28

Welcome to our last challenge of 2025 over at Freshly Made Sketches. Our hostess this week is Narelle Farrugia and I used her sketch to make a birthday card for my son, who would have been 28 on 17 December (yesterday for me as this post goes live).  I still make him a birthday card to celebrate each birthday and this year, I made a card to resemble his car, which was his pride and joy.  He painted it himself and wanted to be a car painter.  

To make the card, I first stamped the Papillon stamp onto the black panel with Versamark for a subtle watermark effect, but it didn't even show up in the final card or the photos.  I applied some gilding flakes to a white panel and then ripped it diagonally to match Matthew's car.  I then die-cut the rectangle frame from the panel and mounted it onto another slightly larger black rectangle before putting it onto a card base.

I used the same technique for the numbers but put the gilding flakes at the top, added a smaller black panel and the stamped sentiment.

Here is a photo of Matthew's car after he had painted it and then at his funeral where we invited everyone to write a message in Sharpie over the gold paint.  That car is treasured as are the messages.

Thanks for visiting and please check out the fabulous cards made by the design team.  This challenge will be open for longer and we'll be back in January with a new year of sketch challenges.

Products used:

Stamps: #Hashtag, Papillon (Tim Holtz)

Ink: Obsidian (Altenew), Versamark

Cardstock: Black, White

Dies: A2 Rectangle Stax (MFT), By The Numbers (PTI)

Accessories: Gilding Flakes (Nuvo)

Cheers

Karren

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