40th Birthday Card For A Vicar

I have a lovely old gentleman who asks me to make him a “Special” card every now and again, and they are always a challenge!!

The only brief I had was Father Joe, 40 and Team Vicar, but knowing my gentleman has a good sense of humour I decided to throw caution to the wind and go with what came into my mind first …….. and then “pray” that I got tone right”

I use Publisher to put the card design together, I have a basic template, but depending on the wording and theme it tends to change with each card. I try to get the wording right first and then it’s positioning, followed by finding suitable free images which in this case it wasn’t that easy!

Then comes more fiddle-farting to get the images to fit ….. a card like this can take up to two hours to get it just right …. before any cutting and sticking gets done. Once I am happy with the whole thing I save it all as a JPEG and then insert it in size a little smaller that A5 onto an A4 sheet (Landscape), then copy, paste and crop parts from it to make the simple decoupage layers (I hope that makes sense) until it looks like the sheet above.

Now I ready to put the card together, making an A5 card blank, mat and layering the front on silver then cutting out the decoupage layers, which I stick down with adhesive foam pads.

Nothing too fancy …. I

Finally a few stars, micro glitter and the odd splodge of Ranger Glossy Accents add the final touches  in texture and extra dimension.
I just hope I am not struck down for it!!!

E Type Jag 70th Birthday Newspaper Card

This card is A5 in size using a hand cut card blank in white linen card.

Linda asked me if I could run through how I make one of my newspaper cards again, as she was under the impression that I printed the whole thing out on an A5 card…. so here goes ……

I create the newspaper image on an A4 Portrait page in Publisher …. and then when I am happy with it, I save it as a jpeg so that I can print it to any size I want while keeping the proportions right.

I then create a new page in Publisher in A4 Landscape, inserting the card front jpeg and sizing it slightly short of A5.  Extra decoupage layers are made by copying and pasting  and then cropping the resized card image, until I am left with just the parts I need.

I cut the card front out , leaving a slight edge all the way round.

And then mat and layer it on silver or another matching card, before sticking it on the card blank with double sided tape.

The decoupage layers are then cut out and stuck down with adhesive foam pads.

Finishing touches can then be added like Ranger Glossy Accents to give dimension and accentuate, in this case the speech bubbles.

That’s all there is to it, perhaps a little long winded and fiddle farty but it works for me.

The brief for this card was that it was for a gentleman called Bill, who always told his wife Anne, when questioned, that all the parts and work on his E-type Jag that he went hill climbing in only ever cost 50 quid! Pull the other one!!

Newspaper Leaving Card

This card is A5 in size and is made using white linen effect card.

The brief for this card was that it was for Alison, she likes to play darts, drinks cider and is moving on to a new school. I think I ticked all those boxes. I found a picture of her new school by Googling it.   I’ve been quite restrained in my embellishment for a change, only using Ranger Glossy Accents on the darts, eyes, sign and cider glass.  The cartoon is mounted on a couple of foam pads for a bit of dimension.