You're a Winner

The theme for Day 1 of Online Card Classes' "Clean & Simple 4" class is heat embossing. Kristina Werner demonstrated a technique called "3-D embossing." Basically, you stamp an image/word/pattern in a dye ink, then stamp again in Versamark, slightly offset, and heat emboss the second stamping. The main requirement for your focal point seems to be that it is a bold image, with not much fine detail. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to try this technique during class, because I don't have many stamps that fit that bill. But I found one in this Simon Says Stamp set that worked perfectly!

I began by die cutting a piece of white cardstock with the stitched rectangle die in Mama Elephant's "Femme Frames" set. After determining where to place my greeting, I mounted it on my Fiskars stamp press (a helpful tool in positioning the stamps for this technique), and stamped it in Hero Arts' Pool mid-tone shadow ink. Then I cleaned the stamp, and stamped it again in Versamark, slightly above & to the left of the first stamping. I sprinkled on some Ranger Liquid Platinum embossing powder, and melted that with my heat gun.

For the background, I used one of the stamps from the "On Point Borders" by Mama Elephant. I masked off the greeting area & outside the faux stitching lines on the panel, and did the same process as on the greeting, repeating until I'd stamped the entire background. Finally, I removed all the masking tape.

To create the mat, I die cut a panel from more white cardstock with the largest of Lawn Fawn's "Large Stitched Rectangle" dies. I coated the cardstock with the Hero Arts Pool ink. Originally, I masked off the outer edges with painters tape, outside the stitching lines, to have a thin white mat. But the ink ended up bleeding a little under the tape, so I inked the entire panel. Finally, I glued the focal panel to the mat, and adhered that to an A2 card base. I will be sending this card to Operation Write Home.

I'm entering my card in the following challenges:

Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday "Anything Goes"
Simon Says Stamp's Work It Wednesday: "Something New" (new technique)