Concord & 9th—Big Hugs Retro Rainbow Card

Hello, Crafters!

Today I’ve got a fun card for you featuring the Sending Hugs bundle from Concord & 9th’s February release. This bundle is super fun and includes a stencil pack, a die set with a coordinating die, some fun hearts and a banner die, and a small stamp set. I love the variety of sentiments in the stamp set—they cover every occasion!

This card today came out of a lot of trial and error. My final stenciled greeting came from two ‘failed’ greetings prior to it, though they aren’t quite fails, they’re simply not what I was looking for with this card. What made things a little more difficult for me was the color palette on this card. I was trying to use a color palette that would have two colors that layered over each other well since I was planning to stencil the inner letter details, and since I was seeing a lot of blue stenciled greetings with this product, I wanted to do something different. So, I settled on Grapefruit ink for stencil 1, Stardust for the shadow stencil, then Sorbet for the inner details stencil.

This stencil color combination actually came from some planning ahead of time (I didn’t want to waste too much more C9 white cardstock), when I started playing with the bundle, I had thought about using the Rainbow card front die but as one large rainbow on a portrait-orientation card. I wanted to make something a little different since inspo pictures during release week were all portrait cards, I decided to go landscape with this one. With that being the idea, I knew I couldn’t use the Rainbow card front die the same way. I went on Concord & 9th’s website and pulled the product up since I haven’t used it in a while, and they showed an example where they made small rainbows in each corner. I decided to follow that idea on this card, but I knew I didn’t want a primary-colored rainbow. I wanted something more toned down, so I die cut the Rainbow card front die out of Sorbet, Grapefruit, Stardust, Clover, and Sea Glass cardstocks.

So that each corner wouldn’t look the same, I did one corner in the same order I just listed, then aligned another rainbow arch out of Stardust, Clover, Sea Glass, Sorbet, and Grapefruit. I loosely taped these arches together with Post-it tape so that I could move them easily and glue them down with less fuss. But, before gluing them down, I decided to add a bit more texture to the card front with the Stitched Polka Dot card front die.

At this time, I decided I would be gluing the ‘Big Hugs’ off to the left side of the card, so I decided to stamp and white heat emboss a sub greeting on Sorbet cardstock and die cut it out with the coordinating banner die. I wanted to have an array of hearts off to the upper right of the card, so I die cut a large one with the stitching die out of Sea Glass, a medium one cut out of stitching on Stardust, small Clover and Sorbet ones, and an itty bitty Stardust one I die cut with the small heart from the Everyday Sayings die set. I glued down the hearts trying to stagger them in a way that was pleasing to the eye and added the small Stardust one on the left side of the greeting to tie the hearts to both sides of the card. This card doesn’t have a lot of built up dimension, but all these different types of die cuts really help to make it feel like it does.

Well, that wraps up this card! I know it’s a little wild, but I love the retro vibe and how playful it is! This bundle really helps you to make quick work of a card with how large the greeting is, so the sky is the limit to what you can create with it! Thanks for stopping by the blog today, I hope to catch you next time with more inspiration! 😊