blending videos. So five by seven is kind of my favorite sort of size card to create at the moment. Um, I don't know why I just really, really like it. Um, I'm just going to, my trimmer only goes through one piece of card stock really easily at a time because this is a pre-made card base. So it's like 300 GSM. So I'm giving that some extra and if need be, yeah, I'll just take my scissors and trim this down here. I've already got the line there and I can neaten that up afterwards if need be, but that just, I've got the guide. So I know that's going to be nice and straight. So I've got this additional piece here that I'm going to put in my straps box and then just pull the arm out and cut this down to seven as well. Now this one is a bit easier because I can open this up and I can cut the additional back panel like so. There we go. Now for this, the first thing I want to do is add some color. So I've got this panel that just happens to fit quite nicely actually on my five by seven. It wasn't pre-cut. It was just, again, it was out of my scraps box, but I think I'm going to use this as my mat for my color. So I'm going to bring in a blending mat. And one thing I have already chosen is my colors. So I think I saw this somewhere on Instagram or Pinterest, a card I really liked that had a similar sort of color blend used. I don't know the exact colors. I don't think they actually use distress oxides, but I am going to, and I've chosen these. Now mine are looking a little bit tatty now. I've got some new ones coming. They are on order. So the main two colors are going to be the salvaged patina and the dried marigold running through the middle. The two, the top ends, the corners are just going to be touched with the darker colors ever so slightly. Now, while I'm filling a panel with ink blending, I do start with holding my panel with my fingers, but then I resort to either tacking it down underneath on my mat or I take just a simple piece of folded up cardstock and I'll place that underneath or over the top of my ink blending. This won't transfer any oil from my fingers and vice versa. It won't transfer any ink onto the paper or cardstock either. So I'm going with around about half of this filled with the gorgeous turquoise with the salvaged patina to start with. And then I'm going to fill the other half with the dried marigold. I don't really want the line of color to necessarily be completely horizontal through my panel. So I'm going to try and bring this sort of diagonal, the blend line here so that we've got a little bit more of the dried marigold on the left hand side and a little less, a little more of the salvaged patina on the right hand side. This is just laying my base color down because I will go back and tweak the blends in the background probably quite a few times before I'm happy with everything. So I've just laid down my solid color first of all, just filling in the paper, really the cardstock. And then I'm going to start thinking about working into my turquoise here into the salvaged patina. So with not too much more ink on the brush now using pretty much what's just already on the bristles. And you see we start to get this beautiful soft green between the two colors, which I absolutely love. Once I'm happy that that's blended nicely into the dried marigold, I'm going to turn this round and I'm going to come back and work again onto the salvaged patina side, just a tiny little bit more on my brush, not a lot, there's probably already a lot on there already. And I'm just going to start blending where I finished up with the dried marigold and just blend that nicely a little bit more into the salvaged patina there. So once I'm happy with the main bulk of the color down, I can add my depth by just adding a little bit of evergreen bough. This is going to go in the bottom corner where the salvaged patina is. Again, I'm going to come back to my salvaged patina brush and blend that in, make sure that there's no harsh lines there. I do need to bear in mind, though, all the time I am going to be spritzing this with water, so that will help to disguise any areas that I'm not entirely happy with. And then I'm going to do the same on the dried marigold side with spiced marmalade. Again, a stronger color, so I'm only going to be capturing the very corner of this. There we go. So there's my blended panel. I'm really happy with that so far, but as I say, I have got a bit more work to do on it. I'm actually going to take a water spritz. Now I'm going to first of all do a light mist all over the sheet, and then I'm going to, on my hand, just splat a few bigger blobs. So this just gives it a little bit of a mottled look. It's ever so subtle. I like that effect. It gives it a little bit of texture. And then into my fingers, and I'm just going to flick a few splats around. I'm not going to put any more on my hands and leave those to air dry. You can heat dry them, but I always think the best results are from air drying. So I'm going to just pop that to the side for five minutes. And what I'm going to do in the meantime, because I can't work with that anymore for a few minutes until that's all dried, is I am going to now start die cutting some flowers. Now I have chosen to go with some of my Textures flowers, which I've not used in such a long time, and they're so beautiful. They come from this Layering Flowers and Panel Die set. This is from my Floral Folk Art collection. You'll find this available linked below and on Craft Stash. It comes with this huge, beautiful circular die you can see there in