Hello stampers. I think I just made up a new word here. “Splooshing”. What I mean is scrunching up a wet baby wipe (actually, half a baby wipe), dabbing it into an ink pad and then pressing it onto paper to make a background. So, to make this very striking card, I used sahara sand and smoky slate to make the background on a 3 3/4 by 5″ piece of whisper white cardstock. Then you ink up your Lovely as a Tree “treeline” image with Versamark and emboss with copper embossing powder. Repeat slightly lower and to the left with silver embossing powder. After that you can choose to add a ribbon or not. I used 1/8″ silver ribbon (132137)on one and vanilla 1/4″ satin ribbon (142794) on the other. I also did one without ribbon after getting lots of feedback on Facebook. Which one is your favourite?

There is a story behind this card. I received a beautiful Christmas card from one of my team members, Karen Gardner. This technique was used on her card and I immediately knew I would be using it to make my swap card for the Canadian Business Conference in Toronto. This is the first event of its kind for Canadian Stampin’Up! demonstrators and I am super excited about it. We used to have a Leadership Convention each year in January but it was discontinued, so Dale Hampshire decided to create this event. I signed up for two swaps, one with Lovely as a Tree and one with Touches of Texture. The other swap will be the focus of my next blog post. Here is the card without the ribbon:

The sentiment is stamped in black archival ink and comes from Rose Wonder. When I made these cards I was nervous about using so much copper foil! The stuff is not cheap. And it is beautiful. Those two facts usually lead to hoarding. Then I decided I could cut images from the part that wouldn’t show. Genius. Now I have a ton of dragonflies and bees. Large dragonflies, medium dragonflies and groups of dragonflies, all waiting to be incorporated into beautiful cards. Check it out:

I did create a video showing how to do this technique. It really is so very simple and the results are truly beautiful. Have fun with it.

Don’t forget to keep your Versamark pads juicy by reinking now and then, it is the secret to successful embossing. Secret number two is not swinging your heat gun back and forth but focusing on one spot at a time and slowly moving as the powder melts. Today this card is in honour of my team member Janis Taylor’s mom who died and went to heaven today at the beautiful age of 92.

Hugs, Jackie