Saturday 3 October 2015

Quick Mixed Media Birthday Card

It is birthday season in my small family, with my son's and husband's birthdays being less than two weeks apart. While I was anticipating my son's birthday and made this canvas board for him well in advance, I totally forgot to buy or make a card for my husband. I realized this just as I was getting ready to start baking his cake this morning.

Cake preparations abandoned, in almost panic mode I whipped out a piece of watercolur card from my stash and I trimmed it to fit an envelope I'd found lying around. After gessoing the entire surface and applying three shades of acrylic paint (greenish blue and turquoise blue by Amsterdam and green gold by Golden), I added another layer of gesso and pressed a punchinella (sequin waste) stencil in the gesso while it was still wet. Once the textured gesso layer was dry, I added a few drops of nickel azo gold fluid acrylic by Gloden and sprayed it with some water to make it drip.  This created a wonderful "rusty" look over the green/blue layers.


This  took me only about 15 minutes. So far so good! Then I struggled a bit to decide what to put on the card - I couldn't do the usual flowers, butterflies and birdies! As I was desperately rummaging through my stack, I came across some metal charms of a clock face and some gears, which seemed to fit the rusty look of the card, plus hubby really likes clocks, so it seemed the perfect solution! I adhered these pieces with glue dots. They are removable, so I can salvage the embellies once the card has served its purpose. Of course, hubby might decide to keep it forever, which is fine as well!

The next bit was a bit of a bodge job, but, hey, that's allowed in mixed media, right? I didn't want to stamp directly on the card in fear of ruining it (plus, I wasn't sure if it would work on the bumpy surface) so I stamped 'happy birthday' on tissue paper and attached it with gel medium. Job done! I even had enough time to write this blog post about it! Now I just have to make that cake real quick!



Update: The cake was done just in time. It may not have been the best-looking cake in the world, but it sure was yummy with fresh cream and raspberry jam! 



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