Up, up and away!

Hi Everyone, later this week is a friends, erm... "Special Birthday" it's one of the zero's, I won't say anymore than that!! She is a complete fashion freak, and shoes are her particular weakness.. Some of you ladies may be nodding in agreement I guess.. For you, your weakness may be for shoes, and for me, it is Cricut Cartridges... Just added a few more to my ever growing selection.. They're not all mine you know, they are for the shop!! honestly!!
Any hoo, My Summer in Paris Cricut Cartridge arrived last week and it inspired me to complete this project for my friends 30th Birthday, oh dam! I gave it away.. Oh well, damage done!
Looking at the outside of the card you may be wondering, "why a hot air balloon for someone who likes shoes?"ahh, but take a look inside..
So, here's how I made it.
I took an A4 piece of glossy card stock and ran over it with an anti static bag to remove any static and more importantly non visible sticky finger prints, well, most of them anyways...I then took my Brayer and applied Some "Mountain Rose" Adirondak Dye based ink... Using a Brayer is a technique to be learnt and is difficult to explain in pictures and words, perhaps I should start doing video tutorials, what do you think? Whilst I'm on the subject, do you think I waffle on too much on my posts?, do you like the step by step instructions? or would you prefer just to see what I have made? Let me know your thoughts and leave a comment.. Back to the project.After applying the Mountain Rose colour, I then applied some Sunset Orange, I know it's difficult to see in the picture, but it's definitely there, honest!.Next I applied some Currant Ink to the glossy card. But, before doing this I punch a circle from a "post it" note and stuck it in the top corner of the card, and then went over with the Currant Ink.Remove the circle and you have a Moon, or Sun on your project.Then place the whole of the "post it" Note around this circle and Brayer on some more Sunset Orange Ink, just to soften the effect.Next, tear some scrap paper, this will be used as a mask to form some mountainsand brayer on same Latte coloured Ink.Then go over the remaining White area with some Espresso coloured inkto give some depth to the mountains and the project.And you should end up with something like this, I say "something" as the effects will be completely random and unique each time..I cut the card down to sizeand then matted it onto some White card stock. The card was still rather large so a standard envelope will not fit it! My Martha Stewart Score Board will sort that out though...
So, onto the Balloon. I cut the images out from the Summer in Paris Limited Edition cartridge @ 6" and layered the front image onto the back.This in turn was stuck onto the front of the card with a double layer of foam pads, just to give it some real dimension and height.I printed a sentiment from my PC and literally rolled the remaining ink I still had on my brayer over it so that it would tie in with my project.This was matted onto some excess glossy card stockand mounted onto the front of the card.
Nearly there folks!!I cut out 2 shoes from Summer in Paris @ 3 1/2".Again, these were mounted on top of each otherand I positioned them inside the card, as a sort of surprise kinda thing, adding the last bit of the sentiment to complete the project.My friend is ganna wonder what kind of card I have given her until she sees the inside and realises that I know her better than she thinks!!!
Anyway, I'm sure she'll love it, as I hope you do too?
Thanks for checking us out..
See you soon..
Pinnacles.