Vintage Auto

Last week we took a look at some of the fab new 1950's dies designed by Jen Long and I mentioned the car die set which I am very fond of so I thought I would share it with you today.

Father's Day is just around the corner here in the UK so if you want a bit of inspiration check out this link which will take you to 6 project sheets and oodles of FREE downloadable papers to create retro style 1950's style cards. We love that word so I'll write it again....FREE!

Here are the dies I used today:

• Sizzix Thinlits Die Set 10PK - Vintage Car & Radio (659506)
• Sizzix Bigz XL Alphabet Die - Block Talk by Tim Holtz (658563)
• Sizzix Framelits Die Set 8PK - Circles (657551)

I went for a typical 1950's colour palette and rather than make it easy for myself I decided to try to create a two tone style car. I started by cutting all the different elements including the headlights, hub caps, Bumper ( I should say fender really!) etc.

I trimmed away the parts of the blue car I didn't need along with the windscreen and steering wheel of the cream car. Next, I attached the separate sections of the blue car to the cream car before adding the wheels and hub caps.

After adding the bumper and headlights I attached the steering wheel and soft top as well as the silver wind screen surround.

Here is  a card made following most of the steps above but I have added a few twists like the white wall tires and I have substituted black for grey to give a softer effect. I also used Distress inks sparingly to add a little dimensional depth as well as a few white highlights with a gel pen.

I used a couple of the circled dies to create a silver frame with the check paper in the centre before die cutting the letters from silver card. I cut all the asymmetric shapes by hand before mounting everything onto the base card.

Well that, as they say is that! but I did have one tiny idea which I want to share.

I wanted to create the same car but have it look like a rusty old banger, I die-cut all the bits as above and roughly applied Walnut Stain Distress Ink around the edges before assembling the car.

I pressed down onto the die-cut car using an embossing ink pad before applying the Vintage Photo Distress embossing powder and shaking off the excess prior to setting it with a heat tool.

After this I went to work with my Distress inks starting with yellow and orange tones before introducing a little blue. The results were quite effective and it will probably find it's way onto a project at some point in the future.