Asian Acetate

Over at Paper Artsy, Carol Quance has been using some beautiful Paper Artsy stamps in really imaginative projects one of which included acetate. Now, this may seem unconnected, but today my Magpie Mate went in to work as a Maths teacher for the last time - he's taking early retirement! He's a true Magpie too and he's had twenty-two years to hoard all kinds of things at work: oh, dear most of them have found their way into the nest over the last week as he empties his desk! But one really useful acquisition has been a big box of acetate sheets. Here is what I made with some...

I loved Carol's stunning pink and orange image, but I wanted to create an Asian themed card. I love all things Asian and on Tuesday all my birthdays and Christmas came at once when I received an amazing piece of Happy Mail from a very generous crafting friend, Dianne, aka Magpie Cousin! I used some of her lovely hand-coloured paper for my card and some of the beautiful, Chinese paper she sent me. I decided to make a middle section to my card with acetate butterflies stamped  from a Paper Artsy 'Wings' plate and little antennae made from what I think are meant to be flower centres for handmade flowers - my mum found them in a charity shop and gave them to me. This was quite a challenge and  was it difficult to photograph! I took the picture is taken in our conservatory. The painting on the door my daughter's first 'commission' when she was about eleven and I love the cheery colours and shapes so much I've never wanted to paint over them!

I love playing with Shrink plastic, but I didn't have any of the jewellery 'bits and pieces' needed for Carol's gorgeous bracelet design, so I compromised and added an embellishment to the card made from a piece of Shrink Plastic dye cut in an oval shape with a dye-cut Shrink Plastic frame. I stamped the same Lynne Perrella lady on my Shrink Plastic as the image inside the card and edged the card with Graphic 45 paper of an Asian design.

The reflections on the acetate made photographing it difficult. Hopefully if you click on the images you can see in a bit more detail. This paper had a lovely water-colour texture and the layer above it was gold leaf and terra-cotta. Unfortunately, it's hard to see the glitter of the gold under the image in a photo, but it does gleam irl! I edged down one side with some braid, which is probably more Indian than anything else, but it seems to blend in with the mood of the card, I think. I added two little motifs from the LP plate over on the right.

As Carol pointed out, acetate cards are a challenge because you can see the back of everything! I covered the back of my image with another piece of the beautiful water-colour paper. The Graphic 45 paper is double-sided so there is a design whichever way you look at it, and I created a little dye-cut frame from double-sided Prima paper too to place at the corner. This shows through the card like a looking-glass in the background, I think. I had no dye-cut of flowers so I adapted a snow-flake dye, which I coloured with alcohol inks with a pearl at the centre. I fixed on the butterflies and flower with glue dots. I was really pleased with the effect of the layers of acetate, but unfortunately it was difficult to capture the full effect.

I have decided to make this a card to wish my DH a happy retirement! Here it stands  with a nice cup waiting for some China Tea to be poured. We'll get out the Champagne later! Thank you, Carol for such inspiring and beautiful projects this week.