Saturday 4 May 2013

Oriental Card with Skewer Spine

I came across the design for this card on Jim The Gentleman Crafter's blog and fell in love with it so much that I have so far made three of them before playing about and extending the design. He calls it the "hinged card". Today I am sharing the first two cards I made, tomorrow I am going to show you the third, and on Monday you will get to see how to extend the design to use it as a cover for a book card or for a pad of post-it notes etc.

"Front Cover First Card"

The skewer on the left forms the spine of the card and hinges are made from patterned papers. The skewer on the right is pulled out the top to open the card.

Over the years I've collected quite a lot of oriental-themed images and papers and it's great to have an excuse to use some of them up! There is a mixture of Papermania patterned papers and tags with stickers and other images that I've received in swaps so have no idea where they came from! It's just a question of layering things up and playinmg with the layout until you're happy with it.


"Inside First Card"

The skewers are coloured with black promarker and gold card used to mat some of the images; others are edged with a gold aquamarker. The image in the left panel of this first design is a set of black peeloffs stuck onto white card and coloured with distress inks. After putting it all together, some black flower sequins are added to add interest without too much bulk.

"Front Cover Second Card"

The background for this card is made using a technique that I will be sharing with you in another post. I've made this as a birthday card for a man, so the colours are darker and the images less flowery than the first card.

"Inside Second Card"

These fab images have been in my stash for ages, but they were just perfect for the inside of this second card. The lettering for "terrific birthday" is from peel-offs, but the problem is I've run out of so many letters it took me a while to come up with a sentiment that would fit lol! The nice thing about "terrific" is that it has the same number of letters as "birthday". I find that lots of men really like symmetry and find it pleasing to the eye. Is your man like that?

Ingredients:
2 x 5" x 7" pieces of thick card (I used the packaging from a box of dog food nuts!)
Papermania Oriental patterned paper pad A4
Papermania Oriental tags
large bamboo skewers
black promarker
gold aquamarker
black sequins
black gems
adhesives: PVA, foam tape
gold thread or thin string


Entered for the following challenges:
Crafting Musketeers - Anything Goes (first challenge - congratulations!)
Oozak - Anything Goes with Earthtones
Moving Along with the Times - One for the Guys (the second card, not the first one!)

16 comments:

  1. Fabulous cards, love the designs and images, gorgeous colours

    have a lovely weekend... happy hopping
    Lorna xx

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  2. This is so gorgeous, great design and papers.

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  3. Gorgeous cards, particularly like the inside of the second one such gorgeous images and great colours and designs

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  4. These are wonderful Maddy. Such fabulous design and I love the images and papers you have used.
    I hope you enjoy the rest of the weekend
    Sue xx

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  5. WOW Maddy, what incredibly ornate and detailed cards, more like keepsakes than cards, they are breathtakingly beautiful, Fi x

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  6. This looks great - love the idea - might have a go at one of these when I get some free time to play
    Linda x

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  7. beautiful cards sue xx

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  8. Super cards No 2 is great for a Guy! thanks for playing along @ MAWTT this week.
    Happy Crafting
    Carole xXx

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  9. both great cards look as though they need a lot of patience and s***r words lol
    carol x

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  10. This is a great concept, Izzy, beautifully executed, as usual. I would like to have a go at this myself with my DCWV Far East stack. Very inspiring, thank you.

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  11. Stunning cards, what a lot of work has gone into them.

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  12. What a great idea, and it looks so nice

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  13. Wow Lovely card...gorgeous design...love the papers...Julieannex

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  14. I'm missing words, wonderful pieces of art.

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  15. Very pretty card! I love the papers you have chosen. They are beautiful! Thanks for playing the Oozak challenge!

    -Samantha

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  16. WOW, stunning, love Oriental, and this is amazing, thank you for playing along with us at Crafting Muskateers, good luck xxxx

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Thanks for leaving a comment, it's nice to know I'm not just talking to myself :)