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My husband is a big fan of Johnny Cash aka “the man in black” so I thought it would be appropriate to make him a mostly black birthday card for his birthday this past weeekend. I wanted to see how much black I could use layered together to get a fun card that was nonetheless masculine looking, despite being a shaker card.
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The supply list for this project, with links, is available below.
I started off with an A2 side folding black card stock card base and I used the Simon Says Stamp Happy Birthday Circle Die to cut a round window out of the front. I also cut the same die out of a glittery black card stock and a gray card stock as I assumed I would need to use a different color for the Happy Birthday greeting that the die cuts out to be layered inside the circle. I then ran the front of the card stock base through my Gemini inside the We R Memory Keepers Next Level Embossing folder to give the front a manly texture.
To create the shaker portion that was going to go behind the circle cut out of the front, I used my We R Memory Keepers Fuse Tool to fuse together 2 sides of an inexpensive sheet protector, using one of the already sealed hole-punched edge as well, cutting off the excess of that edge with a scissors. I then filled the created pocket with a mix of black & gold micro beads, black, white & silver seed beads, and a few black sequins. Once appropriately filled (not too much as it is a shallow pocket) I sealed the final side with the Fuse Tool and adhered it behind the circle opening with Elizabeth Craft Designs 6 mm Double Sided Adhesive Tape. To disguise the shaker pocket from the back and to allow a place to write a message inside the black card, I lined the interior faces of the card with gray cardstock cut to 5 ¼” x 4”.
For the greeting on the front that goes over the circle, I carefully adhered the greeting cut from gray card stock on top of the greeting and circle that I also cut from the glittery black card using a Zig glue pen. Since the gray didn’t create quite enough contrast with the mostly black shaker that it was sitting on top of, I carefully traced over the greeting using a silver pen to change the color just enough to make it visible, while still keeping with the masculine color scheme. For the finishing touches I added a strip of black glitter washi tape across the bottom portion of the card and added a few black sequins around the greeting circle that were then completed with a dot of Black Tie Enamel Accents in their centers.
Although the greeting may be a bit on the scrolly side for a man’s card, the color scheme really offset any girly feel it may have had. Also the variety of textures – embossed background, glittery black circle, shiny black sequins, black glitter washi – is what makes the black on black look work. If the textures were too similar, the card would look kind of flat. It’s the variation in texture that gives the tone on tone look its visual interest. This is a good rule of thumb for any tone on tone look whether it be on a cards, scrapbook pages, or even room interiors – vary the scale and type of texture to create interest.
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