A Woodsy Birthday

While I occasionally work from sketches I usually start with either papers or stamps.  This time, however, I really wanted to try out  the following sketch Craft Your Passion has as their most current challenge:

 

I really like the layout of this sketch, and I have a masculine birthday coming up so I used the sketch to make the following card:

Once I decided on layout and theme, I looked for papers that I thought would work best.  I decided on My Minds Eye Miss Caroline Collection Dilly Dally 6x6 pad.  I liked the colours and the wood grain, and thought it would work with a woodsy theme.  Once I decided on patterns I choose coordinating cardstock and a Bo Bunny stamp set that would work well.

I decided on gray for the base,, and black as an accent.  I thought I would try out a technique that I had seen but not used before.  On the black piece I decided to use as the focal of the card I stamped my image with white craft ink.  After heat setting the ink I coloured over it with pencil crayons.  I was going to leave the centre of the tree uncoloured, but as I was going for 'tree at night' effect so I decided to colour the inside of the tree with green as well.  The green on the inside of the tree isn't completely visible but I think it blends in a bit better.

I thought it would be fun to use the flashlight from the set, so I cut some yellow from the same paper pad in a triangle that would fit the bottom of the focal point piece.  I temporarily adhered the yellow to the black piece and stamped the 'Happy Birthday' sentiment in Versamark over both pieces.  The section of sentiment over black I heat embossed in white, and the section over yellow I heat embossed in black.  Once the corners were rounded and the edges sponged I foam taped the triangle over the tree.

I wanted to add more detail to the background so I sponged the edges of each pattern with black and adhered them to the black accent piece.  I die cut some rick rack squares from gray and sponged them with white to make them look more distressed.  Once adhered somewhat randomly I added black hemp twine around the middle.  The focal card was adhered with foam squares to the background,  the little flashlight was foam taped in place, and the background was adhered to the card base.  

To follow with the sketch I found some buttons that would coordinate and knotted some brown thread through the centres of each.  I adhered these buttons with Zots to the background and I was done.

This card was fun to put together and I really like the result.  I should work from sketch challenges more often!

I would like to enter this card into the following challenges:

1. Craft Your Passion - Sketch Challenge
2. Catered Crop - Rickety Rack Recipe Swap
3. Creative Craft Challenges - Distressing.
4. Moving Along With the Times - Keeping it Real.
5. The Pink Elephant - Buttons Galore.
6. Simon Says Stamp and Show - Summer Holiday.
7. Really Reasonable Ribbon - Father's day or Masculine with Ribbon or Trim.
8. Creative Card Crew - Dimension.

I used the following supplies:

Cardstock:  Stampin' Up!  Basic Gray, Basic Black.  My Minds Eye Miss Caroline Dilly Dally 6x6 pad.

Stamps:  Stampin' Up! On Your Birthday, Bo Bunny Roughin' It.

Ink:  Stampin' Up!  Whisper White, Versamark Watermark Ink, Memories Black.

Embossing Powder:  Stampin' Up!  Basic Black, Martha Stewart Bright White.

Pencil Crayons:  Crayola Green, Brown, Gray.

Other Embellishments:  Buttons, thread, hemp twine all from stash.

Adhesive:  Tombow Mono Permanent Adhesive Runner, foam squares, Quickie Glue pen, Zots. 

Tools:  Cuttlebug, Quick Kutz Nesting Rick Rack Squares, scissors, paper trimmer, bone folder, We R Memory Keepers Corner Chomper.