Golden Wedding Anniversary Card

I love making cards

PICTURES AT THE END

I was recently asked to make a card for somebody, it was for her grandparents golden wedding anniversary.

I thought I would share it with you.

I really enjoy making things for special occasions, and cards are one of my favourite things to do. So here it is.......

I took a piece of gold card first, decided which way round I wanted the finished card to be, and then looked through my card and paper stock to find some inspiration regarding colours and textures of card and paper.

When I had found a number of pieces I was happy with, I placed them on top of each other to see which pieces went well together.

While I was looking through my paper and old cards, I found a lovely picture of quilled flowers, which got my creative juices flowing.

I wanted to keep the card quite simple but pretty.  And of course, as it is a special day, I wanted the card to reflect that.

I started to make small flowers and leaves using cream, brown, gold and peach paper.  I then chose a nice piece of card to mount them onto, and started to lay them out to see what sort of arrangement I wanted and decided that I didn't want to use the gold and brown ones.

The next step was to hand emboss a cream coloured piece of card on one side and lay a white card over it with an oval cut-out to get a few ideas of layout for the writing or printing I was planning on putting on the front.

I didn't really like the regimented look of the card and so I placed all pieces of card 'on the wonk', just to see what it would look like, and I liked it, and so, taking my laptop and printer I chose which font and words I wanted and printed them onto some wonderful water colour paper, I loved the fantastic texture it had to it, unlike the smooth card I was using throughout the rest of the card.

I popped the printed piece into the oval card and mounted it onto the embossed cream card 'on the wonk' using double sided foam pads to give it some depth.

Once I had done that, I turned my attention to the flowers again, and while I was making them, found that I had made a butterfly, which I thought would look lovely on its own on the opposite side to the flower arrangement that I had in my head, so I set to placing the flowers to see what came out of my head to the card.  I dobbed a little pearl paint onto the edges of each leaf and flower, and the butterfly, and tried it with gold paint too, but wasn't happy with that look, so I put those to one side and just used the plain and pearl ones.

It needed more, and scratching my head I came up with the idea of using wire, which I had done on previous cards. I used a gold plated jewellery making wire, but you could use any really.  Gold looked good, so I used my round nosed pliers to make swirls on the ends of the wire and glued them to the card using my glue gun, but only in the areas that I knew I would be placing a flower, to make sure it would cover up the glue. 

Next I popped the flowers and leaves in place using either my glue gun or diamond glaze, depending on the size of the piece and the place I wanted it to go, if I wanted the flower to sit on the two different layers of card I used my glue gun as it gave the back of the flower a bit of depth, but if it was a delicate leaf and I was using it on just one level, I used diamond glaze.   I added a few gold beads here and there and trimmed the corners of the card.

Once the front of the card was done, I put double sided tape on the back of the cream card and mounted it 'on the wonk' to the gold base card and put some pretty paper inside for the person to write in.

Onto the box, I used heavy cardboard from and old diary I had, and covered it with tape to strengthen the joins, and then covered it in card stock. dressed the inside and out with ribbon. and made a bow to put on the top, I made a gift tag from gold card, embossed it and mounted it onto some lovely paper I had and then trimmed it into shape and edged it with gold paint. Popped a piece of gold cord into a hole I made using a hole punch, and boom, done.

As always, I had to add a bit more bling, and so I added an elasticated sequin ribbon to finish the box, this is just used as a closure for the box, like a ribbon but without the need to tie and untie it each time you open it.

I was going to add four pieces of embossed gold card to the lid, but I thought it was too busy, so i left it as it is. I like it.

The card was wrapped in gold tissue paper and topped with a piece of protective packaging to prevent the flowers from being squashed.

Let me know what you think, I loved making it, and I think I may make some more quilled flowers to add to my collection, as I think I need more practise. I might even get myself a book to learn some more techniques.

Hope you enjoyed this, next time I will either do a video or take a few more pictures, I didn't think about it until afterwards, sorry.

Have a great day what ever you are up to, I hope I have inspired you to get crafting.