IBFD - It's a New Day

Hi everyone!  I'm a little late on this post.  My husband has been off for the last 3 days and has been making a mess of the kitchen.  He's been baking bread.  While I appreciate having nice hot, fresh bread, I don't like cleaning up the kitchen every time he steps in there.  I spent 2 hours cleaning the stove top the other day, and it looks like it hasn't been cleaned in 3 months.  I don't know how he is so sloppy when cooking stuff.  He certainly hasn't adopted the "clean as you go" method, that's for sure.  Usually, we can wait and run the dishwasher every second day, but I've had to run it every day this week.  And that sucker is full! It will give me a bit of a break from cleaning the kitchen when he goes back to work.

So anyway, I have a new card to show you.  Its for this week's challenge at The Brakefast Club - Challenge #10 - Ring in the new.  I saw this rooster image that I thought would make some really cute country cards.  This card isn't exactly country, but I thought the rooster would work well for the challenge since it rings in each new day. Here's my card:

Supplies:
Stamps:  Rooster (I Brake for Digis)
Papers:  DCWV (red cardstock), Bazzil (yellow - sun rays), Recollections (sun), The Paper Company (kraft), Wausau Exact Index 110# (white), Cougar 110# coated (vanilla card base)
Tools & Embellishments:  Swirling Lace around the page punch set (Martha Stewart), Classic Frame die (Spellbinders), black Sharpie marker, artists chalks (Loew Cornell), eyeshadow applicators (Dollar Store), kitchen sponge, light blue & green pigment ink (ColorBox Catseye), pop dots, spray fixative (Prismacolor), large corner rounder (EK Success)

This card was fairly simple, but there are a lot of pieces.  The first step is to sponge the sky.  I took some scrap pieces of cardstock and cut some cloud shapes.  Then, with a piece of sponge, I lightly tapped on some blue ink using the cloud shapes as masks on a 4x4 piece of white cardstock.  I sponged the sky & cloud background about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way down my background piece so that my "ground" layer would overlap it. Next I assembled my sun and sun rays.  I used scraps of cardstock again, and cut five long triangles of yellow cardstock.  I made sure they were fairly long since I wanted them to hang over the edge of my background.  I cut a circle from another scrap of orangy yellow cardstock.  I then used the little flower die from my Spellbinder's Classic Frame set to make the centre of the sun.  I glued the flower shape to the centre of the circle and glued the sun rays to the back of the circle, spacing them out evenly.  I decided where I wanted my sun to be on the card - about 1/3 way from the top - and glued it on the background.  The rolling hills are then made and applied.  To do this, I cut wavy pieces from scrap kraft cardstock.  I then used green ink to ink the edges to make it look more like grassy hills.  I cut the waves 4" long (same width of my background) and layered them on the background, slightly over lapping the bottom of the sun so that it looks like the sun is just rising up from behind the hills.  Next, I coloured the rooster with artists chalks using eyeshadow applicators, then spraying it with a fixative so the chalk wouldn't rub off. Once the rooster was dry I cut closely to the edge of the image and attached it to the front with pop dots.  I attempted to make a rub on for the sentiment, but the ink didn't transfer very well and was too light to see very well, so I just took a sharpie and traced over the printed sentiment.  Once everything was glued down where I wanted it and the way I liked it, I trimmed the sun rays with sharp scissors even with the background cardstock.  I then took a corner rounder and trimmed the corners, cutting through all layers at once.

In order to get the right size mat for a 4x4 piece, I cut my red card stock 5x5 and used my Swirling Lace punch set (yay! first time using it).  I adhered that to a 5x5 card base, and then attached my "picture".

It may seem like there's a lot of detail and steps to make this card, but all in all, it probably only took me about an hour to make the card.  And I got to use up a few pieces of my ever growing scrap stash.

I hope you like the card and try making a paper piecing project yourself.  It is a very fun way to use up your scraps.

Take care...

Cat