LEAVES TWO WAYS

I wanted to try something a little different for my blog post today. So, I decided on a technique I will call Leaves Two Ways. Of course, you could use stamps in any shape other than leaves. 

Say you decided to use flower stamps, then the technique would be called Flowers Two Ways. It doesn't matter. I'm just being goofy. I guess it's a good thing that no one appointed me to name the various techniques.

On with the show.

Even though I've never been a big fan of the color Pacific Point, I decided that it would maybe make for an elegant card using this technique. So I went with it, both in the cardstock and in the ink.

Starting with a 4" x 5 1/4" piece of Pacific Point cardstock, I stamped in Pacific Point ink the large philodendron leaf from the Tropical Chic stamp set, found on page 121 of the Annual Catalog. I didn't touch any of the leaves to each other, but stamped them randomly across the piece of cardstock. To get a random design to come out fairly well, start with one image stamped close to the center, working outwards from there. It makes it a lot easier to add little bits and pieces of the stamp at the edges rather than try to fit the whole stamp into teeny spaces that are much too small to accommodate the stamp without overlapping.

Once the Pacific Point ink was dry, I rubbed my Embossing Buddy well over the stamped cardstock. Then, with VersaMark Ink, in a similar fashion, starting near the center, I stamped the leafy frond randomly right over the tone on tone leaves. I actually did three at first in the center, then went to the Heat Station, dumped gold embossing powder onto the stamped images, heat set them, then continued on from there. 

Before heat embossing, you still have time to examine your images for any stray marks you do not want in your final piece. If you find some unsightly embossing powder caused by overstamping, dropping the stamp, anything, gently remove the unwanted pieces with a small paint brush. Then heat emboss.

Once those first three images were embossed, it was easy to figure out where to stamp from there. It actually took me three times at the Heat Station until the leafy fronds were embossed the way I like them.

Because I used gold embossing powder, I opted to mount the embossed piece onto a brushed gold cardstock base. I die cut the word from the same gold paper.

In taking the photos of this card, I tried to get the impression of the gold embossing and the brushed metallic in the word and the card base. Tough to do, but I think this last photo shows off both those elements nicely. Well, sort of. Now I see that the light completely faded out the top edge of the gold card.

Two-Way

Smiles.