Cards For Men - Challenge #3 "Seeing Red"

ProMarkers are made by Letraset and are a twin tipped, dye based alcohol marker offering a high quality product at a great price. Avilable in 148 colours, they give incredible tonal range and can be applied to a diverse range of materials, not just paper and card. ProMarkers produce vivid, bright colours right through to the subtlest pastel shades - the translucent inks can also be overlaid and blended, even further extending the range of shades and hues on offer. ProMarker's quality nibs and inks provide flawless colour lay down with consistent coverage and no unsightly streaking.

The prize

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This was a fun challenge for me. I had just got my hands on some fab digi stamps, i think that you can tell by the style of the illustration who's creation it is. If you want to know more send me a message and i will forward the details.

The image fitted in perfectly for a 'Toy Soldier' like we all had as children.. Okay those Adults that can remember that their prize possessions were wooded toys hahahaha. This was the direction i was going to take with this card project, also it could be for any older child over the age of 18 however l think its mostly going to be for the older boys in your lives.

I kept the overall design simple:

How i made the card:

Printing out the illustration on a good clean white paper stock that can take a pro-marker i set about picking out my selection of pro-markers and then coloured in the image.When it was finished and had also been glittered and glossed with some of my 'Desert Island Craft Box Must Haves' Glitter and Gloss gel pens .I then went round the image with a blue/grey pen. I always do this when i'm going to cut something out. A clear white area is a lot more noticeable than one that has been coloured in, also you don't have to be millimetre perfect when your cutting out when its got a border. This was then placed aside.

The backing paper was one of my own design, so i will make it available for download in the next few days. This then covered an A4 plain card stock card.

In my paper collection i had been given some 6"x6" paper stock that i had thanked the person for but placed aside. The hearts fitted in perfectly, i didn't want a full topper page for the drawing to go on so this was perfect it gave the card some extra dimension. Please remember you don't have to have a base for an topper that fits perfectly and the topper sits on. Play around with circles, squares etc. you will notice in some cases your topper stands out even more.

The side bar just had the text printed out on the same paper i had used for the illustration, it was a free font that i had downloaded. Please search out the internet for free fonts, again if you have any problems let me know and l will forward you a link that i use and they are all free to use, the only thing you cant do is sell the fonts as your own designs.

Now then i have to hold up my hands and own up. The reason for the small stamped images at the base was that i didn't spell check, so i had to cover up my spelling of soldier that was on the original text bar. In hindsight it was a blessing as i did a new treatment with the wording and to me it works better. But it was a little short so i used some 'postage stamp' stamps and covered up my error. The corners were clipped using one of the smaller detailed corner stamps that i have in my stash.

This was then secured onto a sheet of red card and trimmed to size. I always find it a lot easier to trim after i have secured onto some backing card. I have also noticed that when using double sided tape if i run a glue stick over the tape it gives me some extra time to slide and make minor adjustments before it sticks into place.

If you make a mistake its not the end of the world, its paper and it can be covered up, so please don't go beating your self up because you have made an error 'IT CAN BE SORTED OUT!'