the packaging. It's got the most beautiful flourishes. I need to clean mine out. It is in the bag. I need to clean it out from the last time I used it. And it comes with the outline die as well. But then what you also get is these beautiful flowers. There's three different sizes. They're layering flowers. I'm not going to use all three layers of mine. I'm actually only going to use two layers. So I've decided already I'm going to cut each one of the solid flowers. So for example, this middle one, I'm going to cut that from a vellum or a parchment, whatever I've got laying around. I've got quite a few different scraps here. I'm going to cut that from vellum and then I'm going to cut the white outline and layer that on top. And I'm going to do this quite a few times for each of the three different shape and size flowers, so then I can cluster them together. I'm going for the white look because I want the background to stand out and really be the focal point. And I don't want to detract from that at all. So my original plan or vision for this card was to have the ink blended background like so, a sheet of vellum over the center of it, and then these flowers built up on top. I'm still going to cut out the center vellum, but I'm not sure yet if I'm going to use it because I love that background so much. It's almost a shame to kind of cover it up too much. So I might just put my flowers on there so you can see the color coming through. I'm going to try both versions and decide which I prefer. So I'm really running low on parchment and vellum. I've actually got a bit that's got a crease here, but that's fine because this piece is still absolutely fine. So as not to cover up too much, I'm going to cut this down. Let's do a measurement. Let's try about three inches, something like that. So let's see. Yeah, see, that's pretty. And that would wrap around the card. I can actually do so. Just make sure that's straight. Fold that over there, fold it over here like so, and then somehow position my florals on here. I think it would work. I think. Let's just see. I feel like I need some white foliage maybe to really pop against the color. I'm still thinking so we've got sort of this version or just got them. I think I prefer that. I think they look more. Yeah, I just really almost looks like that almost looks like alcohol ink sort of effects there. Yeah, I think I'm going to leave this panel off. I'm going to cut myself some white leaves. I've got two options. I've got two texture sets that have white leaves in. So I'll go and grab those, cut some leaves and decide I've got some really large ones or some much smaller ones. And then we'll think about the next stage. So my two options would be this die that comes from the Papercraft Society box that would look like. So that's quite pretty. I've actually left all the detail within the leaves rather than popping that out. Or a much bolder leaf that comes from my floral or Paris Romance layering florals. I don't think that I think that was just going to be too big. It's a beautiful shape. It's just far too large for the flowers. So I think I'm going to go with a couple of these cut down. I'll probably do two, one sort of top, one bottom or maybe even three and trim one out. So I'll get those cut. First of all, that's much better running that through. That was three or four times back and forth, just changing the direction of the cardstock and die just to capture all the angles. And there we go. That one's cut absolutely perfectly that time. OK, so put that leaf to the side. Now, I'd really like to also put some stitching around the edge if I had my sewing machine on me. Absolutely. I would be doing that with my sewing machine and some white thread, but I don't have my sewing machine with me. So what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to use I have a tool that punches holes and I'm going to use that instead. Now to use this, I do need a foam back and or background backing base. So I use the bottom of my stamping platform here. Now, usually I'm quite happy to go with quite loose lines. So that's a little bit wobbly for this. I'd like to do a zigzag stitch if I can. So I'm actually going to use a ruler and I'm going to keep everything as straight as possible. OK, so wherever my pokey tool is, I think my ruler is also hiding. Isn't it strange? Everything I need today, I can't find. So I'm going to use the edge of an acrylic block anyway, just something straight. And I'm going to do a stitched line about five millimeters from the edge there. If you can just see that it's very subtle. Usually you can see it better on the other side. I'm going to do this twice. So again, coming back in five millimeters again. So now I've done my poked hole. So if I turn that over, you can actually see that a lot clearer on the white. These are just a guideline for me. I'm going to use the tip of a white marker and I'm just going to draw zigzag lines between the two. I'm not aiming for these to be really perfect. Again, kind of quite rough, quite very much almost hand stitched rather than sheen stitched. Now, this white just takes a little while to start showing up. But once it does, it really shows up nice and white. I'm trying to use the very, very tip of the pen because my white gel pen has actually run out. So here I'm using it's a white fiber pen. I couldn't even tell you now where I got this one from, but it's brilliant. It actually shows up really, really white. Hopefully you can just start to see that coming through now. So I'm going to work my way again around