You're the Gratest

One of the technique lessons in Week 1 of this year's Camp Scrap was on gloss gel resist. I decided to use it on this card, which I will be sending in my final shipment to Operation Write Home. I knew I wanted to use Lawn Fawn's "Best Pun Ever" stamp set, but was at a loss for design ideas. So I went cruising on Pinterest, and found this card, which I decided to CASE. Since I didn't want to reproduce it exactly, I made it a point not to look at the photo of it while I created mine.

I began by cutting a piece of green patterned paper from my scrap stash. I taped the "Triangle Pattern" stencil by Hero Arts/BasicGrey over that, and spread Liquitex Gloss Super Heavy Gel medium through the stencil. Unfortunately, in a couple of spots the medium spread under the stencil. But I figured I could probably cover those areas up later, so I just set it aside to dry, rather than starting over completely.

I stamped the cheese & grater on a scrap of 140 lb. watercolor paper in Ranger Archival Jet Black ink, then colored them in with Inktense pencils, blending the colors with a damp paintbrush. Once they were dry, I die cut them with the coordinating dies. I also stamped the greeting, from the same stamp set, on a piece of white cardstock, and die cut that using a "Nesting Scallops" circle die by Lifestyle Crafts.

Once my background piece was dry, I inked over it with Mowed Lawn Distress ink. Where I'd applied the gel medium resisted the ink, so it only stuck on the spaces in between. Then I had to decide how to cover my "mistakes" (a.k.a., opportunities for embellishment) from the medium going under the stencil. I figured I could use the strip I was cutting to ground the cheese & grater to cover one area, and the greeting piece for the other. So I cut the strip and cut off part of the scalloped circle. I inked both with Antique Linen Distress ink, just to tone them down a bit, then glued them in place, and glued the images down. The design looked a little too heavy on the right side, though, so I ended up adding a patterned paper strip to the left, which I also inked with Antique Linen. Finally, I matted that with a piece of yellow check patterned paper, mounted that onto a piece of kraft cardstock, and adhered the completed card front to a white A2 card base.