Prayers to You and Your Family

I decided to make one more card for a2z Scrapbooking's May Challenge: "Sentiment Focus." I got my inspiration from a lesson in an older Online Card Classes' class, "Stretch Your Dies."

To create my background layer, I first watercolored several scraps of 140 lb. watercolor paper with blue, green, & yellow Winsor & Newton Cotman watercolors. After they dried, I die cut leaves from those pieces using Lawn Fawn's "Stitched Leaves" dies. I arranged several of my die cuts close together on my work surface, and stuck a piece of Glad Press 'n Seal to the front of them. I taped the largest of Lawn Fawn's "Small Stitched Oval" dies over the whole thing, and ran it through my die cutting machine. To be honest, I wasn't sure it would stay together & not get overly stuck with the Press 'n Seal, but it came out perfectly! I added pieces of foam tape to the back of each leaf, and set that aside.

I chose Hero Arts' "Prayers" stamp and cut set for my greeting. Using my MISTI, I stamped the "prayers" onto a strip of Essentials by Ellen 40 lb. vellum with Versafine Onyx Black ink. I removed that stamp and, with the vellum in the same place in my MISTI, I placed my 2 smaller greeting stamps below the main word. I picked those up with the door of my MISTI, and stamped them in Versafine as well. Finally, I sprinkled Recollections Clear Detail embossing powder over the ink, and melted it with my heat gun. I cut the vellum strip shorter, and created a V-notch in each end.

After I peeled the backing papers from my foam tape pieces, with the leaves still stuck to the Press 'n Seal, I flipped the whole piece over onto a 4x5.25" panel of ivory cardstock. I got it as centered as possible, and pressed down to adhere my leaves to the panel. Finally, I oh-so-carefully removed the Press 'n Seal--which, I'm happy to say, did NOT rip any of my leaves! I applied bits of Perfect Paper Adhesive to the back of my vellum banner, hiding the glue behind the thicker lines in "prayers," and adhered that on top of my leaves. I placed 2 acrylic blocks over the banner, just to hold it down until the glue dried.

I inked around the front of a white A2 card base with Stormy Sky & Bundled Sage Distress inks. I felt these colors complemented the colors in the leaves. I rounded the corners of both my ivory panel & card base with the 1/2" side of my Corner Chomper. Once the Distress inks had dried, I used my ATG to adhere the ivory panel to the card base.

I'm also entering my card in Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday "Anything Goes" challenge.