Author: Jenny Hayward

I’m back!  Our new computer is up and running.  I just need to get used to this new Windows 7 version. It’s a lot different, but it’s fast!

I have 2 more male cards to show you.  These are done with the faux woodgrain effect.   Have you tried this technique before?  It is a fun thing to do and everytime you do it, the results are different.  It’s a great manly technique.  I’ll talk about the technique shortly.  I will show you the cards first.  These cards I made last year.

This is using the retiring ‘Wanted’ set again.

I have created the woodgrain and then mounted it on a Chocolate Chip base.  I inked up the horses in Chocolate Chip and stamped them without reinking.  It looks like wild horses running!  I matted this on Chocolate Chip and adhered it to the card.  I looped some twine and then adhered that with a glue dot.  The greeting is from ‘Short and Sweet’.  I punched that out with the Word Window punch and then layered that with a Chocolate Chip Word Window Punch out.  I did stamp the inside with the paisley stamp onto Very Vanilla but I forgot to take a photo of that.

The other card is using ‘Owl Together Now’.  I’m a bit sad I haven’t used this set has much as I thought.  It is a very cute set.

I punched out a circle in the card with the 1 3/8″ circle punch.  I stamped up a little owl with Old Olive Ink onto Very Vanilla card.  I coloured just his wings with the So Saffron marker.  I adhered that piece under the woodgrain card with mounting tape and wrapped some twine around it.   Then mounted it all with mounting tape on a piece of Old Olive card.  This was adhered to the Chocolate Chip card base.  The greeting was from the set and punched out with the Large Oval punch.  The edges were sponged with Old Olive and then layered on another Large Oval punched out in Old Olive.  I offset them and adhered them with mounting tape again.  This is very cute.  It looks like the owl is peering out of his hole in the tree.

There are a lot of different versions of creating the woodgrain effect on the internet.  I found a tutorial on Splitcoast here.  I did mine on Very Vanilla card.  I used Creamy Caramel, More Mustard and Chocolate Chip inks.  A couple of tips I found:

– When you swipe your inkpad down the card, start off the edge of the card and try to run down in one movement.  It doesn’t matter too much, but you get lines across the card where you stop.  That just adds to the character of the wood effect though. Lay the inkpad flat to swipe down.

– Make your card piece a little larger than you want.  You tend to get a dark edge,  so you can trim it down.

– After I used the 3 colours (starting from the lightest first), I rubbed over parts of the card with white ink with a sponge (rubbing rather than dabbing).  Just apply lightly.  It might help sponging off on scrap paper first. 

– After using the white ink, you can always touch up the card by sponging (rubbing) on the 3 ink colours you have used until you are happy with the result. That is, you might want to add a little more golden colour then sponge on more ‘More Mustard’, or if you want it darker sponge on more ‘Chocolate Chip’.

I was going to do up a tutorial for this, but I think the one on Splitcoast is simple to follow.  I found it a bit hard to swipe ink with one hand while taking a photo!!!!  Here is a sample piece I created while doing this though.

The card was curled up a bit that’s why it looks crooked.  Sorry about that  🙂

So you can go and create some faux woodgrain cards just in time for Father’s Day.  Until next time, Happy Stamping.  🙂