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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Oriental Scene Card

I haven't made an oriental card for ages, so I was quite excited when this lovely new Oriental set arrived from Clarity. Dad used to keep koi carp so they were great to make for him, but since he stopped I've done different things for his cards.

I had a quick Google to get an idea of what the scene should look like. Mum and Dad had the water idea and the scene slowly evolved.

The temple seems to be pretty symmetrical so it makes the refection really simple. I started off by stamping the water lily in the bottom corner and masking it off. Then I stamped the refection of the temple in second generation black Adirondack. I stamped the main image above using black Archival as this gives a much blacker image. 

I don't know if you recognise it but the tree is actually from the Daydreamer stamp. I thought it was the most oriental looking of my Clarity trees. Once I had worked out where they needed to go I stamped them onto my Splodgemat and then pressed the card down onto the image to transfer the ink. This gave me the reflection, which I matched with the trees above.

I did the water with my Ink Dusters, trying to get a few lines to give the effect of ripples on the water. I sponged the tops of the mountains and brayered the bottom. I also brayered the sky.

I know you're not supposed to be able to use ProMarkers with Archival ink but I did and it seemed to work fine. I did leave the image to dry overnight before I coloured it though. I wanted the reflection to have a bit of colour too so I got out my coloured pencils for that. 

I finished it off with a nice oriental looking frame bought from the Silhouette Store and cut on my Cameo. I did try a few embellishments on the frame but decided I liked it how it was. Since then Mum has sent me a little box of oriental coin embellishments so I'm sure they'll appear on future cards.

Lynne
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December's Stamping with Clarity Shows

It seemed to work well last month so I thought I'd do the group shot again. Then I can blog the individual cards throughout the month.

There were some fantastic cards from the rest of the Design Team and as always I've got lots of new ideas.

Here are mine. I hope you like them. Luckily the Oriental scene is first in the photo so that will be the first one to be blogged. It was one of my favourites (the other being my bookmark card) but it wasn't shown on TV. I could see it sat there waiting to be picked up but it never happened. Poor card! :-)

Sorry that the photo isn't great but it was a really dark day when I took it. My lesson samples aren't on there as they'd already been sent to Clarity. The snow globe was blogged yesterday.

Now the shows have finished I'd better get back to my Christmas cards. Lots of penguins to colour and cut out!

Lynne
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