A special gatefold Easter card...

Today's card is a special gatefold card in that the two halves of the "gate" don't just meet in the middle, they overlap.

Here you can see the two overlapping halves. When the card is closed, it is held in place by one wing of the blue butterfly on the right. The butterflies were made with a Martha Stewart butterfly punch. I doubled the butterfly on the right to make it stronger - punched two butterflies, ran one through the Xyron sticker maker and adhered them together.

The three pearls down the center of each butterfly were made with Liquid Pearls.

I scored the left side of the card and punched the edge with the Doily Lace Martha Stewart punch.  I also ran the right side through my Cuttlebug with the Swiss Dots folder.




The image was colored with ProMarkers. I absolutely love coloring with these alcohol markers. I have purchased most of mine from www.carpediemstore.com. They have very affordable prices and great service. To get all the detailed information about these markers and others made by the Letraset company, visit www.letraset.com.

As you can see the colors can be soft and muted, or vibrant.  When I color an image like this, I like to use a soft color to outline the image, creating a muted shadow. As I am still an alcohol marker novice, I decided to try two different colors for the shadow to see which I liked better. Here are the results:

This first image was outlined with a soft beige-tone marker. It could have been ivory or satin. I honestly don't recall.

BTW, I have no idea who made this stamp--it's an old one that I bought at our local crafts "second-hand" store called ArtScraps.

This second image was outlined with a pastel green, which is very much like a very light aqua color.  I think I like this outline color better than the beige color. It adds a brightness to the image and a nice contrast to all the yellow. 

I only used two different colors for each kind of flower and greenery. I used three different markers on each of the baskets--again, experimenting with what I thought might work and trying to learn from that. I wanted the baskets to be different in tone to better distinguish each one.

If you haven't yet tried coloring with alcohol markers, I highly recommend trying ProMarkers. They are affordable and great fun!

 

The inside of the card is a bit of a surprise when you open it. I like to think it's like opening a closet door and seeing that the inside of the closet has been nicely wall-papered.

Another doily and butterfly made a nice spot for a sentiment and for adding a personal note and signature. I lined this doily up exactly with the one on the front of the card.

 

I was able to line up the doilies by adding adhesive to the back of the inside doily, matching the front of it to the backside of the front doily and then closing just that half of the card to adhere the doily to the inside. Does that make sense?

I hope you enjoyed today's Easter card. It was great fun to make, and I hope the recipient enjoys it, too.

 

I am entering this card in the I ♥ ProMarkers challenge "Anything but square."

 

Thanks for stopping by, and remember to laugh--a little or a lot--every day!

Cheryl