Reflection Technique and Acetate Card

Even though I sold this card less than five minutes after I made it, I don't really like it. I thought I'd put it on here anyway, to show how I did the reflection.

I had seen a lot of posts about stamping onto plastic and pressing the plastic on the card to make the reflection, but I thought there was less room to mess it up if I just stamped it onto vellum and mounted the vellum so the image was reversed.

First, I shaded a piece of white CS and a piece of vellum using VersaMagic Aegean Blue. next, I stamped my trees onto the CS and the vellum, and cut the vellum just below the stamping.

To attach the vellum, I put some Usartquest Perfect Paper Adhesive over the black base of the trees on the stamped side, then turned it over and put it under the CS image so the backside of the stamping showed through the vellum, and the trees were reversed to match the ones on top. I liked the effect of how the vellum image was a bit lighter than the image on the CS.

Then I wasn't sure how I wanted to finish the card. I was planning on it being a rectangular card, but when I held this Spellbinders Grand Label over it, it was the perfect shape to outline the shape of the stamping, so I cut and embossed it. The mat was shaded with the same Aegean Blue, only darker, and I used a blue Gellyroll pen to outline the shapes.

Rather than make the whole card in this shape, I wanted it to stand up, so I decided to mount it onto acetate. I thought the acetate would be sort of like water, and would work well with the reflection. Then I cut, embossed, shaded and outlined a matching piece for the inside of the card and added some pearls.

It's not my favorite card, but it did use some new techniques I had never tried before. I hope it inspires you to try your own reflection, or to use some acetate on a card.

Aquarium Card

I was going through some very old tutorial folders on my computer, trying to figure out something new to make when I came across this tutorial by House of Stirfry. I saved it several years ago, and never tried it. When I saw it again this morning, I decided it would work with some K&Co stacks and die cuts I had.

I was going to make it like the folded tunnel card she did, but on my computer, I am seeing a bunch of question marks instead of numbers for the measurements, so rather than spending hours trying to figure it out, I made mine differently. It's sort of like a regular tunnel card, where you have accordion folded sides, but rather than making tunnels, I added two squares of acetate into the accordions so my fish would swim. There are four layers to this card, the background layer, two acetate layers, and the front of the card. The front was cut with Spellbinders Grand Labels One, and has dimensional die cuts on it.

The die cuts were larger than I wanted for the inside, so I cut smaller images from the paper in the stack and added them to all three inside layers. The only inside image which was a die cut is another plant which was printed onto acetate. I put that plant onto the bottom layer of acetate so some fish would be behind it.

The card is 6x6, and if you want to make one like it, the accordion folds are from sheets of CS which are 4x6 and scored lengthwise at every half inch. This makes enough folds for two layers of acetate inside.

Now I want to try the folded tunnel card like hers if I can figure out the measurements!