Happy Birthday Cactus

I have a really sharp card to share with you today, I hope it prickles your fancy! 😀 …. ahh I love puns. I used some textured pearl cardstock to make this cactus card today.

I started with an A2 sized panel and a couple different green ink sprays. I wanted to add some interest and color to this piece which will be what is die cut to make the cactus.

I have a stack of dog pee pads that I used when I’m spraying inks to help keep the surrounding area clean. I just spread it out over my work surface and I don’t have to worry about the ink getting all over my desk (and all the mess that is on my desk!). When I’m done, I just fold it up and it reuse it several times.

Once the spray inks were dry, I added some green and brown ink to deepen the color, using blending brushes.

Once that piece was dry, I die cut the cactus from it. I also used the Stardream Metallic Flame to die cut flowers to go on the cactus as well as some stripes to decorate the pot that the cactus will go in. I also used the pearl ivory cardstock to cut a few strips that I will color to go on the pot.

I used a couple different alcohol markers to color the ivory stripes. Alcohol markers are great for this and dry really quickly!

Once I had this pieces done, I focused on the background. I used another piece of the pearl ivory to hot foil a frame and sentiment. I started with the rectangle frame and taped it face down onto my cardstock with just a piece of tape at the top to create a hinge.

Then, I cut a piece of bronze hot foil and lifted the frame up to put the foil underneath, with the pretty side touching the face of the hot foil plate.

I wanted to see if I could hot foil the sentiment at the same time as the frame, so I laid them down on the foil and taped them into place as well.

Once my hot foil machine was ready and my plate sandwich all heated up, I ran it through my die cutting machine. It worked! Except I did get a lot of over foiling because I had such a large sheet of foil on there.

I used a sand eraser to take off all of the over foiling. This works really well, but try and not rub it over the areas of foil you want to keep as it can scratch the foil.

All that was left was assembling my card. I loved how it turned out – the foil and the pearl cardstock are so pretty!