Copper Wedding Anniversary card share

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! Sorry it's been a while since my last post, Chris and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary last week. Chris bless him came down with a head cold the weekend before which I hoped I'd avoided only to wake up on our special day feeling dreadful. In one way I've been quite fortunate because the initial cold symptoms only lasted for a day or two (yay for avoiding turning into a snot goblin!) Instead I've just had a hacking cough which is worse at night so I've not had a lot of sleep for the past week, not only does it keep me from going to sleep but I wake up a few hours later needing to cough up stuff - sorry to be gross, sharing is caring lol. Upshot is I'm exhausted and in a lot of pain so I've not done a great deal of crafting even though I really want to, I just don't have the energy right now. I did manage to get a couple of cards made, the first was an anniversary card for Chris, the second was an anniversary card from Chris - yes you read that right, because he started with man flu on the Friday before our anniversary and he always leaves things to the last possible minute, my beloved husband didn't have a card for me on our anniversary so rather than go without, I made my own for him to sign. I didn't mind too much because Mixed Up Craft shared a reverse easel card on YouTube and I thought it would look pretty cool made out of acetate. I wanted to make him a card with a copper heart and that's what I ended up making him though there were a few trial runs first before I settled on the version shown later in the post. I tried wrapping copper wire around a black chipboard heart but it looked dreadful, I tried painting diecut hearts using metallic copper SparkleIT Brusho powders but even when dry the resulting paint is highly water reactive and I couldn't get it to form a smooth layer of colour so that was another idea out the window. I then decided to cover a thick diecut heart (I layered 8 diecut black hearts together to make an extra thick heart) with copper embossing powder and heat set it to make a copper heart embellishment which is what I ended up using. It took about four layers of embossing powder to get a smooth finish and I'm not totally happy with the results because there are dips where I held it with a pair of reverse tweezers while it was being heated and the embossing powder isn't the bright copper Kettle colour I'd hoped for instead it's more a bronze colour. I have a sheet of copper circle outline stickers in my stash that I've owned but not used for over ten years, these are a gorgeous bright copper so I used them to make my own backing paper, I tucked some under the heart and had others hanging off the edges which I carefully cut away so I could use them to fill in any bare parts on the edges. I added a strip of copper embossed card to the side to tie in the copper heart and stamped a with love sentiment on the bottom right hand side. The second card is an acetate reverse easel card with a dry embossed copper heart layered onto a black heart, I used 7 mini copper hearts as the stopper. I was hoping to use more copper on this card but discovered I only had a single sheet of copper foiled card stock so I had to be frugal with what I had. If you want to know how to make a reverse easel card then check out Mixed Up Craft's YouTube channel for her tutorial. It's a very easy card to make with only one fold different to a regular easel card. As I'm writing this on my phone, I shall add the photos under the main text as I can't get it to be part of the main post, some of the photos may become a little out of sequence but hopefully they should still make sense. As always if you have any questions or comments please leave them in the usual places and until next time - keep crafting! Love and crafty hugs, Sarah xx xx