Groovi circles

Lots of circles at the moment.

This card is my first attempt at using the piercing grids with the groovi system (for parchment craft). 

This is what they look like, if you're not familiar. They're drilled with hundreds of holes - one has a straight pattern, one is diagonal. You can use them with a small ball tool to emboss, or with a piercing tool to pierce holes in the parchment. They're not as easy as they look! I've got used to groovi being very forgiving, if you come out of the groove the parchment doesn't mark. With these grids, there's always hole nearby to go into if you miss the one you're aiming for!

I started the piece by writing out the name (my friend's new little boy), then used the nested squares plate to make a border and the nested circles to add, well, circles.

Then I added the patterns in the circles with the grids, embossing on the back and piercing from the front. I started with some simple patterns and got a bit more adventurous as I went. There must be thousands of possible combinations of dotty patterns you could make with these.

I added colour to the parchment with sharpie pens.

To make the background, I chose distress inks to match the colouring, and applied them to the inside of a plastic folder, cut open. I spritzed with water, smooched the ink around a bit, then put stencil card inside and pressed the ink into it. I love the results!

This is front and back of the card - I love both, I should try using two pieces of card so I get to use both in future.

I added a bit more ink and had another go with a bigger piece of card, this came out well as well, so goes in the stash.

Such a quick and easy way to make really funky backgrounds!

Some of them look like coral, so I might try adding silver fish to them one day.


Anyway, back to today's card. I finished it off by trimming the pieces to fit, and mounting the parchment with glue dots - as there are solid coloured areas I can do this without the glue showing. I used a turquoise card base to frame it and set off the colours.

It's quite bright for a baby card - not sure how that happened, wasn't intentional! - but why not? Hopefully my friend and her little boy will enjoy it.