Author: Bonnie

I was going to add actual buttons to this card but they were the wrong color. In an effort to make them purple I put them on paper used to protect the work surface when stenciling another project and sprayed with Purple Shimmer Spray. The spray did not stick to the button but the button did leave a very cool impression on the paper. Funny thing is that the bird made with the embossing paste ended up not even being used but now that paper is this bg used here. The harlequin bg piece is white copy paper and a stencil sprayed through with Purple Shimmer Spray. All is layered on purple cs with white cs base. Added the angora fiber wrapping and Silhouette cut frame with hand made stitching lines. Sentiment is stamped in black on round tags.

Homemade Shimmer Spray: I am seeing this spray in many product lines and some are quite expensive. After doing internet research and watching videos I came up with my own concoction. 1 part alcohol, 1 part water mixed in a small spray bottle. Add several squirts of color burst, 1/8 t. perfect pearls and 1/8 t. clear drying liquid glue. Shake to mix and attach spray head. Without the glue the shimmer part just wipes off (there was the suggestion of using hairspray but I don’t like the smell or indigents in most of these). The shaking before you add the spray part is because the color burst wants to get stuck in and clog the tube before it gets thoroughly mixed. For this purple spray I did use purple perfect pearls and for a blue spray I made today I also used the blue perfect pearls. It will be fun to see what other colors I find I want and to see what the different shades of perfect pearls give the finished results. Oh and add a few small clean pebbles to help with agitation. My husband empty a shotgun shell and gave me the bb’s which work quite well, too.

We are 3° this morning and a skiff of snow. My Warm Winter Wish is that it looks like this somewhere (maybe Florida) and will look like this here soon (maybe June).

My thought pattern here was to play with a stencil and glossy photo paper. With the stencil laying on the glossy paper I swiped the ink pads across the stencil then sprayed with water. Lifted the stencil and let the water dry. Placed another stencil and used glossy white embossing paste with spatula in a few areas. Then stamped grass and butterfly image in black and added copic colored, Silhouette cut greenery. The sentiment was stamped in black on tissue paper and glued on with thinned white glue. The reason I used tissue paper is because the glossy paper wants to cling to the stamp and doesn’t always give the cleanest of impressions. This way the sentiment is black and sharp, the down side of this technique is that around the sentiment , where the glue is, the paper loses its glossiness. It is OK here, just adds texture. Butterflies were stamped in black on copy paper and water colored with deep blue mica pot, fussy cut, wings gently shaped and adhered with dimensional glue. Image piece is adhered to white cs base in a 3 1/2 x 6 size.

Once I had heat set in gold the versa mark stamping bg, the central frame got masked then I sponged the three colors. Dropped a few water drops on ink to add interest to bg. Stamped the sentiment in black on the mat layer then glued that to the trimmed frame that is popped up. Outer most frame was also glued, on to the white cs base.

Here is the frame I created but decided to trim down to just a top and bottom for this card. Hope you can use it somehow?

This started days ago with the honeycomb die cuts. I used rust pastes in three colors and a stipple brush to color the die cuts but the white copy paper became part of my design here, too. The other image piece was also a leftover from last week and seemed to fit right in with this one. Tag and sentiment are Silhouette cut and the sentiment has the paste in the brown to color it. Finished card is 3 1/2 by 7.

A girl friend sent me some bronze embossing powder to try. So I used the versa mark pen to highlight the stamped leaves and die cut bird then heat set the new embossing powder. The Silhouette cut leaves just happen to overlay the background stamped leaves, not planed but I will take this one. Stamped the sentiment in black and layered all on gray dry embossed cs. Then mounted on white cs base. The piece in the background is my embossing folder. It is a piece of wall paper sample that I cut to fit in the Cuttlebug. The sandwich of A, B and C plates did a great job of texturing my cs.