Sunday, June 16, 2013

Happy Father's Day

My dad has always taken interest in our activities and all events of our lives. He is the only male in a family of 4 (although he now has 2 grandsons and a granddaughter). He had no choice but to take interest in some of the more girly aspects of our lives, one of them being crafts.

A while back my dad gave me a piece of birch bark and said that it was a nice piece with some nice usable areas. He had collected the bark on one of their nature walks and thought I might be able to use it somehow in one of my cards.

When someone contributes to my love for crafts, I try to use their present, be it a stamp, paper supplies, even a piece of nature, in a gift I can give back to them.

I knew I wanted to use the bark in my dad’s father’s day card. It took a while to come up with a masculine idea that would display the precious piece of nature. I love the slight irony of stamping an image of a tree on a piece of a tree.
 
 
 
 

Heather’s Stamping Haven and a camping weekend at Murphy’s Point was a huge help towards the production of this card. I spoke to; whom I can only assume was Heather – what a helpful, knowledgeable woman who has tried many products and techniques including stamping on birch bark.

I told her what I was looking to do, what my vision was and she suggested the best products to use and the best methods to apply to increase my rate of success.

Heather brought my attention to the beautiful Cling Tree Poem stamp. My first intentions were to heat emboss the image but she recommended because of the details in the words that I simply stamp the image using StazOn, an ink that is suitable for all sorts of surfaces including a possible nonporous bark.

Her concern, and mine, was that she had never stamped on the back side of the birch bark and I did not have enough bark to do a test run. That’s where the camping weekend comes in. At Murphy’s Point, we were surrounded by fallen birch trees. Some bark samples made their way home with me, along with a few tiny black ants (I think I am going to stay away from including nature in my projects. I do not need little critters crawling around my craft table).  

I am glad for the bark samples. It took a couple of tries to get the right amount of applied stamping pressure. I stamped the image onto the piece of bark and stamped the same image onto the white paper, each seperately. The two images were taped together aligning the images like you would with wallpaper.



I am pleased with this card. I think my dad will be happy with what I have done with his gift.

Happy Father’s Day to my dad and to all you fathers!!


From my inventory:
  • Fiskar paper trimmer
  • Tim Holtz scissors
  • Creative Memories paper trimmer
  • We R Memory Keepers - Urban Window Collection
  • Recollection - Green Faux Canvas
  • Tombow glue
  • Various cardstock
  • Birch bark
  • Kool Tak - 2 sided tape

Purchased:
  • Stampendous - Cling Tree Poem stamp
  • StazOn - jet black ink

2 comments:

  1. I love the way this card turned out. I very much love the tree on tree - clever! It's stunning. Really stunning.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I really like the alignment of the stamp. Beautiful techniques!

    ReplyDelete

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