I made this card using the Hot-Air Balloon die from Issue 136 of Papercraft Essentials, I love this die, its so versatile, and so to mix it up a bit I thought I would cut into it and use it in a slightly different way :D (I've also used it in more of an abstract way too, and that card will be up in the next few days :D )
As I was creating a scene in this card, I started off by laying out all the dies I was going to use so that I had the rough layout in my head and knew which colours of card I would need to die cut (all the coloured card used is Creative Expressions Foundation Card)... I did also originally cut the balloon from purple card, but I changed my mind as I was making this card and opted for making a heart shaped balloon, and I thought the sentiment 'Love is in the Air' was just the perfect punny sentiment :D :D :D I used my usual favourite stitched rectangle dies from MFT and combined them with a few Lawn Fawn die sets (stitched hillsides, stitched journalling card (for the hearts) and spring showers). The banner die for the sentiment was from an Avery Elle die set and the heart for the balloon is from Creative Dies in their heart shaped nesting die set :D
The first step was to die-cut all my elements, I then started with the main panel, layering up the hills (where I used Twisted Citron Distress Ink to add some shading), the sun (where I used Canary and Gold Promarkers) and the clouds (where I used some Cool Grey Promarkers to tie them in with the other shaded elements) creating my scene :D The altered hot-air balloon was really easy to create I just used a sharp pair of scissors to carefully cut along the top of the three hearts to detach the basket and strings. The way to get the heart balloon to line up with the basket is really simple too, just position the bottom point of the heart in the centre of the middle heart of the basket. It doesn't matter that we can see this through the gap as we will fill in the little heart apertures with pink hearts :D I also added some shading to the heart balloon using a couple of Red Pro and Flex markers... I did change my mind a few times during this card so you'll see a little bit of that in the video :D Hope you like it though :D
To see the process behind this card, please watch my YouTube video below or on my channel :D
More close up photos below :D
If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments below and I'll do my best to get back to you :D :D :D
