Two Toned Butterfly Embossing

I saw this technique on this blog via pinterest and loved it, so tried it myself.  I glued some lighter punched butterflies onto the darker cardstock, then, when they'd dried, I ran the panel through my Big Shot with an embossing folder.

I added a piece of sheer blue ribbon with a butterfly bracelet charm off to one side, then glued the panel to a piece of cream cardstock.

I'm entering this card in Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday challenge, anything goes.

Flipped Butterflies

I've wanted this embossing folder ever since I first saw a project using it, but didn't think I'd ever get my hands on it as it's been discontinued.  Well, I found a site in the U.S. that had atrocious shipping costs but that folder in stock, so I placed an order.

And now it's mine. :D

The concept I had in mind to put gold ink on the raised parts of the embossing folder and letter press them didn't quite work.  I always got residue on the unraised parts, making the final card look pretty bad.  So I finally just embossed the whole thing in black and used a gold pen on the raised parts for the contrast I wanted.

I then added the punched butterflies.  The ink pad was a truer, brighter gold than my pen, but it still looks good.  I matted the embossed panel on a gold panel to aid the contrast, then mounted that on the black card base.

Hot Air Balloon Birthday Wishes

I made this card for Papertrey Ink's Make It Monday Challenge, Watercoloring Embossed Images.  This is a fun technique.

All of the stamps are from Papertrey Ink's Up, Up, and Away set.  I started by stamping the hot air balloons on watercolour paper.  I put a few drops of different coloured reinkers on a piece of plastic and got out a container of water and a brush.  Then, taking small amounts of ink and water, I carefully painted the balloons.  For the baskets, as I don't have a yeller reinker, I tried something different.  I coloured on the plastic with a water based Crayola marker to get some ink, and used that.  When they were dry I cut them out.

For the background (also on watercolour paper) I painted the hills with a peacock shade of green, using more water to wash out the colour for the hills further back (and yes, I realized after gluing my balloons on that I'd messed up the perspective).  For the clouds I again coloured with markers on the plastic, this time in two shades of grey.  I added some water (probably too much) and painted the colour directly on the cloud stamps.  I actually like the marbled effect I got.  It worked well for clouds, though I won't try that for solid images.

I glued the two smaller balloons on the page and used pop-dots for the largest one.  I also punched one cloud and popped that on for dimension.  Finally I stamped my sentiment and added it to the back (and then realized I should have done that before adding the popped elements).