Lookie, Likies

Yep lookie likies, that’s what we’re playing over at the Daring Cardmakers today for the mid week little extra and that Jane has set us another stinker of a dare.

Now, as you are probably aware, both Lynne and Gillian sadly stepped down from the Design team recently, and all though the DCM team's door is always open for them, we thought it would be nice to pay a little tribute to them in appreciation for all their wonderful work during their time on the DCM design team. Lythan came up with an idea that we make a card in the 'style' of either Lynne or Gillian's cards. Or maybe pick your favorite of theirs and use an element from their cards on your own card. Everyone has their own style- we thought it might be a little challenge to try out a different style for a change!

You’d think it was easy trying to emulate someone else’s style of card making wouldn’t you but I found this so hard you wouldn’t believe.

I chose to have a go at Gillian’s style but the first obstacle I had to overcome was the fact that she seems to use a lot of what I term ‘Artsy’ type rubber stamps. Now I have a fair sized collection of rubber stamps but not one single stamp in this style (if you don’t take into account a Christmas set that I didn’t want to use) so I had to find a way of overcoming this little glitch. Eventually I solved the problem with a bit of surfing and found a set of lovely tag in just the right style to download and print out.

There’s a small heart on one of the tags so I decided to go down the romantic route and went searching again for the words to the Shakespeare sonnet ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ and printed this out in a script font onto cream parchment paper.

Next came the fun bit……..I went mad with my Tim Holtz Distress Inks in shades of Tattered Rose, Vintage Photo, Antique Linen and Dried Marigold on the card, tags and the parchment and having spritzed the whole lot with water I added a few coffee granules to the parchment to distress it even further. When everything was dry I added a little Diamond Glaze to the heart for added definition.

I then had to blow the dust and cobwebs off my sewing machine.
It’s lucky to see the light of day from one year to the next is my sewing machine but as machine stitching seems to feature in quite a lot of Gillian’s cards it was a must. Two very wobbly rows of stitching later and the parchment is attached to the card.

Next I needed something to tie my tags to and what better than a piece of Maya Road Chip Board which I covered in Brown Staz-On and secured with an antique looking brad from my stash. The sheer ribbon and metal photo were also from my stash.

All that was left for me to do then was print out the first line of the sonnet in a different font, cut them up and add then to the front of the card………and there you have it…a card that looks nothing like the cards that Gillian makes. Lol!