Monochrome Cards Part One: Merci

Happy Friday! Hooray, it is almost the weekend, which I know many of us are looking forward to! :)

This week’s CASoloy challenge “Monochrome” and Muse challenge #105 both feature the use of a monochromatic color scheme…. very fun, and indeed challenging! The inspiration of creating a two-toned card was so intriguing, that I couldn’t wait to try and see what I could come up with!

In fact, I had so much fun with this, I ended up creating two cards, out of which I have created a two part mini series for you today! For part one of  this series, I have this black and white thank you card where I used masking to achieve a very modern, yet elegant feel.

I began by creating mask inside my Silhouette Studio, by typing up the word “merci” in an Arial Black font set to 88 pt. I cut this mask out of some scrap cardstock using my Silhouette Cameo; for now I was only going to be using the negative, and I set the die cut letters aside to be used a little later on.

I cut my card to 3 1/2″ by 5 1/2″ (folded), and positioned the negative of my mask in the center of the card. Using the “Music Notes” background stamp from Heidi Swapp, I cut out the top section of the music notes from the stamp and positioned it in a “wave” along my clear block. With some Jet Black StazOn ink, I stamped the image inside the negative of the mask until it was filled. Before removing the mask, I took a black multiliner and outlined all my letters to give them definition.

Now I brought in the letters that had been cut out of the cardstock; I applied a bit of removable adhesive to the backs, and laid them over the letters I had just created. Bringing in some tinsel Heidi Swapp color shine, I splashed on a few droplets of ink to add some interest to the card front. I then removed the letters and erased any remaining adhesive from the card front.

I stamped the flourish along the bottom portion of my card front using the same Heidi Swapp “Music Notes” stamp and black ink; I then trimmed along the edges of the flourishes, to create a nice edge on my card. The 1/4″ area that I had now cut off I planned to fill with some black paper.

Cutting a piece of black textured cardstock to 3 1/2″ by 5 1/2″, I adhered this to the back of my card front using dimensional adhesive, to help give the card a little bit of dimension. I also tied a black ribbon around the top of the flourish stamp and applied some Wink of Stella clear glitter to both the “merci” letters and the black textured paper.

I’ve really enjoy making my envelopes match the card that it comes with, so using the same process as for the letters on the card front, I created the “merci” sentiment along the bottom left of the envelope. I also stamped the music note stamp across the envelope flap to tie it all together.

While I am not a huge user of black, I really liked how this monochrome card turned out! Be sure to stop over to check out part two of this mini-series here…  “Monochrome Cards Part 2: Wishing on a Star“.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Challenges

This card is submtted into the CASology week 134 “Monochrome” challenge and the Muse challenge #105.

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