Tyre Swing

Hello lovely peeps

This is my entry for the Innovation Master category over at the MFT 'Card Design Superstar' competition.

The monkey (Sunshine and Friendship set) swings from side to side - attached to a branch with some string (the branch is a tree from the Sweet Safari set, turned on it's side). 

When you open up the card you see a crocodile ready to get in the water ...

and then a sloth bobbing along in his rubber ring (he slides from side to side)

The inspiration for my project was the gorilla from the Sunshine and Friendship set (though I've coloured him like an orangutan). Like the other animals in the set he is sat in a rubber ring, but I thought it would be fun to turn it into a tyre and have him swinging from a tree over a river.

I thought a z-fold card would be a good way of adding the river on (just score an A4 piece of card half way and then score one of those sides in half - cut part off to leave a square shape and turn the cut off piece around)

 I used the curve die from the Surf and Turf set to shape the spare piece into a river shape.

I coloured it with speckled egg distress ink which I loaded onto a blending foam and dragged along the card in the direction of water flow.

In the centre section I wanted a little channel that one of the critters could slide along but the die that fit the shape best (again, the Surf and Turf set) was too wide so I cut only one end of it (let the bit that you don't want to cut hang off the edge of your cutting platform).

Once that was cut I lined up the other end of the die to give a nice rounded edge.

(as you can see below I only cut a tiny piece of card out the second time)

I wasn't happy with the main card base that I coloured with blending foams so started again with a piece of A4 piece of watercolour card.  For the grassy background I dabbed distress inks (crushed olive, twisted citron, mowed lawn) onto an old poly pocket and spritzed them with water before laying it on top of the card.

Once this was dry I folded as before, then started to stamp some leaves in the top right corner with black Versafine ink. I used post-it notes to mask off the ones I stamped first so they were layered underneath each other.

After stamping I coloured them with rustic wilderness distress ink and a damp paintbrush, then once that was dry I covered all the leaves with glossy accents. 

The sentiment was stamped and embossed with white detail powder onto black card

The animals were all coloured with alcohol markers, mostly Copics.

I'll leave you with a little video of the orangutan swinging away :D

Thanks for stopping by, stay safe
Katrina x