Cinema Saturday #41 or Tiarna's Birthday Card

It's astounding, time is fleeting... sorry, wrong movie! But you are caught in a bit of a time warp here! Cinema Saturday #41 was Chamber of Secrets, and ever since I did the Beauty & The Beast castle card I was wanting to do a more realistic castle version, which all tied in nicely with Tiarna's birthday coming up... I got started but took quite a break from this card and only just finished it 11pm Saturday night, with Tiarna's 10th birthday being on Sunday. Here is the card I made for her:

Even though Tiarna has just recently read the LOTR books (and a LOTR themed card would have tied in nicely with this weeks Cinema Saturday movie), she has been a Harry Potter fan since she was 18 months old. There was no way I could make a card that included all of the Hogwarts castle, so I went through images I have on my harddrive and picked a section (the section to the right of this image) that would be relatively easy to replicate (though I of course took some liberties). I made two main changes to the construction of this card from the Beauty & The Beast one, the most obvious being to use textured cardstock instead of plain. This gave it more of the rough brick look, it is also thinner so less bulky when you have a lot of layers and the card is collapsed (this one still fits into a large square envelope, but only just!). I also used textured cardstock for the roofing, however it is turned inside out so the less textured side is showing and you get a contrast in the textures. The other change I made was a structural one: it was hard to get the castle to stand upright on it's own, the nature of the basic concertina fold meant it was always tilted backwards. For Hogwarts I lengthened the sides that weren't going to have cardstock attached to them, so those that did have cardstock attached would stand pretty much vertical.

Tiarna loved her card, but I have just remembered that I had stamped and coloured an owl for Hedwig that I had intended to use on this and forgot to put it on... so shall have to do that and see how long it takes her to notice ;)

All supplies by Stampin' Up!
Cardstock: Going Gray, Going Gray textured, Bordering Blue textured, Basic Gray
Stamps: none!
Inks: Going Gray, Old Olive, Garden Green
Accessories: Word Window punch, Horizontal Slot punch, 1/2" circle punch, 1" circle punch, cutter kit, dauber, scoring blade on paper trimmer
Show watched while creating: Aus v Eng limited overs cricket

...and because I am not quite ready to have a post without Karl Urban...