Lots of Thanks

Kristina Werner created a card for Day 1 of Online Card Classes' "Stretch Your Stamps 2" class, which I have been participating in. Basically, she used a background stamp, white heat embossed the image, painted it with watercolors, and then cut pieces from that for her card. My card follows her design pretty closely.

For my background, I chose the Hero Arts/BasicGrey "Spice Market Large Petal Background" stamp. I inked with Versamark, and stamped it on watercolor paper. I heat embossed it with Ranger Super Fine Detail white embossing powder. Then I created a palette by smooshing Distress inks in Mustard Seed, Salty Ocean, Evergreen Bough, Picked Raspberry, Seedless Preserves, & Festive Berries onto an acrylic block. I picked up each color with my Ranger water brush, and colored different parts of the image, going from the center outward. The white heat embossed areas resisted the ink, giving a lovely detailed look without all the work.

After the background dried, I trimmed it down into a wide strip and another narrower strip. I glued those directly to the front of my card base.

For the greeting, I first die cut the "thanks" using Lawn Fawn's "Scripty Thanks" die from black cardstock. The cardstock did have a white core, so I decided I wanted to camouflage that. I tried painting the edges with a black brush-tip marker, but it was too hard to get in all the little crevices. Next, I tried applying Black Soot Distress ink by pressing the pad directly to the die cut. Still no luck. So I finally smooshed the Black Soot onto my acrylic block and spritzed it with my water mister. Unfortunately, the ink splattered just a tiny bit onto my card front when I did that. But, the faint speckles turned out giving it a nice subtle detail, to give the stark white some interest, so it worked out OK! I swiped the die cut thanks through the wet ink, and it coated the edges--along with the rest of it--just fine.

After the Black Soot dried, I used my Zig 2-way glue pen to apply small dots of glue to the back of the thanks. Taking a cue from Debby Hughes, I pounced the back of the die cut onto some scratch paper, to take off a little of the glue so it wouldn't ooze out when I applied it to my card. Then I used my tweezers to help me position it, and glued it in place. I stamped the rest of the greeting, using 2 stamps from this Simon Says Stamp set, above and below the die cut. To finish, I coated the "thanks" die cut with Glossy Accents.

I'm entering this card in a2z Scrapbooking Blog's "Encouragement" challenge.