Friday 22 March 2013

50th Birthday Greeting for a Celtic Couple

This was a commissioned card for my friend Ruth. Friends of hers (a couple) are both turning 50 soon and she wanted a special card to mark the event.
The recipients are a Scotsman and an Irish lass, so I thought I'd go with a celtic theme.  I already had quite a few celtic stamps as I've always been attracted to celtic design (they're great for male cards and although he's a 4th generation  Australian, my father still considers himself Irish).
So loaded with a couple of mismatched celtic stamps and a thistle stamp and the idea of including a photo or a pocket for a photo, I had no idea how I was going to fill an A5 card front.  I turned to my favourite sources of inspiration these days - the WMS blog (always good for a laugh as well - Claire has a wicked sense of humour) and the WMS Gallery, and was promptly reminded that WMS have several stunning celtic stamp sets.  In fact one of them Celtic Heritage had both a stylised thistle and shamrock, as well as loads of other celtic elements and plenty of sentiments in an Uncial font.  So yes even though I did already have quite a few celtic stamps, I just couldn't resist.
The design came together really quickly once I decided to drop orange from the colour mix and just stick with a green, navy and white - I even found this great tartan to match in a Basic Grey Marjolaine 6x6 paper pad, and my sewing machine was behaving itself for once.
I lined the inside with white sheets stamped with the same celtic squiggle border stamp I used on the front pocket.
I used Chipped Sapphire and Peeled Paint Distress Inks - don't forget to ink your clear stamps with Versamark first before using dye-based inks such as these Distress Inks if you want a clear crisp image.
The "50th" I created using an EK Success Loopy Numbers set for the "th" - these are rubber and almost impossible to line up perfectly so I stamped this first and then added the die cut 5 and 0 (Tim Holtz Chip Block alphabet) afterwards.
Ruth seemed to like it when she picked it up this evening - I hope her friends like it too.

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