Papertrey Ink's Blog Hop 4

It's Blog Hop time yet again at Papertrey Ink! I'm not home from class yet, but thanks to Blogger's new feature allowing you to prepare posts to publish at a set time, I can share this with you on time. Hopefully I'll be able to stop in to the PTI forum later to check out the other participant's projects.

This month's theme was to use acetate in your projects. I have a little acetate secret to confess. I have tons and tons of acetate--I mean boxes and boxes of the stuff. That's because one of the schools I worked at years ago had an old heat transfer transparency making machine. Once photocopiers were started to be used to make overhead transparencies those machines were kind of discarded. One of those dinosaur machines ended up in my home, along with the boxes of no longer "useable" acetate sheets that were used in the machines and didn't work in photocopiers. I recently dumped the machine (I'm sure the trash collectors were wondering what it was--and it weighed a ton, too!), but I still have plenty of acetate sheets to use in my crafting.

Anyway, here's the info about the card. I was inspired by the sentiment in the new Boards & Beams set. I created a magic card to capture the meaning of the sentiment. You can find a tutorial for this type of card here. When the card is closed, the first image you see is a plain, uncolored house image from the set. I used one of the pieces from the Guide Lines set to make a grid pattern on the front of the house, kind of like the pattern of the shingles on the roof. The large oval was cut out using the Coluzzle


When the ribbon tab is pulled, it reveals a hidden, full-color house image, along with the sentiment. The uncolored acetate overlay falls in place right over the colored image, making it look like the image has been magically colored in.

I used Copic markers to color the house and plants and added just a little sponged Aqua Mist sky around the top of the house. I squeezed in the sentiment verses at the bottom of the panel. Having the empty, uncolored house become filled with color seemed to me to be a perfect match (or metaphor) to go along with the sentiment.

The card was somewhat time-consuming to create, but I'm pleased with the final results. It's a way to use acetate that's different than what I usually think of when I reach for it (shaker cards, see-through cards, overlays). Here's a close-up view of the "magic" panel.

Be sure to stop by the Papertrey Ink forum to find links to other participating bloggers so you can see some other great ideas for using acetate--which I certainly need if I ever hope to make a dent in my "collection . . . "

Materials Used:
Boards & Beams and Guide Lines stamp sets, Lemon Tart and Aqua Mist Palette ink, Lemon Tart, Summer Sunrise, and Cream cardstock, Summer Sunrise grosgrain ribbon (Papertrey Ink); Jet Black ink (Staz-on); oval template (Coluzzle); markers (Copic Ciao); 1" circle punch (Stampin' Up!); copper brad (Making Memories)