Secondhand Snowflake card from DivaRed October workshop.

It's been a while since I blogged, but here I am, like the proverbial bad penny!
Janet (cardscatsandcoffee.blogspot.co.uk) and I did our October workshop yesterday, a week early because I have a stall at Ickworth Wood Fair next weekend - Janet's cards will be there too, but not Janet!

We were very excited, and a little nervous about this workshop, because Eileen Godwin ( eileenscraftyzone.blogspot.co.uk) was attending, and as you know if you have looked at her blog, she is really very good! I hope all the ladies who attended  (we were quite depleted because of illness, family crisis and accidents) enjoyed the day as much as we did.

So this is one of the cards I demo'd, you will see why it is called Secondhand Snowflake when you see how it is done.

I made it on a 7x7 card and matted and layered in quarter inch increments.
To make the snowflake layer you need Centura Pearl card (any colour because you will be using the uncoated side).
Various blue and a pink Distress or Adirondac ink pads, I used Stonewashed, Broken China and Raspberry.
Spellbinders snowflake embossibility stencil
Water spritzer,
Cut and Dry foam.
An embossing machine, I used my Wizard as it is easy to clean.


So this is what you do.

• Cut two pieces of Centura Pearl slightly larger than your embossibility stencil and using the cut and dry foam, ink one of them well with a combination of the inks on the uncoated side....be generous you need a lot of ink on this piece of card.
• DO NOT DRY THE INK!!!!
• Time to emboss. The sandwich I used was as follows, but you should do what your die cutter tells you:  Base plate, Tan embossing mat, Inked cardstock (ink side up), Snowflake stencil.
• Take the second piece of Centura, and spray the uncoated side liberally with water, allow the worst of the excess to drip off, then place it over the snowflake stencil and put the top plate on top of it.
• Put it through your die cutting machine.When you pull the two pieces apart the top one will be a gentle wash of colour and the bottom one will be a much darker effect.
• Trim the paler impression to the required size (I think I did 14 x 10 cm) and gently ink the edges with Stonewashed Adirondac. Keep the darker impression for later, if you use gilding wax over this it looks really good.
• Stamp your snowman, I used the scribble snowman from Funstamps (he is very old, but he is still my favourite!) Colour him in in toning colours, I used Liquid Pearls to colour mine, if you paint a very thin layer on first to provide a key, then just dab the pearly colour  on with your paintbrush you get a raised effect.
• Stamp a sentiment and mat and layer it.

• Then it is just a matter of assembling your card as you wish, and adding a few gems, or in my case pearls.

This is a close up of the pearlised snowman, and you can also see that the strip across the card is made from a spare bit of the embossed snowflake.

I am sure I don't need to say this, but I wouldn't recommend that you do this technique with an electric embosser!





Many thanks for taking the time to look at this blog, I will be back with the second card I demo'd and some photos of the workshop a bit later. Please feel free to leave a comment, it is an open forum, and will stay so unless it is abused.