Butterfly Challenge 28 + M is for Music Notes

I was delighted to see this challenge, because with two musical sons to make cards for, I have accumulated a fair number of music related stamps etc. I knew what I would be doing, but my card turned into a catalogue of mistakes and failings, so it was much harder work that I had intended. It is a good thing I have a sense of humour and don´t give up too easily.

1. The stamp I had chosen is from an A5 set by Chocolate Baroque, called Music fanfare. (I bought mine when it was released some two years ago or more, but it is their featured stamp of the week right now so it is on special offer, but I don´t know on which day that will change). However, when I got it out I realised that although it was music based, it had no notes on it, so when I stamped it, I added a little SeeD´s stamp of notes to fit the challenge. 

2. I wanted to use a die called Anja´s border I think, which I bought a long time ago and only used once. I soon remembered why I only used it once - it doesn´t cut properly. This is unusual for a Marianne die and if I had been in UK I would probably have returned it, but with two or three lots of international postage needed for a return, I hung on to it. However, I made a shim from a piece of acetate to go  over the bit that wasn´t cutting, and I did manage to get a useable result.

3. I wanted to reverse it and cut the other edge to make a gate-fold card, but it wasn´t designed to use in this way, and the two edges don´t meet up as you expect them too. So after wasting a lot of card, and still not having a matching up gate-fold, I did what I probably should have done in the first place, and cut it twice from larger pieces of card and trimmed them after they were matched up. I mounted them onto a plain brown base card and trimmed around the front, shaped edges.

4. I had found a rather nice grungy sheet of scrapbook paper in shades of dusky pink and brown which I used, but it wasn´t until after I had cut it that I discovered the paper was double sided with plain, open brown letters of the alphabet on the back, so I would have had to mount it onto card anyway to hide this!

5. Searching through my stash I found the end of an old paper stack by Papermania, called Nostalgia Warm, which still had some off-cuts of plain pink paper that I used for the images. Because I had gone for a gate-fold card I now needed two images so I chose a second from the set and again added some music notes. I added a little colour to each image with copic markers. I used a Memento ink pad in Rich Cocoa for all the stamping and I liked the way it looked almost burgundy on the pink paper. 

6. Then I found that none of the dies in my considerable collection would fit the images, so my next task was to design my own labels in the size I wanted, import them into the silhouette software, trace them, and cut them out. I also made matching mats in the same file and cut two of these from the brown card left over from the base card. I used the same ink pad to distress around the edges of the pink labels.

7. When I took my first photo of the finished card I could see that the right hand topper was not on straight at all. (Why can I see that clearly in a photo and not on the actual card?). Fortunately I had mounted them using 1mm sticky pads and I was able to remove and reposition it, so it is more or less straight now.

8. I like to add a bit of bling to my cards and I was tempted to edge the butterfly on the left image with stickles, but felt it wasn´t quite right with these rather vintage colours, so instead I gave a quick paint over it with a Wink of Stella pen. This seemed to react with the alcohol ink from my copics, and it turned plain white, with no detail showing at all! So I stamped it again, coloured it, fussy cut it and glued it over the white one.

9. In the top corner I stamped some tiny butterflies by Lavinia, and for the lower corner I stamped, and fussy cut,  some vintage roses on the left over pieces of pink paper, and glued them in place. This bit actually worked with no disasters. The roses were done using a new set of stamps that only arrived on Friday so it was my first play with them. I will give more details of these in a later post.

10. More to make it easier to write on than for any other reason, I printed out a sheet of grungy music score scrap book paper to completely cover the main inside panel, and stamped a Birthday greeting on this as I did not want to add a sentiment to the front of the card.

11. I had just finished writing this post when I accidentally hit the wrong button and deleted it all! So I have now rewritten it, and before anything else can go wrong, I will fly over to Mrs A´s blog and link this up to her Challenge #28 - Use a Butterfly + M is for Music notes.

I also used enough odd bits of paper to take this to Pixie´s Snippets Playground - Week 172.