Where Creativity Meets C9 Challenge #23: Mixed Media

This is my first time participating in a monthly challenge for Where Creativity Meets C9, a blog that hosts challenges featuring products from the stamp company Concord & 9^th.   My friend Wendie first introduced me to Concord & 9^th products a few years ago.  I like the clean, modern style and graphic design look of their products, plus the way they can be used in multiple ways – some even have 3D options. Wendie recently joined the Design Team for this blog, plus she was a guest designer for Concord & 9^th during the month of June.  So I was definitely inspired by all of her beautiful cards to start participating in WCMC9 challenges!  July’s theme is Mixed Media and challenges crafters to create a card or other project using at least two different types of media.   Check out the details for this month’s challenge and see all of the projects crafters created for it; project links are shared at the end of their post.

To create my card, I used the Star Turnabout and Shine On dies from Concord & 9^th.

I used three types of specialty papers and three types of adhesive gems, all from Michael’s Recollections paper crafting line for my project.  I had planned to include wood and paint in my project too, but my metallic painted wooden star ended up looking like just a big wood accent – definitely not the glittery, starry sky effect I was trying to achieve!  So I abandoned my painted star.  Maybe I’ll use it for something else eventually?

I started by trimming black cardstock to fit an A2 card front.  Then I started cutting star shapes out of it to create an overlay for my card.  The star turnabout die adds more stars to your card galaxy with every turn and pass through your die cut machine.  You can run it through one to four times depending on how many stars you want to cut.  The star shapes are evenly spaced in a starburst pattern because there are three stars in the center of the die which can be used to line up your pattern for the next turn.  So basically you run your paper through the die cutter, then turn the die’s position 90 degrees until the center star you cut lines up with the star opening on the die.  Run it through the machine again, turn 90 degrees, and so on.  The first turn is a little tricky, because you only have one star to match up.  But you can see from the photo below that by the last cut, it is super simple to line up.  And once you use this die, the process is even easier the second time around!

Next I cut even more stars by using three turns of the star turnabout die on the teal glitter paper shown in the middle of the photo below.  This time I kept the star confetti instead of the glitter cardstock overlay.  I cut the word Shine out of the crazy cool mirrored rainbow paper shown on the right in the photo below.  This paper is pretty intense when you look at a whole sheet of it, but used in small quantities like this thin die cut shape, it’s shimmery silver without being too over the top!  The paper on the left in the photo below is the layer I adhered to my card front under the black die cut overlay. This is another striking rainbow metallic paper that works best in small doses.  Wendie said it’s like super disco loving bees made the paper, and she’s right!  The honeycomb pattern and texture is the bee’s knees.

I glued the little teal glitter stars and the word Shine onto the black cardstock with a Quickie glue pen.  Then I finished the card off by adding three kinds of shimmery gems to the galaxy of stars on the card front.  I think I went a little overboard on all the stars, but I think I achieved the super shiny, glittery, rainbow metallic effect I was going for!