Ma's 60th Birthday

Good Evening Bloggers,

September was a pretty big one for celebrations within the family.  Firstly, my beautiful Ma turned 60.  As it was such a special occasion Ma's partner asked if I could make a card for him.  Ma to has recently fallen in love with the Magnolia range of stamps also, and is quite often my painting buddy on the weekends.  I pack up my stuff and head to her house and we sit at the dining room table and lose hours while we watercolour.  

So for Denis' card I used the beautiful Tilda with Hawaii Flower from the Butterfly Dreams collection.  My favourite distress ink colour at the moment is Victorian Velvet, so I inked up Tilda using this as the main colour and let this set the tone for the rest of the card. Diamond Stickles and White Opal Liquid Pearls for the something extra.

So then I used my Walnut Stain Distress Ink to add the extra shading.  This is where I had a brain fade, I though how good would my Iridescent Gold Glimmer Mist look spritzed over the top.....as soon as I did that first spritz my brain kicked in and I realised how silly I had been - ummm duh! it was going to make my inks bleed.... and it surely did!!  More so the walnut that I had used for the extra shadowing than anything else, as you can see on Tilda's left arm. It also intensified the colour considerably!  So lesson learnt, spritz the glimmer mist on to an acrylic block and use this in place of water for blending, or lightly brush over the top of the image once I have finished colouring.

And finally the finished product.  Magnolia paper and a paper from my stash used, edges have been distressed and sponged with Walnut Stain Distress Ink.  A purple Prima flower, and two others from my stash. Simple yet effective,  Denis and most importantly Ma were very impressed :o)

Next on the list is an album my sister and I put together for our Ma.  There are 3 of us altogether, my sister is the eldest, and we have a brother in between.  So this Kaisercraft 60 Album was perfect as there were 3 pages inside to decorate, so each of us kids gets a page.  The following is the front of the album, I wish I knew where I got the red paper from that covers the 60 - it is just gorgeous, but alas I only had 1 sheet.

So the pretty stuff, from Kaszazz we used the Daisy punches, the Aged Copper embellishment kit and the love charm and black ribbon.  The pearl flourishes are Kaisercraft, and the Martha Stewart Monarch Butterfly Punch medium.  The butterflies were covered in Glossy Accents, and then liquid pearls drops.  

Inside the album we also cut out and added the following two Tilda's.  You may remember one of these being shown half done in a previous blog :o)  We have below Longing Tilda from the Fairy Tale Collection and Tilda with Balloon from the You are So Special Collection.

Both the images are shown before they had the extra shading done.  I tried to get some photos last night of how they looked when in the album, but the camera just didn't want to work to take a clear close up photo...grrr!!

Finally is the card I made to give to my Ma.  You may remember the Magnolia Mushrooms with Snail Stamp from the Sweet Rainbow Collection that I blogged about in August.  Also I used the Ladybug Tilda stamp from the Raising the Ceiling Collection.  Love this Ladybug Tilda, she is just gorgeous.  Also with the colours I chose, very difficult to watercolour with Distress Inks.  I used Barn Door and Black Soot Refills for her main colours, both of these are extremely unforgiving!!  The best tip I can give when colouring with these two is go gently! Build up the colour slowly, patience is most certainly a virtue!

I was so incredibly happy with how Tilda turned out!!  She is just too cute.

So with the paper I had put aside for this I decided to make a step easel card.  My first attempt!  The finished product was definitely worth it!

A close up of the finished Tilda with Stickles added on to the lace under her hat, and around the hearts, she also has some Black Soot added to help the shadow.  See the video link in my last blog for how to do this.

Finally the ladybug I made in the top right hand corner has wings that move.  The two photos below show you them open and closed - 

I added Vellum in between the red and black card to try and represent her clear wings, and hand wrote the sentiment on to a scallop punched piece of card.  brads were used at the top of the wings to allow them to move.

A lot of work, but a 60th birthday is something very special, let alone how incredibly special my Ma is to me!!  She has had a tough couple of months, and anything that can bring a smile to her face is most definitely worth it!!  She did smile, and then unfortunately there was tears when she read the words I wrote, thankfully this time happy tears.

Thanks for looking, and feel free to leave a comment or question

xx Milly