Folded with Care

“I rise to taste the dawn, and find that love alone will shine today.”

Ken Wilber (brainyquote.com)

One of the greatest things about the papercrafting industry is the encouragement and love its members give to each other. This lesson was called “Let it Shine” because it used shiny elements in making cards but more than that, homemade cards shine love around the world. This card was made with Altenew’s Sweetest Peas stamp set. The flowers are very delicate –just as love can be.

One of the examples lessons showed how to make vellum shine using shimmery pens so I set out by putting a piece of vellum in my Misti Stamp positioner. I laid out 4 of the flowers from this set to give me options on the future layout. First I used my antistatic bag over the whole sheet. Then stamped the flowers with Altenew embossing ink, and added Altenew Antique Silver embossing powder. To melt the embossing powder I used the Wagner heat tool, and as the class suggested, had it totally hot before putting it on the vellum. This way the powder melts quickly and the vellum is not damaged.

Once done, I turned my vellum over and colored on the back with Altenew Artist markers. The markers do not absorb into vellum as they do with paper and the color is muted some by coloring the backs…all for a very soft effect. For the petals I used R603 Puffy Heart and R614 Purple Wine. For the leaves I used G715 Forest Glades and G935 Moss. I proceeded then to die cut the flowers being careful to lay the dies on top and tape them down with Thermoweb purple tape to hold the dies in place. Interestingly, after running them through my die cutter the vellum was crispy and kind of crinkly as I took t he dies off.

I knew I wanted to add a strip of glittery washi tape along the side so I set out to find the right shades of paper to go with the flowers. The solid purple is by Reflections and the light dotted patterned paper is from Memory Box Springtime Bouquet Stripes and Dots ( a wonderful present from my sister). I cut a strip of the dotted about 1/2″ wide and glued it on the Altenew glitter washi tape. Folding both ends over, I attached it to the solid 4.25″ x 5.5″ purple paper. I cut a white piece of white cardstock 3.5″ x 5″, rounded the corner, and adhered it to some craft foam before gluing it to the purple paper. I also rounded the corresponding corner of the purple paper and the card base with my Close to my Heart corner rounder.

I arranged the flowers, putting the first on down with some Gina K glue behind the silver embossing. For the smaller flower I painstakingly cut thin strips of 3M foam tape and formed it strategically behind the silver embossing. This popped up the flower off the white card. Since part of the lesson had been to add shine, Once the flowers were anchored, I used the Tonic Aqua Shimmer pen on the petals. This also makes them curl and look more realistic adding a lot of dimension into the picture.

Onto the sentiment — hmmmm. I picked out a Congratulations from a different set that didn’t go well. Ah, this set also had the same sentiment but in different font. I tried embossing with silver on vellum…too light. Then embossed it on the purple which stood out nicely so I created a flag banner with washi tape and gave the purple banner some foam tape to lift it up. Then added just a few Studio Katia clear embellishments to finish it off.

Well, sometimes you have to sleep on things that just don’t set right. The sentiment seemed heavy in color for what was a delicate card. This morning when I woke up I knew that had to change. I did a quick emboss on the light dotted paper, cut it to match and glued it onto the current banner. Da Da…the lighter colored paper made all the difference in the world for the overall feel of balance. So, so, Beautiful!!!

But then some EXTRA EXCITEMENT:

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I had enough items left over not used on this that I made a Bonus card. This would also fit in the same category. I took a 5.5″ square card base and cut silver metallic Tim Holtz paper to cover it. A nice patterned sheet of paper with greenery around the edge was cut to 5.25″ square was glued flat on the silver. Remember that vellum sentiment I didn’t use? Well it fit just fine here across the card adding some interest by making it stand up in the middle. Then arranged the flowers on top and glued them down. Yay! Two cards.