ID# BVCG February 2010 - Collaboration
Me, Myself & I - Happy Birthday easel card
7"W x 5 "H

February 2010 Galleria has a theme of collaboration. Find a partner and collaborate... I'm not a person that collaborates, so needed to come up with something else. Then I thought of alter egos and I have now collaborated with two others (me & myself, or is that myself & I or ??). Anyway came up with the layout quite a while ago in my head, and finally today I was able to create it. Very happy with the results. It came out exactly how my mind pictured it.

So I started with finding a quote that had a "me" tone to it. I thought Lao Tzu fit my mood completely. So I wrote the quote using a funky Neuland style I love and would lend itself nicely to being cut with my Cricut. Scanned it, cleaned up the text in my photo editing program, converted it into the right extension and cut it out on heavy black cardstock. You can see the actual text I wrote at the bottom of the page.

Now I had to incorporate the word "me" on the front somewhere, so I wrote it as a decorative border around my cutwork using a white colored pencil and a monoline font I learned from Lynn Slevinsky, a Guild member.

card closed

card with white background behind to see actual cut letter design

So the next layer is the alcohol ink on clear plastic. One of my favorite techniques, dropping ink blobs and then dropping more ink within the blobs, creating a ripple effect. Such an organic look. Although when I was looking at this one, I wanted to put gears on it. Next time.

I cut out 2 windows and sandwiched the plastic between them.

Also needed to include the word "myself" which I wrote in the same style as the front border with a Zig black writer.

And the 3rd layer is the "I" which I portrayed as a Greek column, colored with colored pencils, then balancing the "&" on top using a Zig writer to outline the letter and 2 shades of green Ritz micro fine glitter.

Now I really don't like making things that don't have a useful end result, so decided to make this into a birthday card and added the words "wish you" under the column.

Now for an easel card, you need something to stop the card from falling flat, so I created a heavy cardstock border, cut out the candle and heart shapes, and wrote the words "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" with the bullet end of the Zig writer, adding little serifs. The candle was colored with colored pencils and the flame and heart with the Ritz Glitter. I also colored the little lip that goes against the front of the card with the black (didn't like it in the white). I also lightly colored the white cardstock with Pebbles Pearlescent chalks (hard to see)

this is the text I wrote before all the altering.

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