This card started out with an entirely different vision. It was for a sketch challenge that also had the theme "Fun in the Sun". When I saw the theme, my mind turned to when I was in elementary school and we did a project called "sun bleaching" where we put out shapes on dark construction paper and laid it in the sun for a couple days. The result was really cool fading of the paper where it wasn't covered by our shapes. Well, I was going to do that, so of course turned to my trusty Stampin' Up! (SU) Night of Navy cardstock. I used four different SU die sets I have, and die cut many different "sun" related shapes from thick white cardstock. I used a re-positional tape runner to attach them in random order to the dark blue cardstock and laid them out in the sun for three consecutive days, then gently lifted up the white shapes to see how much sun fading had occurred. None! So I left it out in the sun for a full week... MAYBE a tiny bit of fading. Then I left it out for an additional week, and perhaps some fading, but not enough to know unless you were looking for it. So, as a testament to SU cardstock, that stuff is pretty fade-resistant!!! Good product, but not what I wanted achieve!
So, I grabbed my handy-dandy Clorox bleach and a tiny paint brush and LIGHTLY covered the blue cardstock (I dabbed the brush on paper towel before using it each time). The results were instantaneous, and looked quite "artsy".
I then cut the piece us into the four rectangles I needed, and also cut matting for each that was 1/4" longer than the bleached pieces from SU Crumb Cake cardstock. I chose this color because it "sorta" matched some of the bleached blue color, but not exactly... so perfect for a mat.
The bleached panels' measurements are:
1-7/16"x 3", and 1-15/16"x1-1/2"
I really liked how it turned out, but felt it needed a sentiment. I didn't want the sentiment to overwhelm the sketch or bleached patterns, so chose to use the same color cardstock as the matting, and found a butterfly SVG file on the web that I sized to 2-1/2" wide and cut out on my ScanNCut digital cutting machine. I used bleach again to lightly paint patterns on the butterfly outline, then stamped the sentiment in SU Night of Navy ink. I attached it to the card with glue dots where it's body would be located, then used 1-1/6" thick foam tape attached on the wings close to the body to lift them up a little for depth. In real life the butterfly looks amazing,,, not as flat as it appears in the photo.
A final touch was to add tan colored half pearls to the card to dress it up a bit. The pearls are from BasicGrey.
If you discount the two weeks I wasted trying to get the sun to fade my blue cardstock, I would rate the difficulty level of this card as a "2" out of a possible "5". It will make a great "thinking of you" card for someone special.
Date: Sunday, April 24, 2022 GMT Views: 212
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