Today I’d like to share a wedding card I made recently.

You may not be aware, but I make cards for a local gift shop. For the past few months the own has been screaming out for wedding cards.  She can’t get enough of them, she said.  So I’ve been working on wedding cards over the past few weeks so she can restock her shelves.

The dilemma I have is that the payment for the cards is not great.  It helps restock my craft supplies for sure, but it’s not enough to go and have a spending spree. For each card, I am paid $5, which isn’t too bad, except the owner loves cards with lots of ribbon and pearls, and other bling.

Trouble is, I can’t justify adding a lot of bling if I want a reasonable return.  (There is a reason I’m telling you all this, I promise!)

I recently purchased the Spellbinders M-Bossabilities folder.  It’s one of those reversible folders, so you get two designs in one folder.  Pretty darned cool.

Anyway, the one I chose was perfect for wedding cards (see above).  So I made my card, but felt it needed more. More of what I wasn’t sure. So I tried a dry run with a couple of pearls – it made a huge difference to the look of the card.  It was elegance plus, compared to the original card with no pearls.

But…. adding the number of pearls I needed to spruce this card up was going to cost a fortune. Until I remembered my Liquid Perfect Pearls.

As can be seen above, I made a number of ‘pearls’ using the liquid perfect pearls.  But because the rest of the card was already finished and put together, I wasn’t willing to do them directly onto the card.  I took the leftover plastic from craft purchases (such as Spellbinder dies or Cuttlebug Embossing Folders) because it’s nice and sturdy, and added some pearls to it.

The best thing about this is it doesn’t matter if every pearl isn’t perfect, as you don’t add them until they’re dry.  As you can see, I did a heap in different colors.  That way you’ll always have a variety of colors on hand to use when neeeded.

But I digress…

Once the pearls were well dried (I left them overnight, but 2-3 hours is generally enough), I took them off with a craft tool, added a small amount of Glossy Accents, and added them to the card.

One of the tricks I learned doing this is to add the pearls and then while it’s still wet, gently tap the plastic base onto a table or workbench.  That will help to round them up like bought pearls.  It does take a bit of practice to get them fairly even, but I personally think it’s well worth it.

If you enlarge the photo (of the hand-made pearls) you’ll see I tried to make some ‘pearls’ in heart shapes.  They all disintergrated – I think I made them too thin, but I’ll give it another go down the track.  Who knows, they could turn out perfect!

 Okay, so now onto the card!

This card was incredibly easy to make.

I used ivory cardstock, A2 size, and folded it in half.  I then took another sheet of cardstock in the same color and cut it in half, making it slightly smaller than the base card.

Taking the Spellbinders M-Bossabilities folder – Lovely Lattice design – I embossed only about three quarters of the card topper.

I then took a strip of the same cardstock, cutting it to size to fit across the card, then found some matching ribbon to go over that strip.  After adhering the ribbon (ensuring the ribbon was folder under the topper for tidiness), I adhered the strip with the ribbon to the topper.  Then I cut a label from Spellbinders Labels 20, and stamped it with the greeting. In this case, I used a Gina K designs stamp.

I placed the label to the left side, then took a leftover flower from a wedding card I’d made last year for my nephew, and literally rubbed it over the ink pad of Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Spun Sugar.  I then sprayed it lightly with water and let it dry.  Once it was completely dry (about 15 minutes) I used some Stickles Stardust around the edges to give it some sparkle.

Using a pointy craft tool, I made a small hole in the topper so I could feed the wire part of the flower through to the back so it wasn’t seen.

It ws at that point that I decided the card needed pearls to give it more elegance.  Don’t get me wrong, it was okay before, just not as great as it could have been.

Next time I make a card like this, I’ll probably put the Liquid Perfect Pearls on before putting the rest of the card together.  Or I might just do what I did here, and make them off the card then add them. Yep, I’m a scaredy cat!