Experimenting with stamps and embossing powder

 I recently bought a couple of stamps at my LSS because I liked the images but when I got them home I thought, "how do I stamp with these?" Well with a little bit of embossing powder, some distress inks and two kinds of paper- white glossy card stock and a patterned piece of card stock here is what I have come up with. When I make them into cards I will post again.

The image above was created by putting Versamark on my Cuttlebug emossing folder and then covering the image with midnight black embossing powder. My hope was that only the recessed part would have embossing powder but it didn't work out that way. However, I like the look that was left after heat embossing. I then used distress inks and rubbed various colours over the remaining white areas . Now to come up with a card design to apply it to :)

Frosty and the Christmas Trees

Finally more time to make and post cards for Christmas. The crunch is on with a week left and still more cards to make... oh boy better get cracking!
The Frosty card was inspired by a Kristina Werner design here 

The Christmas Tree cards were inspired from a technique learned at Holiday Card Boot Camp 2011

These trees are rally easy and are a lot of fun to make especially with double sided paper :)

peace

One of the techiques from Holiday Card Boot Camp just wasn't working out for me.  I was attempting as Jennifer McGuire suggested, to use the supplies I had at home instead of buying new stuff. The snowflake embossing folder I have is too busy for my liking, but I went ahead and tried to blend Broken China and Faded Blue Jeans distress inks and then spritz with pearlized water.

It doesn't look too bad but I just wasn't happy with it, so I altered it. I took a snowflake stamp stamped it with Versamark on water colour paper and then heat embossed it with clear embossing powder. I once again tried the two blue distress inks and spritzed with pearlized water. This I liked better.

I mounted the snowflake image on thick silver metallic cardstock and embellished with punched snowflakes using Martha Stewart punches. The "peace" wording was cut from the Winter Woodland Cricut cartridge.

I like how this card turned out but I have to wonder if I should of framed the snowflake image with blue cardstock. As you can see below it is very shiney, perhaps it needs to be grounded.

folded Christmas trees

This is a cool way to make a Christmas tree using two sided paper. The trees were made from a 4" circle cut in half and folded back and forth. They really look great! This picture is rather dark- my camera I think is slowly dying. Perhaps Santa will bring me a new one ;) I was also disappointed on the embossed sentiment on the bottom, it was suppose to be white (it's called snow) but it looks more like dirty slush.
I'll try it again maybe I did something wrong or may be it's the paper.

Hanging Star

Another Boot Camp creation. I am really having fun with these cards. I cut the branch and leaves with my Cricut using the Winterwoodland cartridge. The card base was embossed with the Cuttlebug but I cannot remember the name of the folder and it isn't written on the embossing plate. OOPS. The star from the George and Basic shape cartridge was cut from metallic red cardstock from Michael's. The bow is just a piece of silver cording I had in my stash.

Well off to finish some homework. 

Cherish Family photo card

Day Two of Holiday Boot Camp had us create a card with a family photo. The object was for the photo to be removable so that it could be put on the fridge, in a fame or a scrapbook after Christmas. My daughter took this picture of my brother, sister-in-law and neice at Thanksgiving. Cute isn't it?
I made my card so that it had a plastic pocket on the front to put the card in. This also allowed me to stamp a sentiment on the plastic. I also embellished it with some pearls and fir tree branches. The background of the main card was stamped using Versamark and a polka dot stamp.
I think I will try another one but this time with snowflakes.

Holiday Boot Camp

I am participating in the Holiday Boot Camp put on by Kristina Werner and Jennifer McGuire. Here is my interpretation of card one. I don't have a Silhouette so I couldn't use the file supplied by Kristina but I do have a Cricut. I used the doily cut on the Reminisce Accent cartridge (available from a Creative Memories consultant).
If I was to create this card again I would make the border on the Kraft cardstock a little darker as it dried lighter than I anticipated.