My Groovi Card from January Class

Good Morning Ladies,

I hope that you are all well, we had a very hard frost to start the day, it was a lovely bright day but chilly, in fact the back garden didn't really get the sun so stayed frozen solid all day. It was lovely to see the sun though, it did highlight how dirty my windows were though!!

Today I am sharing with you the card that I started at Groovi club a couple of weeks ago, I will confess that I had no idea just how much work goes into completing a design like this.!  The lovely Ronk Langton creates the designs for us to copy, they are all so beautiful, she is a very talented lady. Before going to a Groovi class I looked at the plates as though they were one whole design in themselves but now I look at the different elements that make up the plates enabling you to combine bits from different plates, which is what this design is, we used the same plate that we have taken the flower from for this design for our December card (that I haven't quite finished ), meaning you get your money's worth out of every plate.

This design started with us Embossing an Octagon in the centre of the parchment, we then took the flower element with its leaves and little white berries and added that to the inner and outer of each side of the Octagon, this made up the main part of the design, the butterflies were from the same plate as the flowers, we didn't emboss them this time, we didn't want the white edge so we put the plate under the parchment and drew the butterfly freehand lightly following the outline. It gives a much softer look I believe, we then filled in the colour on both sides of the parchment, being VERY careful on the front! Colouring both sides really enhances the richness of the coloured pencils. We had to go back and emboss the white dots a few times between doing the different stages.  

Once all the colouring was complete we moved on to the border...….

I have shared this image so that you could see the border in more detail, you have to line the edge of the inner box with the line of dots on your Grid Plate, (which is what has taken me so much time as my eyes are clearly rubbish and in need of a new prescription). Once lined up you emboss each dot individually for the first row, then the second row you emboss every other dot to give a pretty pattern.
The last and most time consuming element is Picot Cutting the whole piece out of the A4 piece of parchment, to do this you line the outside line of your piece with a line of dots on the grid, makes sure is straight (which I found a tricky, probably because I doubt myself too much)! Once lined up you go around with a 'Two needle' perforating tool, placing the longest pin into the last whole of the previous piercing (this helps with straightness and spacing of the holes).  After you have gone all around, you take your Snips or Scissors and cut between the holes to create the 'Picot' edge.
It looks so effective,
I finished my card by colouring some gemstones and adding them to the centres of all of the flowers and to create the bodies of the butterflies.  Oh and I added the 'Happy Birthday' to the centre, I was so worried that I was going mess up on this last hurdle, but I didn't !!
I love how it turned out, I hope you like it too, I would 100% recommend Groovi to everyone, it's a lot of work but the results are definitely worth the time and effort you put in!

Pat came over yesterday and after we ate lunch we both got down to some serious Groovi work, Pat was finishing the card we made in Decembers Class, it was nice to have the 'Expert' on hand for advice!  Thanks so much for coming over Pat xxx

Hoping to see Sue today for some more crafty fun !

I hope that you all have a lovely day, Hugs on their way to those of you in pain xxx

love and hugs to all of you,

Sandra
xxxxxx