Panda!

Second part of commission. A card for a panda lover... which didn't turn out like I originally envisioned it, but ended up being pretty damn cute anyway. 

I hand-sketched a panda face and cut it out to use as a template for the base card (China White) that was folded in half with a small hinge left on top for the card to open. The separate bits - ears, eyes, nose and mouth were cut out of dark Mocha cardstock (I'd completely forgotten to buy black, but this colour worked well too) and pasted on.

For the inside of the card, I used letter stickers to make the word 'panda', and I drew a cupcake on a separate sheet of cardstock, coloured it in with Copics and Aqualip, cut it out and put it on with foam adhesive.

The face can be flipped to the back so that the inside is displayed with the ears still visible :)

They say a good book is like a good friend...

First part of commission, finally done! :D Couldn’t go to bed until I’d finished it. Someone commissioned a birthday card for a friend who’s apparently loves books amongst other things, but I chose books as a theme (resonating with my inner bookworm). 

The ‘bookshelves’ were inspired by a few sources - all the bits were cut out from various scraps of card/paper, and I have no idea if the quote is from somewhere else but it just popped into my head so I used it (lemme claim credit? XD ) 

Thanks, Octonauts

The cat is Kwazii and the penguin is Peso. They’re characters from BBC’s children’s show, Octonauts. Also the favourite of a child I’m visiting. (These visits are making me learn a lot about current children’s shows).

I printed out the two characters and traced them onto corresponding coloured paper, cutting out the bits and pieces. (The faces were coloured in though, too much effort to cut everything - the collars/boots/feet were cut out). 

The ‘thanks’ banner is an old technique, I just cut out banners from a strip of kraft paper and wrote on them in funky fonts. The white string is cross-stitch thread.

I drew in the ‘bubbles’ (the Octonauts are an underwater search and rescue team) using blue Sakura Glaze, coloured some of them in with the same pen and coloured the others with glitter glue. 

All in all, two hours? 

Fire and Blood

A birthday card for another Game of Thrones fan - a House Targaryen dragon-lover. :) The Targaryen dragon was referenced from a banner online - traced and cut by hand from brown cardstock. Not fun. I later outlined it in clear Aqualip and shaded in some details using Copic markers. Some glitter was added for effect.

To embellish the base card, I went around the card using the point of a circle compass and then threaded red cross-stitch thread through, for the ‘fire and blood’ element. 

The dragon was attached using foam adhesive too add dimension. I mildly regretted this decision when I got to the tiny parts like the forked tongues and cursed having to cut pieces of foam tape small enough to fit onto them without being visible. 

The greeting was written on tracing paper with one of the LoTR fonts - First Order, I think, I screwed up slightly and smudged the still-wet Aqualip ink - and I cut the backing strip out of an old Kinokuniya catalogue page. I then folded it and trimmed both ends into a ribbon ‘v’ to make it look like a banner. 

Once again, inspired by Kristina Werner's circle cards: see example here. I don't have any special circle cutters, so I improvised by folding a piece of cardstock in half, then using a circle compass (from the geometry set I used during secondary school Mathematics!) to draw an almost-circle - leaving a 'hinge' at the folded part of the card.

Kristina uses such beautiful round dies to cut out lace backgrounds and such, but I improvised by using the snowflake kirigami technique to cut a circular pattern out of tissue paper, and pasted it on. I then built layers using tracing paper, old catalogue paper, and sentiments cut from a Paperchase Christmas wrapping paper.

Merry Christmas

A Christmas card inspired by Kristina Werner's Washi Tape Christmas Tree. Since washi tape is pretty out of my budget, I used leftover strips of green paper and tore them carefully to create the jagged edge effect, before giving each strip a light coat of Pentel Silver Poster Colour for shimmer effect. I glued a piece of white string down and arranged the green strips over it, adhering them using foam adhesive. The presents were cut out from random scraps and wrapped with string.

For the sentiment, I'd actually bought a beautiful gold-on-kraft wrapping paper with framed Christmas sentiments all over it from Paperchase, picked one of the sentiments and cut it out, putting it on a brown cardstock background and pasting it on. The tree was decorated using a gold star and fuchsia sequins, and glitter glue.

To The Lovely Gentleman

Birthday card for a lovely gentleman in our class with a love for all things classically British. 

Black cardstock, cut to shape using a rough template of a top hat printed off the Internet, and outlined in copious amounts of black Aqualip. Cream cardstock cut out in the shape of a hat-band, and pasted on. The Union Jack was printed out and attached to a pin I sourced from my sewing kit, and the letter ‘Q’ is an alphabet sticker.

The whole thing was given a very light coat of Pentel Pearl Silver poster colour (if you dilute it enough it gives a satiny sheen to the background paper without colouring it silver).