Taheerah Atchia

Hi everyone! How are you all today? 🙂 Did you enjoy the Uniko Studio Release yesterday? If you’re wanting some goodies I’d grab them quick before they sell out! 🙂

So, I’m sure you’ve all seen the subway art trend that’s been making its way onto cards recently. I’ve seen some stamp sets pop up here and there that have some sentiments designed to fit together to give a subway art effect. They’re cool. I’ve seen a few that group various sentiments together already into one stamp so you get a subway art effect in one go. They’re cool too. Some even have images built into that as well.. They’re even cooler.

But let’s face it – if I’m going to do a subway art card, I’m not going to do it the easy way am I?

Oh no.

This girl likes a challenge.

So, then… what would a subway art card consist of for me? Just how difficult would I make it?

Well… 60 individually stamped images, from I think about 57 different individual stamps. That difficult enough? No? How about some heat embossing thrown into the mix? With two different colours?

That ought to just about do it:

 

Okay, to say that I love this card would be an understatement. To say that I’m proud of it would be too. I mean look at it!! Just look at it!!! I did that!!!! Me!!!! I mean, it’s AMAZING!!!!! It’s INCREDIBLE!!!!!

Ahem. Anyway.

 

I’m not going to go into all the ‘I stamped this here and that there’ kind of step-by-step that I normally do. That would take far too long here and I certainly can’t remember precisely which stamp from which set went where. But I will talk you through my process a bit and how I designed it as I think that would be the most helpful thing. And there is a supply list at the end as always so hopefully that will also help.

 

So I started by planning the main stamps for my card. I knew it was going to be a birthday theme so I pulled out a bunch of birthday sets and set about working out my positioning. To help with this I had an A2 card base ready and laid out the stamps on top of that to get a rough feel for what I could position where. I knew I wanted different orientations and mixes of sizes and images too, so this took a bit of work.

I focused on the positioning of the biggest stamps first and then worked out where I could fit some of the smaller ones. I couldn’t fir every single stamp on when I planned as the backs of the stamps kind of get in the way. But I got a good enough idea to give me a starting point. What I usually do at this point is take a photo on my phone to use as a reference. Here’s what that looked like for this card:

 

Very busy!

To keep the relative positions as close to the idea as possible I then placed a large block over the card and lifted all the stamps off in one go. I’m not going to stamp all the images at once but this keeps my layout in place and I can then pull off individual stamps and work with them knowing where they would go and which stamps sat next to them.

 

I built my card a few steps at a time. As I was heat embossing in two colours I had to decide which colours would go where and only stamp a few at a time. I wish I could tell you that I planned in advance which stamps would be gold and which silver, but I kind of just planned it on the fly as I went along! My only rule was that I didn’t want too much of the same colour near each other.

 

I started in the bottom right corner and filled right to left, then the middle left to right, then the top right to left, a few stamps at a time. I used Versamark ink and obviously that is quite hard to see, so I stamped one or two images at once at most, then coated with embossing powder before stamping a few more, all without heat setting just yet. I alternated embossing powders as I went, so to just fill one ‘row’ took a while.

 

When I felt like I’d made enough progress (or when I got nervous about messing up, lol) I heat set what I had to ‘save’ it then carried on. I guess a bit like a gamer saves their progress on a level as they go in case they die (ask me how I know… ). What I can tell you is I made this card on the first attempt! Seriously!!

 

Anyway, Where was I? Ah yes, a little at a time and heat emboss. I continued with this process slowly. As I stamped the images I was able to get them closer together than in my plan, or in some cases just have a bit more space between them. As this occurred I pulled out some smaller stamps to fill in the gaps, and in some cases selectively inked only part of the stamps. I did a bit of this as I went, where it was obvious, and then again at the end, when looking at the final design and spotting where to add extra images. It’s a little easy to go overboard and cram too much in, but I think I managed to get the balance just about right.

 

One last tip when you do this sort of card. An embossing powder tool is pretty much essential for preventing unwanted stray flecks of embossing powder on your card. I use the EK Success Powder Tool. That and a fine paintbrush (and a steady hand and a LOT of patience!) enabled me to get as close to perfect as possible with my embossing. Not 100% perfect. But close. *wink*

 

Right, that’s enough of my preaching! 😛 I hope the above explanation was useful rather than patronising! It’s hard to know what is helpful and what is obvious!

Oh, and I know the detail is a little hard to make out in these photos because of the lighting and focus, so here is another shot that hopefully makes it clearer:

 

Anyway, I would so *love* to hear what you think of this card!! I am so very proud of it and really hope it is appreciated by more than just me, lol! Please do leave some love, and if you have any questions I would be more than happy to answer them! Thanks so much for stopping by, I hope to see you again soon!

Supplies: