The Ace of Spades!!

Have had quite a few days of total lack of motivation and inspiration - been feeling very tired and under the weather!! I attempted this 8" square boxed card a couple of weeks ago, but really didn't like how it was going - so I abandoned it for a while. I think now that I had approached it in the wrong way. Usually, I start with the image or other focal point for the card, then choose my colours and cardstock to match - and then decide on the layout. For some reason, I had this image of a layout in my head and started from that - without really looking at the focus - and it all went wrong.

So, I went back to the image - in this case the playing cards. This is a commissioned 21st birthday card - I can't lay claim to the clever idea of using the cards to represent the 21 - it's what I was asked to do!! But it's one to remember for future reference.

I orgininally toyed with the idea of using real playing cards, but I realised that a) I would need more than one pack, and b) they wouldn't be the size I wanted. So I found these royalty free images on the internet, printed them onto photo paper, mounted them onto card, cut them out and rounded the corners!!! The poker chips were cut using the smallest circle nestie. I couldn't get them to cut exactly, but actually ended up quite liking the white edge. The letters for the name on the card were cut using X Cut Roma DieLicious Alphabet die, and mounted onto the poker chips.

The card I used for the base card and the box is a large sheet of Xmas Red Pearl from The Range. It usually scores and folds well, but today it decided to crack along the spine of the card - the box was fine - it was just the card. I got round this by using a piece of black mirror card from my stash as a wrap. And as I am still playing around with my new Grand Calibur and dies, I cut the edge of the wrap with the ric rac edgeability.

The "waste" was used as the ric rac edge on the box top. I cut a square using my grand nesties from white pearl card I had in my stash, and used one of the inserts from the ric rac edgeabilities to cut the diamond pattern on each side. A piece of the black mirror was stuck behind to add more definition. The black border was cut using a grand scalloped square and a grand labels 1, while the red is a lacey square embossed with That Special Touch Polka Dot mask. (In case you hadn't noticed, I'm a bit of a die cutting fiend!!). A little piece of red satin ribbon, and a few black gems from my stash finished this off for both the card and the box front.

 

For the inside of the base of the box, I used more grand nesties to cut the black frames which were mounted onto a piece of the red, which I embossed using That Special Touch Polka Dots mask, turned diagonally onto the square - as it wasn't big enough to emboss the whole square. Three of the card backs finished this off. The inside of the lid was similarly decorated partly with a "waste" frame, and also with a lacey square, but this time I used the poker chips as decoration.

In the end I was really pleased with the result. And looking at it again, I realise there was another problem with my original design - I had tried to include some yellowy gold to pick out the colour from the King of Diamonds card - and it so didn't need it!!

Anyway - onto other things - busy, busy, busy - I've finally started work on Christmas cards - and have a few fairs and things coming up so need to get more stock sorted.
Cxx