Purple Birthday Card

Another card from my archives: this is a birthday card I made a couple years ago for my friend Becky. She and I both like purple. For the background, I used purple white core paper, embossed a piece for the bottom half, and sanded both the bottom and top pieces. I covered the dividing line with a polka dotted sage colored ribbon and added a few eyelets for interest. On the green card stock, I stamped white swirls and green dots and lightly sanded the edges. On the cream colored card stock, I stamped swirls in purple (the color doesn't show well in the image) and green dots then inked the edges in green. The sentiment looks much better in person - it's embossed with a glittery purplish embossing powder.

The flower was cut with a Sizzix die, sanded, and attached with a green brad. The brad looks much more green in this image than it actually does in person. The textures and reflective properties between the paper and the brad are different. The camera picks up light reflecting off of these varied surfaces differently from our eyes. The result is that something that looks like it matches to our eyes may look totally different when photographed. I could have fixed this in Photoshop, by desaturating the color in the brad some before posting, but I'm feeling lazy today. The glittery sentiment is another difficult element to photograph. I typically use a polarizing filter to remove surface glare (e.g. in the eyelets) and bring out the colors (although this worked too well on the brad). Of course this also tends to remove the glitter effects. So, basically, I'm showcasing the design of this older card; I'll probably get a bit fussier with the colors on my newer cards. Heh.