Wednesday 27 May 2015

Cas-ology Story

It was an unlooked for, and unexpected, pleasure to have my card chosen at Casology for the Music challenge. Even more so when I was offered the opportunity to be a guest designer for this week's challenge.




Given my background as an English teacher, my current work as a Young Adult librarian and being in possession of a long-established reading habit, story to me will always be books.  As indeed, it is for many of my friends.

This presented something of a problem to me as a stamper - the only  stamp set I had to hand for this is Darkroom Door's Bookworm. It's got the coolest reading sentiments and it was in support of my reading habit that I originally got this set.

The set is semi-distressed in style, with lots of shades and shadows but I wanted to convey the idea that the books are a source of light and joy - more than dusty pages and antique covers. That is why I water-coloured each book in the pile in a rich shade of the rainbow and so making the book pile the focal point of the card. 

Then I counterbalanced the weight of the books by stamping the sentiment as a reflection of an imaginary vertical line down the centre of the card. I divided the card by scoring a line under the books. 

Yet, it just looked wrong. Originally, I had imagined the books sitting in a sea of words but working on the theory that its best to plan your card and then take one thing out, I had omitted that. But after a bit of a think, I masked the books and stamped the top zone of the card in pale grey using Dictionary. This was more successful as the books were then grounded to the page but the airiness of the stamp did not close up the white space but was more akin to adding texture. (So the thing I had to 'take out' was to omit a second score line I'd planned.) 

I'm very happy with the contrast between the monochrome of the sentiment and background words and the vibrant rainbow of books: the story is the joy.




This will make a great card for friends who love books and reading, whose idea of a good time is sneaking time to read a good book! Like me.

Ingredients
Card: Whisper White
Stamps: Darkroom Door Bookworm, SU Dictionary
Ink: Basic Grey, Black
Other: Derwent watercolour pencils.





7 comments:

  1. So great to have you as GD this week! Love your rainbow of books!

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  2. This is a wonderful card featuring books. Love your subtle background. Thanks so much for being our guest designer this week at CASology.

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  3. So happy to have you as our guest designer over at CASology this week, Jan! :)

    I love the bright pile of books against the word background! Perfect for each other!!!

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  4. Congrats of being the CASology GD, you must be super excited!! Brilliant card for the theme, the background is perfection!

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  5. Well, it was certainly worth persevering! Love the dimension in these books, despite being a one-layer card. Great masking too! Fabulous to have you guest designing this week at CASology!

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  6. Jan, I love the rich, bright colors you used on your books...and what a great sentiment! Perfect for the cue this week...so great to have you guest designing with us at CASology!

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  7. Hey Jan! Congrats on your win. Your card is so cute. I love the colors you used on those books of yours. Nicely done.

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