Oriental Birthday Card

This was made for my Dad. Happy Birthday Dad. x

I chose the Asian stamps from Clarity for his card as he used to keep koi carp and still has a lot of oriental touches in his garden.

Unfortunately when I made my samples for TV using this set I didn't have the Cherry Blossom stamp or the Oriental Bamboo mask by Splodge Away. It's a shame as the cherry blossom would have finished off the top of my Oriental Scene Card perfectly. I've since rectified that and I couldn't wait to play with them all on Dad's card.

I started off by running a square of card and the bamboo mask through my Grand Calibur to emboss it. I then inked through the mask using Black Soot Distress Ink and Cut-n-Dry foam. This made a dramatic black background.

I always think of black and red when I think oriental, so that set the tone for the rest of the card. When I made the original samples I made a note of the colours I used to colour in the pagoda with, so I was able to use them again for this. It saves a lot of time when you remember to do things like that!

My original idea was to stamp the cherry blossom on the bamboo frame and hang the lanterns from it,  but I couldn't figure out how to do that with the black background. In the end I put the cherry blossom in the scene and hung the lanterns from a line I drew in a black Sakura Glaze pen. The dangly bits on the lanterns were too fiddly to cut out so I replaced them with some embroidery thread. Sally-Ann also did this on one of her gorgeous cards.

Stamps Used

Geisha and lanterns from the Remountable Asia Set

Pagoda

Cherry Blossom

Lynne
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