Chalk It Up To Being Irish

I love St. Patrick Day which is why I guess I love making cards and wishing people the luck of the Irish. Of course having a smidgen of Irish blood coursing through my veins may have something to do with that also.  I have my last two St. Patrick day cards to share with you today before I get all the cards in the mail next week. These were fun to make and of course as the title said I used my chalks on them as well as Cameron got to do more work than he has lately. He always amazes me at how intricate he can cut and he is so happy doing so. Oh you want to see the cards.

I started out using my Cameo to cut out a mat for a stencil. You may recognize this mat from the previous post. That is what I love that I can design files and then use them over again. I used my chalk pastels for the shamrocks but then the background looked too blah and some chalk dust marred it so I went back and rubbed pigment ink with a cotton ball. Then put my stencil back on the panel and this time instead of using the chalk directly drew on scratch paper and used my finger. Next time I'll use my finger to color in with chalk using a stencil. Live and learn. Then while the chalk was still on the cardstock I outline with a fine tip marker.

I traced a celtic knot image I had and was pleased  at how well Cameron cut it out. I then painted it with Extreme Glitter Peridot paint. It really is prettier than it shows here. The image is one I'm sure came from Fairy Graphic. I went and again traced just the part of the image that I wanted cut out. After she was cut out and glued to the knot I pop dotted the knot onto the card.

I decided to do this card a little differently from the other cards so I paper pieced the focal image. Being the frugal person I am I used the stencil I had cut out and chalked over for the shamrocks in the previous card. I knew when I was making the first card that I was also going to use the negative cut out so chalked over the whole panel.  My marker nicely outlined the shamrocks for me when I used it on the previous card.:-) 

I cut out a scrap of cardstock to back the panel and painted it with the Extreme Glitter. Then I resized and ungrouped a file which had been a free file from Silhouette. Then filled the pieces in with color. Because I don't like to paper piece I grouped the shamrock right onto the pot and the pieces of the rainbow together before printing. I lightly glittered the rainbow. Painted the coins with glitter glue as well as the shamrock. The pot puckered a little bit from the glitter glue as you can see but trying to get over being a perfectionist I went ahead and used it. I don't know if I like the pot slightly off centered but after all the pot of gold is at the end of a rainbow.

Thank you for stopping by. Wishing you Happy Frugal Crafting till we meet again!