David’s Birthday Card

My boys don’t like birthday cards (or Christmas cards, get well, congrats……) but, ‘cos I like to make them, they get them anyway! David rides his bike everywhere, his only form of transport, so I decided to use the pushbike image on this card. His birthday is next week, I suppose I could avoid the postal strikes and just direct him here to look at it – save risking it getting lost .

I’m not very good at this reflection lark but I’m trying and am determined to master it one day. For this card I stamped the bike onto a piece of transparency and then turned it over and rubbed it down onto the slightly glossy card stock. I then inked up the stamp again (black Versafine) and positioned it above the ‘reflected’ image. I did the same with the other stamps using some that I’d just won as a door prize at the Happy Stampers Festival earlier this month. There was a collection of clear stamps in the goody bag called ‘build a scene’ – so I did!

I then tore a doubled piece of scrap paper into some rough mountain shapes and inked them using bits of sponge. I used it double so that I could reverse one piece to give the reflected mountain outlines without having to turn over the piece I used for the top of the card (which risks the ink from the paper transferring to the bottom of the card by accident).

It was looking OK until I tried too hard and decided to add some more trees in the valley! I masked off the hills and stamped the trees but I missed a little bit – they seemed to be floating, not anchored to the ground at all. When I tried to fix this I managed to smudge the ink so I chose to stop there! I punched a circle out of some card and inked a sun and then added a slight blue wash to give the impression (I hope) of some water.

I glued the wire bike in place because…..well, I’d bought some and I had to use at least one! (I bet I’m not the only crafter on the planet who hoards all their ‘stuff’!!)