Tech card by a technophobe

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you've all had a brilliant weekend, we've had a bit of snow but it hasn't settled fortunately. We're having a few problems with our computer at the moment so if I vanish for a few weeks it's probably because we've taken our hard drive in to be repaired for the THIRD time! I really wish Microsoft would sort Windows 10 out properly, we've had to pay twice for Windows 10 to be installed at a total cost of £140 and I refuse to pay a third time - it's really eating into my craft budget *angry face*. The computer keeps trying to install updates and it seems ok but when it configures (not actually sure what that means) after the restart it goes so far then just freezes onto a blue screen with the microsoft logo on it and nothing happens. We then have to somehow get the computer to restart itself, repair itself, remove the update that it says has failed to fully install and then reboot again. The main problem is it keeps trying to install the stupid update (or a number of stupid updates) and the exact same thing happens again. I don't understand computers - tbh I barely understand my phone but things like this just make me even more of a technophobe, not less of one I'm often tempted to see if kicking the damn thing would make it work properly lol.

Being a technophobe it's quite ironic that the card I'm sharing today features yet more technology, but an iPhone and xBox controller in this case. I've only met my niece's partner once so it was quite hard to know what sort of card to make him for his birthday as I don't really know him. I asked my niece what he liked and got the reply 'computers and xBox and stuff like that', not a huge help but you work with what you've got and luckily I do have an oldish stamp set from Clearly Besotted Stamps which is called "Text Me" that has an iPhone or similar and a wireless controller plus a few 'text speak' stamps. I'm not a huge fan of text speak as I'm sure it's one of the reasons a lot of people are abysmal spellers, language may be continuously evolving but it needs to be intelligible to everyone not just a select few! This isn't even a 'grumpy old woman' rant because one of my friend's is only a few months younger than I am and half the time I can't understand the texts she sends me even when I try to read it out phonetically. I'm particularly not keen on the text speak I've used on this card as it sounds like I'm ecstatic that he's got some high end bathroom fixtures  (bidet!) - I'm sure Michael will like it though 😉

To make this card I started with the background and cut a panel of Bristol Board to 4" x 5 1/2" so that it would leave a border on an A6 card blank. I ink blended a background using Tumbled Glass, Mermaid Lagoon, Salty Ocean and Peacock Feathers - this was my base layer which I further distressed using a distress sprayer filled with water. I dried this off using a heat tool and didn't really like the results so I went over the panel using a bit of Chipped Sapphire, Mermaid Lagoon and Lucky Clover distress inks, again I lightly sprayed with water but blotted it straight away for a more subtle look. I dried it again and put it under my glass mat while I worked on the rest of the card so it could flatten out more. I stamped the controller handset being careful not to ink up the lead using Versafine Onyx Black ink as I wanted a crisp dark image and did the same with the phone but I added the OMG sentiment onto the screen. I dried the images with my heat tool to prevent smearing the ink and then fussy cut the images out. I used a Memento brush pen to go over the edges so there wasn't a distracting white edge where I'd fussy cut and added double sided foam tape to the phone and d/s tape to the controller and put to one side. The distress inked background piece was nicely flattened by this point so I stamped icons from the stamp set using  Memento Tuxedo black ink in a random pattern to make my own bespoke patterned paper. I added this panel to a pre scored card blank from my stash (Dovecraft brand) then added the tech toppers as shown.

I really like the background I made, it appeared a bit splodgy to begin with but the colours smoothed out once it had thoroughly dried. I'd really like to use this Bristol Board with the new Distress Oxides because I've heard many good things about them and I must admit that I've had less trouble blending on Bristol Board then I have on any other card, so I'm very curious to see the Oxides on it but alas I don't own any - yet!

I hope you like my latest creation, I readily admit I find men's cards particularly challenging so I hope I've inspired some of you for your manly makes 😉 Michele and I are planning to resume our joint blog challenge soon using magazine freebies so I hope you'll keep an eye out for that and hopefully join it too. If you have any comments or questions then please leave them in the usual places and I will try to get back to you if needed. Until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xx