SNOW FLURRIES

I have such a huge stash of Stampin' Up! Christmas stamp sets, both old OLD and new. The other day I noticed -- since I keep all my Christmas sets together in one place -- how out of control my stash has gotten. I was dismayed. Thus, I made a pledge, sort of a challenge, to myself that I would randomly grab one of these sets and make a card using at least one of the stamps from the set each and every day. Today marks my third day of doing this. And it is really a lot of fun!

Like I noted, without looking, each day I select a set from the pile. No matter what it is, I need to create a card from SOMEthing in that set. Actually, the first day, I used stamps from two separate sets. One was a really old set that featured a darling sketchy window that had never seen ink. So I used that set, plus three from a newer set. 

The card I am featuring today is the one I created on the second day. It features a cool technique called Joseph's Coat. The photo below shows the finished card.

For a complete tutorial on how to do the Joseph's Coat technique,you can refer to THIS POST. The card in this particular post shows more of a fall theme with leaves in autumn colors and black as the brayered color.

I will give a brief description of how I did my snowy card along with a few photos to clarify.

Start out with a piece of Whisper White cardstock. Mine measured 4" x 5 1/4" initially. I chose four different shades of blue, all retired colors, to cover my cardstock. Just for a bit of nostalgia, the blues I used included Bordering Blue, Cool Caribbean, Marina Mist and Not Quite Navy. Do any of those names bring back fond memories?

With the lightest color, start to sponge onto the white cardstock. Work up to the darkest, most powerful, color. Create some lighter as well as some darker areas to give your card interest. Remember to start out slowly. You can always add more ink to build up the intensity of the colors in places. 

The photo below shows my cardstock after I sponged it. 

After the white cardstock is sponged to your satisfaction, rub it with the Embossing Buddy. Then, in VersaMark, stamp your images, in this case, three sizes of snowflakes. You can overlap a bit, but not too much. Too much overlapping creates more of a muddled mess. You want some blank spaces here and there.

Once you have the sponged card stamped to your liking, add Clear Embossing Powder over the entire piece, tapping the excess back into its container. Handling the piece carefully, heat to emboss the images. 

When the embossing is cool, you will start brayering with a dark color. As I mentioned, I'd used black on the card in my link. However, for this card, I used Night of Navy. 

When inking up your brayer, roll the brayer several times in one direction across the ink pad to ink it up well. Brayer the ink onto the embossed piece, going in all directions, over and over and over. Once you have a good even coat of the dark color brayered on, take a soft tissue and buff the excess ink off of the embossed images. 

The photo below is what mine looked like once I'd brayered it with Night of Navy and buffed off the excess ink. Because you used Clear Embossing Powder, the colors that you'd sponged onto the white cardstock shines through as the color of the snowflakes. Magic, huh?

I wanted to mount this piece onto a mat of white, then onto a Night of Navy card base. Because I started out with a piece of cardstock bigger than I would actually need, this gave me the opportunity to clean up the edges a bit by trimming all the edges down to a final size of 3 3/34" x 5", the perfect size to mat with a 4" x 5 1/4" piece of a contrasting color. 

Once again, the finished card:

Because the background of this card is pretty sensational and really the star, I wanted to preserve as much of that as possible. To do so, I wrapped a bit of the white 5/8" Polka Dot Tulle Ribbon around a small portion, adding a sentiment done on Night of Navy and embossed in white.

Have you ever tried the Joseph's Coat technique? After seeing and reading this, do you think you might give it a try? Please do! It is quite addictive, and really, sort of magical! Let me know if you need any help!

Flurried

Smiles.