My Time to Craft and Allsorts Challenge
Happy Birthday
Good day, fellow crafters. When it comes to adding a touch of elegance and dimension to birthday cards, dry embossing emerges as a captivating technique that elevates your creations to new heights. By using embossing folders, you can transform plain cardstock into a textured masterpiece, instantly capturing attention and conveying a sense of sophistication. With an array of embossing folder designs available, from intricate patterns to whimsical motifs, you have the power to tailor your embossed birthday cards to suit any theme or style. I hope you enjoy my submission to these challenges.
To create the background for these cards, I first begin by getting my supplies in order. I chose to use a piece of premium white cardstock, Altenew’s Cheerful Bloom 3D embossing folder, and Distress Oxide inks in the colors of Mowed Lawn, Wilted Violet, Picked Raspberry, Saltwater Taffy, and Lucky Clover. To create the background I used the various colors of inks I had chosen to cover the white cardstock keeping in mind how the embossed images would align with them. Once the inks were dry I lightly misted the back of the paper so that it would prevent the embossed image from cracking the paper and placed it into the embossing folder. I then ran the embossing folder through my embossing machine, which provided a very beautiful background in and of itself, but I wanted the focus to be only on the image. To accomplish this I took my brayer and black ink and covered the inside of the top of the embossing folder’s raised portion and then aligned the paper and ran it through the embossing machine again. This is done so that the portions that are covered with ink are pressed into the areas where you don’t want the background to have color. It was a new technique to me but it ended up working very well.
The next step in the process was to trim the background to its final size and to mat it with a beautifully corresponding purple cardstock that set the colors of the flowers off nicely. However, before I matted it, I did cut my sentiment out of the area that went below my background, as I often do, to prevent material from being wasted and ensure that I have enough of the right colors to complete my card. I next used the Elegant Occasions sentiments glimmer plates and my hot foil machine to hot foil, in a gorgeous purple the sentiment that I wanted for this birthday card. Once that was complete, I used the corresponding die and cut it out.
To finish the card, I needed to find the perfect way to mount the sentiment. While surface mounting was an option, I felt that the intricate details of the 3D embossing folder deserved to shine and not be overshadowed. To achieve this, I ingeniously raised the sentiment from the surface using foam pop dots. This technique added dimension and allowed the sentiment to stand out prominently.
