Thinking of You

I am participating in Online Card Classes' "Stretch Your Dies" class this week. Kristina Werner had a tutorial on Day 2, on using "Die Cuts Within a Larger Die." She used leaf & flower die cuts, but I decided to do butterflies.

I began by stamping Hero Arts' "Highline Ironwork Background" stamp onto a piece of 140 lb. watercolor paper, using Versamark ink. I then heat embossed that with Ranger Super Fine Detail White embossing powder. After taping my paper down to a board to keep it from warping too much, I used watercolors in shades of pink, purple, & blue to paint over the embossing. I sprayed that with my homemade Perfect Pearls spray, to help the colors move more & give it a touch of shimmer. Finally, I dried it with my heat gun.

I used My Favorite Things' "Butterflies" and DoCrafts' "Butterflies 1" dies to die cut the butterflies from my embossed & painted panel. When I had cut several, I arranged them close together on my work surface. I cut a piece of masking paper large enough to cover them, and stuck it to my pants several times to remove much of the stickiness, as Kristina had suggested. Then I stuck the masking paper to the butterfly arrangement, picking up all my die cuts at once. I taped the smallest of Spellbinders' "Grand Ovals" dies to the masking paper, and die cut the paper & butterflies. With the butterflies still stuck to the masking paper, I then applied pieces of foam tape to the backs of all the pieces. I flipped the whole thing over onto a kraft cardstock panel, and pressed the butterfly pieces in place. Finally, I carefully removed the masking paper, revealing my arrangement on the panel.

I stamped the greeting from Hero Arts' "Floral" stamp set onto a scrap of blue paper that had a slight pattern to it, again using Versamark. I white heat embossed that, & cut it into a banner shape. After I determined its placement on the card, I applied foam tape pieces to the card front where the banner would go, and liquid glue to the butterfly pieces that the greeting would overlap. Then I stuck my greeting banner down. After mounting my completed card front to an A2-size card base, I round all 4 corners with my 3/8" Corner Chomper. I will be sending this card to a friend of mine, who needs a little pick-me-up.

I'm entering my card in the following challenges:

Virginia's View Challenge #13: "All Things Embossed"
Hero Arts' Nature Challenge
Simon Says Stamp's Monday "Lions & Lambs, Oh My"
Simon Says Stamp's Work It Wednesday: "Spring"