An alternative anniversary card

It's my aunt and uncle's 40th wedding anniversary next month (you will already have seen the stitch I made for the occasion) so today I decided to do an anniversary card for them. One thing I have noticed is that cards that are for a couple (ie not the ones from a wife to her husband) all seem a little bit girly. All well and good, but men celebrate anniversaries too, and the best card will be for both members of a couple, whether a hetero or homosexual couple.

Anyway, enough drivel, here's to the card! I've been looking at Tim Holtz tags lately, and he has been revisiting some of his techniques. I took a few of those techniques for the card.

This is the first technique - stencil embossing. Basically you use a stencil and add distress ink through it, then before the ink dries you add clear embossing powder, take off the excess and heat set it. You get a lovely shine to the hearts which you can just see at the top of the picture.

A slightly different technique to what Tim does, basically I added some stencil words in texture paste and then added distress embossing powder over the top. Leave it to dry completely (one hour at least) before heat setting the powder. I didn't wait so it's ended a little paler than it should have. Still looks good.

Here is the second technique - industrial grunge (something like that anyway). Basically you emboss some foil then use black soot paint and a blending pad to get the paint into the grooves, giving the whole thing an industrial feel. Works best with cogs, rivets, clocks etc but works well with the heart folder here.

I used some Madame Payraud paper for the background and distress inked the sides before putting the foil in the centre. I also used the same paper for the hearts, die cutting them and inking the sides with barn door and a little bit of stickles, before die cutting 40 and painting it in brass. Finally I tied some twine around the card, adding a love heart charm. The whole thing was then put on white card.