Birthdays and Blogging for Dummies (that's me btw)

Hello crafty peeps, just a quick post to let you know what I've been up to in my crafty nook. It's my lovely hubby's birthday tomorrow (Thursday 21st) so I've been working on his birthday card. Actually I started it at the beginning of the month but only finished it last night, not because it's a huge project or anything just I've had a bit of a crafty block the last few weeks - men's cards are always a bit of a challenge for me if I'm honest.

The moment I saw the "Long Time Ago" stamp set by Neat & Tangled, I knew it was destined to be used on Chris's card so just after I bought it at the beginning of the month I started to mess around with black card and white watercolour paint until I had a starry spacey style background. If anyone is interested in making a similar background, try typing in starry backgrounds on YouTube, Kristina Werner and Jennifer MacGuire both have at least one background which are to be honest far superior to mine! Back to mine though, I wanted the stars on my background to have depth so I splattered thinned out white paint onto pure black cardstock, allowed it to dry then added some watered down Cosmic Shimmer Sparkle Paint in Angel Red - this paint is actually a very pale pink colour. I allowed that to dry and splattered on some LuminArte  Twinkling H20s Radiant Rain pure colour concentrate in Majestic Blue and Snap Dragon, these paints contain mica so have to be shaken well before use, I didn't add a whole lot of these daubers just enough to add a bit more colour and to add depth to the galaxy. Once these were dry I got my "precious" (otherwise known as a clear Wink of Stella pen, these pens are like gold dust and everywhere I normally order from either don't stock them or are permanently out of stock!) out and carefully stroked the brush nib so some of the clear glitter ink splattered onto the card. It's given the background a subtle shimmery sparkle which I love. Anyway let's fast forward to last night - I've been panicking slightly about how I was going to stamp the words onto the background because I wanted it to look as close as possible to the opening sequence on "Star Wars", the letters on the film are yellow and I don't have either a pale yellow ink or yellow embossing powder, the closest I could come to it was using a dark yellow ink and clear embossing powder. Only problem was that when I tried it, the letters barely showed up on the starry background. I tried white and it too vanished once it was heat set, it was only when I used a really juicy white ink pad and glow in the dark embossing powder that the "A LONG TIME AGO IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR, AWAY.... YOU WERE BORN" stamped image appeared! The first part of the sentiment slants away into the distance and is smaller than the second part (which also slants btw) so it looks like it's disappearing into space. It's a really cool stamp and it means I was able to get away with just the sentiment and the starry background as the card's main feature. I stamped HAPPY BIRTHDAY underneath and heat embossed it in hot pink (not usually a men's card colour but somehow it works!)

I've matted the black card onto silver holographic card, then matted it on black card, then a different style holographic card before sticking the whole lot onto a black card base. I buy the card blanks from The Works because it's sturdy cardstock and is white inside so you can write a message without having to add an insert. I've added some strips of starry background card and holographic card to the inside of the card and added a 'Celebrate' sentiment from a Teresa Collins stamp set. I'm really pleased with how it's come out and if I ever work out how to upload the photos from my camera, I'll add a couple of it to this post.

And on that note a bit of news.... In a bid to make myself a better blogger I've just purchased a copy of Blogging for Dummies from Amazon and it should be here next week, so once it's arrived and I get round to reading it, you should see some subtle changes to my blog which will hopefully improve it so I finally get some followers - who knows I may learn how to add email notifications etc. Confusingly according to my stats I have ZERO followers and yet I know I have a follower on Google (waves to Teresa my sister!) because I received a Google notification telling me I had. I'm hoping the book explains what the difference is and how to attract followers without having to pay for ads etc - I'm not so much cheap as poor lol plus I'd much rather use any spare cash I have on buying craft goodies for a subbie related giveaway (watch this space), then pay for people to view my blog via a google ad.

Anyway that more than enough for now, I'll post another entry when I've done a bit more crafting, until then,
Love and crafty hugs,
Sarah x