Birthday Card Making – Basic Grey Card Kit- Herbs & Honey – Arielle Gordon Design – Berry Sweet Triangle Card

 

This card I made with my mother-in-law in mind, as her birthday is in this month. Unfortunately, I have had very little time lately and I have been struggling to find even 10 minutes of spare time to do some crafts. So I made time to make this card while at work on my break. I have been very fortunate to have the Basic Grey Card Kits for the Herbs & Honey collection and Grand Bazaar collection as they come with card ideas and instructions to build those cards from designers. Designing a card and thinking of the idea is the the thing that is most time consuming for card making and scrapbooking – or any art, I believe. So it was great to be able to choose a design and just put it all together in a flash. It meant I didn’t have the stress of feeling like I was against the clock.

 

This card design is credited to Arielle Gordon and is very cleverly put together. First I read through the supplies list and gathered all the pattern papers listed and I prepared the card base. Then using the ‘berry sweet’ sticker from the title stickers which is in a triangle shape I cut a template. I then used that template to cut one triangle of each pattern and four triangles for the strawberry pattern paper. A strip of a bout an inch of red was also needed.

 

From there the triangles are used to form a pattern. When I was cutting out the triangles I tried to put the triangle over the parts of the pattern that I liked more. Such as the FR from the wood and red text pattern paper and the sweet peas of the green vegetable pattern paper. The strip of red paper was placed at the bottom as a border. The blank space is for the ‘berry sweet’ sticker that was used for the template.

 

The instructions called for using a striped bottle cap and the little yellow brad. I used the little yellow brad as instructed but decided to swap out the striped bottle cap for the yellow sweetness bottle cap instead. I thought it made the card a little sweeter. Tee hee (o^-^o)

 

I didn’t have my foam squares with me when I was at work so when I got back home I took 10 seconds to cut a square from my foam tape roll and used that to adhere the ‘berry sweet’ sticker. The instructions also advise to use a corner punch to round off the corners of the red border. But I liked the crisp edges so I left it angled.  I felt so inspired after making this card and I’d love to recreate this technique using different pattern papers and maybe different sized triangles or shapes. I think I might have to invest in a triangle punch or set of die cuts to speed the process along a bit.

Birthday Card Making – Basic Grey Card Kit- Herbs & Honey – Arielle Gordon Design

This card I made for my father’s birthday using one of Arielle Gordon’s designs from the Basic Grey Herbs & Honey card kit. I think it’s perfect as he’s really into the old school and retro. I began with a white card stock base and trimmed it down from the 12 inch by 12 inch included in the card kit.

I used the Martha Stewart Score Board and bone scorer and made the card top folding.

I gathered the pattern papers as advised in the instructions and then I trimmed them down. All the measurements are included in the design instructions.

Once I had the strips I adhered them to the card. But when I tried to place the banner sticker from the the Herbs & Honey Title Sticker Sheet, included in the kit, I found that I had the gaps between the strips to wide so I had peel the strips off and re-adhere them closer together.

After that I could place the banner down. In the instructions and the example image they use the whole sticker, but as most of the right hand side of the sticker is covered and you can only just see the bottom spike on the right hand side sticking out I decided I’d cut the banner in half and only use half the sticker.

The instructions called for the two of the bottlecaps, one made from chipboard and the other metal. And then strategically placed in the middle of these two bottlecaps was a sticker also from the Title Stickers Sheet. The photo doesn’t show it but there was also a small brad placed between and below the green bottlecap and the good times sticker.

My younger brother and I signed the inside and wished my father well for his birthday and then it was speedily posted off. Even though we tried to get it all done on time, it is going to get to him late, especially as he lives three states down and has an ocean border.

I’ve really been enjoying making these card kit cards and it really helping me get a greater feel for designing as a lot of the times it takes me ages to come up with an idea and I always forget about the principles, such as the rule of threes, when designing.

I think I should study the principles of design more in order to make the simple & clean designs that I love and gravitate to so much.

Happy Birthday Dad! Hope you had a great day!