I Miss You

This is my second card for the sketch challenge at Our Daily Bread Designs' blog. While I did keep to the basic sketch, I omitted the mats behind the layers.

My inspiration for the focal panel background came from a lesson at Online Card Classes' "Stretch Your Stamps 2" class, by Lisa Spangler. I stamped Stampabilities' "Wrought Iron Background" stamp on white cardstock using Versamark ink. Then I clear heat embossed it, and when the embossing had cooled, I blended Scattered Straw Distress ink over the panel. I spattered Heidi Swapp "Seafoam" and Dylusions "Postbox Red" spray inks over the panel, just to add some flecks of color. Finally, I did a technique called "iron off embossing." I placed the panel under a couple of sheets of copy paper, and used a warm iron to melt the embossing into the paper, thus removing it from the panel. Finally, I die cut it with Lawn Fawn's "Stitched Journaling Card" die.

For the focal image, I stamped Our Daily Bread Designs' "Chickadee" onto a piece of watercolor paper, using Ranger Archival Jet Black ink. I colored only the berries & branch with Inktense pencils, blending the color with my water brush. I did add a bit of orange on the bird's claws and beak, but basically left it uncolored. Because I wanted to pop the bird up from the background, I die cut it with the coordinating die, and cut 4 more pieces from white cardstock. Then I glued all the layers together. This pops it up, while providing more support to the smaller bits on the die cut.

Stitched Journaling card & embossing detail

I used the border embossing folder from the "Poppy" set by Cuttlebug & Anna Griffin to emboss the red and green strips. After I embossed those, I went over the green with Bundled Sage and the red with Victorian Velvet Distress inks, just to give a little more depth. I also used the main embossing folder from that set to emboss a piece of navy cardstock. I made a diffuser from matboard to use when I embossed, so the lower left corner of the panel would not be embossed, since I wanted to stamp my greeting there.

After gluing down my red and green strips, I stamped a greeting from this Hero Arts set on the navy panel, using Versamark. I heat embossed it with Ranger Super Fine Detail white embossing powder. Finally, I glued my focal panel on the card front, and glued the chickadee to that. I will be sending this card to Operation Write Home, for an overseas hero to write home to his/her loved ones.