CCC #35

Hello my friends. I should have been working on a card for my class on Thursday, but today is my daughter's birthday, and I wanted to make her a special card. She's 25 today and such a sweetheart. (I can say that, 'cause I'm her mom.) Where has the time gone? We're going out to eat tonight, so I'm going to time this post for when we're out, since I know that sometimes she checks my blog and I don't want her to see it ahead of time.

I tried to make this card a bit more artsy than my usual style, since my daughter's very artistic, so I'm hoping she likes it.

This is also for the Compendium of Curiosities challenge on Linda's blog. The challenge this week is found on page 67 - Design Details.

I actually built this card around the inside of the card, which is a pop-up style card. The idea I had in my head was to use Tim's gear dies and have letters coming from the gears like they were being manufactured. However, because I was pressed for time, I made it a lot more simplistic, but hopefully the idea still comes across. I used the bricked embossing folder behind the gears to make it look more like a factory.

The alphabet letters are an old EK Success stamp set called Typewriter ABC Set from their Nostalgiques line. My 1/2" circle punch was giving me grief and I thought I might have to cut the letters out by hand, but I managed to get them all punched by partially punching, turning the punch a bit and finishing it off. Not fun.

For the front of the card, I die cut some gears from corrugated cardboard and then added some direct to paper vintage photo ink to age them a bit. The old metal buttons in the centers are actually sewn on, since I don't know where my big wire cutter is and I'm not sure I'd have been able to cut the shanks off anyway, since they are a molded part of the button back rather than a wire loop.

The background is stamped with extreme elements (SU) in several colors and then embossed with distressed stripes embossing folder and sponged with vintage photo ink.

I cut a piece of twill and then sponged it a lot with vintage photo and added the print of the little girl. The crown is part of the extreme elements set and I put some black pearls on it.

Some old buttons from my stash, some brads and some stitching complete the card.

Thanks for stopping by today. I hope you're having a wonder-filled week.