Happy birthday, dude.

This card uses the truck from the retired set, Classic Pickups, with the greeting from A Little Birthday Cheer. This is for a guy who is a big fan of almost any kind of automobile. The kind of guy who has his first truck stored in a storage lot so that someday he WILL complete its refurbishment. Someone who doesn't care at all that his wife and I call the truck the calico beast. Someone who claims that the calico beast's tires aren't totally flat, they're just flat on ONE side.

For this friend, I thought I'd give him a sweet new truck to admire. Granted, the truck image itself is pretty small, less than 4" x 4" overall ... and it's 2-dimensional, but its chrome is all new (used the new Platinum Shimmer Paint for that) and its windows are all there (used a piece of clear envelope for that), and the paint is super-shiny (thanks to Crystal Effects and shimmery white cardstock as the base). This is a thick, heavy card, perfect for the hand-delivery tonight at dinner.

For color inspiration I had to find Ky and ask him what kind of truck this was. He guessed a '56 or '57 Chevy. Then I had to ask if our friend is a Chevy guy or a Ford guy. For a guy who cares, he's REALLY going to care, and I didn't want to insult him by giving the wrong make of truck. The Chevy was a good fit, so then I just Google for images of Chevy, truck and flame paint. I found a couple images to show me the way to making a good flame paint job. For this kind of realistic color job, I wanted an example to follow, even if it meant tweaking it from there.

Then there are manly details like these screw eyelets that I've been hoarding for quite a long time. I thought they were perfect for a car card! I was worried though that I had too many layers for them to go all the way through, but they were just perfect and the Crop-a-dile set them easily.

In the picture above you can see one of my tricks for adding dimension to a project. Stamp the image once on your background layer and then stamp it again on a scrap for painting/coloring, then cut it out, pop it on dimensionals, and voila! you have a shadow behind it and everything.

See? In the photo above is the Platinum Shimmer Paint on the wheel rims, grill and bumper. It's the most opaque of the three shimmer paints available, and I just sort of drew it on by dipping a toothpick into it and then dragging it on my project. Where it got messy and I lost some design elements, I just went back in with my permanent marker and dotted them back in. It worked great and was easy.

In the picture above here you can see my clear envelope-turned window, and the shine that the Crystal Effects gives to the truck's paint job. You can also see the Brushed Silver cardstock that I mounted the truck image and screw eyelets to. It's a subtle shine, but it was another way to work in a big silver metallic element.

In the picture below I show you a small tip. You know how sometimes you wonder if you go ahead and put in some brads if you'll regret it right after you do so?

I punched out some similarly sized black dots and placed them where I was thinking of putting my black brads. This allowed me to see what it would like and then decide. (Black brads shown on the project and in place above, black paper dots shown in place in the photo below.) They're not exact, but close enough to make a decision ....

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you're having a good week - mine's been good, but really busy at work, so I've been tired when I get home. Hoping to find some stamp time this weekend, but I know there are also a few chores to get done, too.