Posted on 3 Comments

Everyone loves a little ‘elovephant’

Hello Downland Crafters,

Welcome to my first blog post.. ever. I wanted to let you all know how I created a card using this adorable guy. (I named him George). Lets jump in. I use A2 size cards for the mostpart. ie 5.5″ x 4.25″ (A6 would be the closest in Ireland and UK) and I always make my own card bases using Neenah 110lb cover cardstock. I prefer top folding cards – I have no idea why! Also did you know that you can order a custom made stamp from the Downland Crafts web site if you navigate to the ‘Stamps DC, Custom Made Personalised’ section. Trish gives you font options and you can choose your own text. I have one and use it on the back of all the cards I make.

The first thing I did was to dry stencil emboss a piece of Neenah 80lb cardstock with a Hearts stencil I had in my stash. I have a new die cutting machine thanks to Santa but I haven’t figured out quite how to use it yet. I figured the subtle embossing was better than none so I’d call that a success!

I then stamped ‘George’ onto a seperate piece of Neenah 80lb cardstock using memento tuxedo black ink. I colored him in with some cool gray copic markers C6, C4, C2 with some R20 mixed in his ear. I used W2 and W0 for his feet. His dicky bow I coloured with some sparkle markers I have in my stash of pinks and red. Alternatively I could have used copics and overlayed that colouring with any of the many clear sparkle pens on the market. I finished him off by using the darkest gray copics and putting some dots to give him some texture. Then I used a white gel pen to give his cheeks a few dots, this was the scariest part as when I use my white gel pen it never looks like it actually worked. However if I’m patient and wait for it to dry it does dry to bright white.

I knew I was going to want to frame him so I picked a frame. Let me fill you in here on my thought process, the larger frame was ‘way’ too big for the image and I know that the frame I chose was just a hair too small – but.. I decided that it would be a really cute idea to have one of the hearts coming from his trunk to continue onto the frame itself so when I placed the frame on the image to be cut, I made sure I placed it right where I wanted it. (The alternative was to cut off the bottom of his legs, and I really didn’t want to hurt George in that way.) Technically I could have used 2 rectangles from a nested set to make my own frame in the exact size I wanted but I didn’t think of that until later. Typical. I die cut another 2 frames out of 80lb card stock so that I could glue them together with some wet glue. I use wet glue as it gives me some wiggle room for lining them up perfectly and I made sure that the ‘coloured’ heart was on the top layer.

At this point I have a thicker frame, the inside piece of that frame with George all coloured, a white background and a heart embossed piece of cardstock. Originally I was going to make George pink, who doesn’t love a pink elephant, but I decided I definitely wanted make my clouds – lets say – non traditional! I used Distress Oxide – ‘Victorian Velvet’ (or any colour die ink you have) along with a cloud stencil I have in my stash. I wanted the ‘frame’ to remain pure white, with that partial heart, so I put some adhesive to the back of George and placed the image with the frame on my white cardstock to see where exactly I wanted it placed. Once I found my spot, I removed the frame part. Now George is placed on the white embossed background.

In order to make the clouds I put the stencil towards the top and starting with a finger dauber on the stencil gently swipe upward off the stencil across the width of the card. This is where those cloud stencils come in handy. To avoid too much repetition, turn the stencil (or angle it a different way) move to a lower position on the paper and repeat. I was careful when I got to George as I hadn’t masked him off. You could very easily with a piece of printer paper to protect him but I had enough control with the finger dauber to avoid him while keeping the clouds up to his outline. I repeated the process until the whole sheet looked like fluffy pink clouds.

I then glued back on the frame around George. Then all that was left to do was to emboss a sentiment in white embossing powder on black cardstock and foam mounted it leaving a space where it was going to be over the frame that George was in.

And there you have it. I hope that you love this guy as much as I do. He would also be perfect for a new baby card or a Mother’s day card, or even a Father’s day card for that matter. Hop on over to downlandcrafts.ie and grab him while he is in stock. You can use DTEMICHELLE10 to get 10% off him during checkout, but be sure to tag us with your creations. I would love to see what you do with him.

Have fun creating,
Michelle (aka Michelf).

3 thoughts on “Everyone loves a little ‘elovephant’

  1. Great card and geeat first blog post Michelle.

  2. Such a gorgeous card and fabulous detailed blog post! Well done Michelf.
    Love from Elfie xx

  3. Fabulous post Michelf, really informative. Thank you so much.

Leave a Reply to Katrina Howe Cancel reply