Heartfelt Congratulations

When I had the idea for this card I really wasn’t sure how it would turn out. I was a bit sceptical if I’m honest. But now that it’s done I actually think it worked very well!

I started with my cardbase, which I made from some black card. I then embossed it with bubble wrap pattern. I did this by taking a piece of bubble wrap and treating it like a large background stamp – I laid it on my table, covered it with embossing ink, then pressed my card base in it. I then coated the base with black embossing powder, tapped off the excess, and melted it with my heat gun. The impression isn’t perfect. There’s a whole section that didn’t take at all – I guess those bubbles were flat. But I think it worked surprisingly well! I honestly thought it would end up being a mess.

Next I moved on to my coloured strips. I used watercolour paints to create an ombre effect from a dark purple-red through to a very light pink. Once the paint was dry I trimmed down the panel and then cut it into five pieces. I worked out how I wanted to arrange them and then put them in my MISTI for stamping. The stamp I used is one by Panduro Hobby (I can’t seem to find a link for it.) I inked it up with black pigment ink and stamped it onto the three middle strips all in one go. I then lifted away the outermost of the stamped strips and restamped the middle one so that the ink would also take where they overlapped. I then applied clear embossing powder and heat embossed the image.

At this point I decided to adhere the coloured strips into place. I positioned the central one first, adhering it flush to the card base using tape runner. I also used tape runner to adhere the outermost (unstamped) strips. I then put foam tape on to the back of the other two strips and adhered them in place, taking care to line up the pattern as well as I could.

I still wanted to add a sentiment so I took one of the stamps from the Ready, Set, Shake set by Lawn Fawn. I stamped and heat embossed it in white onto a piece of black card. I forgot to prepare the card first so there’s a lot of stray bits of powder… I then fussy cut the little panel and used liquid glue to attach it to the raised strips.

As a final touch I added a touch of glossy accents to the little hearts on the right hand side of the heart as well as the flower on the left.

I’m very pleased with how this turned out. As I said, I really thought the bubble wrap embossing was going to be a messy failure, but it actually worked surprisingly well. I had originally planned to make this a Valentine’s card, but I wanted to use the congratulations sentiment so I guess it can be an anniversary card, or perhaps for an engagement.

Love,

Lady Joyful

Challenges included:

Allsorts Challenge – Let’s Celebrate

NBUS – Never-Before-Used -Schtuff and optional: bubble wrap (the heart stamp is one I’d never used before. I don’t think I’ve ever used the sentiment stamp either, but I could be remembering wrongly.)

Sweet Stampin’ – Spots & Dots

TGIF – CASE The Designer (I CASEd this card.)

Uniko Challenge – Anything Goes and Optional: Love