Aloha, all!
This is the last Christmas Card I’ll be sharing with you this year, but it’s one of the most special. It’s not a Fun Fold or any of those Fancy things. But it is a one-of-a-kind card that I made for a one-of-a-kind kid – our teenage grandson, Quin. And it’s made using a technique that’s been all over the Internet and the Stampin’ Up! world as well this year – the “Eclipse Technique.” I’ve heard other names for this, and it’s definitely not new. But, with the real honest-to-goodness eclipse that took place during 2017, this name seemed to stick.
If you spend much time on my blog, you know that my particular style of photographing my cards is to have them set at an angle so that you can see that it’s a folded card and not just a wall hanging. But, for this card, shooting the photo straight on gave a much better sense of the technique that the angled card.
But enough of the photography – on to the technique. It’s really quite simple. (1) Figure out which Designer Series Paper or Stamped Image you’re going to use for your card front. (2) Decide on a solid color for your mat (if you’ve got a light design up front, dark is better in the back, and vice versa). (3) Get out your Large Letter or Large Number Framelits dies, and arrange them as you’d like them to appear on the front of your card. I used 4 letters, but 5 is squeezable, especially if one is the letter “I” or the number one. With 4 letters, one of which was an I, I could spread these out a little bit. (Hint for the next week or so – 2 0 1 8 works wonderfully!) (4) Remove the letters from the paper and adhere the printed paper or stamped layer to the mat so that the color shows through the letters. (5) Finally, apply some Foam Adhesive Strips on the back of the letters and adhere them over their spots on the image. (6) SPECIAL step for letters with a central cut-out area, such as A, B, D, O, P and Q, and the numerals 4, 6, 8 and zero: Don’t pop the center pieces up with the foam strips. Instead, when the rest of the letter is popped up, adhere those center pieces flat onto the paper. Check out the Q in this project.
While Quin is not having the best year (that happens with teenagers quite a lot!), he’s still close to our hearts, and we look forward to his receiving this card, made especially for him!