the card. So there's almost stitching done complete and dry. Like I say, it's not supposed to look perfect. I actually quite like I've missed a bit here and I quite like the effect of having missed areas and not no perfection. It's just how I'd probably end up with it if it was machine sewn anyway. So I'm going to raise this panel up with foam pads. So I'm going to pop these on the back. I tend to go with my foam pads in the four corners. First of all, and then with this size card, I'd probably just go to across the middle as well. That should be enough. And placing that onto my card base, as you can see there, I've then got that dimension, just lifted that up a little bit. Now I need to position my flowers and I'm just thinking that I might actually like a little bit of stenciling under my flowers, just awesome, additional texture, not too much, but I'm going to find a stencil that I can just take a little bit of maybe the darker green here, the evergreen bough, and just run that through a little. So my leaves, I'm going to have one top, one bottom. I think I'll actually glue these now. If I glue these now, then they're down and I will have to adjust the flowers around them. There we go. So I'm actually gluing just the centers of the flowers, leaving the ends and the edges quite free. And this will overlap the bottom of the card here as well. Not worried about that stem. And let's start. So I'm going to start with my biggest flowers. Now I'm going to apply glue where the white areas are underneath the vellum because I don't really want the glue showing through the vellum. Again, I'm just going to add glue to the center and put this one there. I think the glue would dry clear anyway, but just sort of be on the safe side. I've always known I was going to use this beautiful sentiment. Look at this. This is what happens when I don't edit everything out. So this beautiful sentiment, this comes, I believe, from my Mariposa stamp collection. So I'm actually going to stamp this, I think, onto, I think I will stamp this onto white. I'm going to actually stamp it in embossing powder. One thing I didn't do is add my additional leaves. I'm just wondering whether I actually need those. That one's just slot under there really quite nicely, actually. Perhaps one under there as well. Yeah, I don't think I want to do any more. I don't want to. Let's just see, with or without. Yeah, I think with. I will add a little bit of glue to those in a moment, but I don't want any more than that. That would be enough. So I'm going to stamp this with clear embossing powder, ink, sorry, and I'm going to emboss it with gold powder. So I've got my, this is from Ranger Princess Gold. Look at that, that really is absolutely beautiful, isn't it? So just let me trim this. I'm going to do this roughly for now because I'm pretty sure I'm going to cut this all out, fussy cut this out. But my other option would be to lay it over, tuck it in and have it as a wrap. I just think that's too much, Bell, and I think it takes away from the flowers. Lovely if you don't have a great deal more time and you need to finish quickly, but I think it's going to be worth it for me to cut this out. Now to do that, I'm going to give it a tiny border of just a few millimetre. The scissors I'm using are Fiskars embroidery scissors. These are so perfect for fussy cutting. They're my favourite ones. I must admit, I don't know why I've got them. I must have probably originally bought them for embroidery work or soft crafts, but they're just so perfect because they've got the sharpest point. If I need to get into any detail with them, I really can very easily. There we go. So that's all cut out and that is going to look really pretty across there. So I'm going to use, I think I'll just use the bookbinding glue. That seems to dry really nice and clear under the vellum anyway. Hopefully this is back in stock at Craftstash if it's not already. Now I'm still going to be careful about going over with my glue where the embossing is, just in case anyway, and not using too much. You actually don't always need anywhere near as much glue as we often use. Just go up the main lines there, a little bit on each letter really, and on the very end. Just there and I think put that on the end there and then work backwards. I keep wanting to say beautiful. It is really pretty. Okay, so finishing touches with this. I have got myself an assortment of gems and pearls. I think I'm going to scatter these around the flowers there. There we go. I don't want to overdo the stars and I think I'm done. Now that's actually quite a flat card in the end. I didn't have to raise this coloured panel up onto foam pads. I could have had that flat as well and that would easily go in an envelope. I've also managed to keep within the restraints of the card. Usually I overlap cards and then I have to think about making my own envelope. What's really pretty is you can see through, so you've got a hint of colour showing through the vellum there. You can also see the other flowers underneath which gives it that really layered look and I love that pop of gold over the top. So all in all, I'm really pleased with that. Thank you so much for coming along with me on this journey while I built this card up. If you like videos like this, please do subscribe to my channel. I've got lots of different tips, tutorials, lots of ink blending on there as well and of course featuring lots of my textures range as well, which you can buy just here. Thank you everybody, take care and I'll see you again very soon.