The Details
Where did it come from
Papercraft Inspirations Issue 166
When did I get it
June 2017
When did I try it
15th August 2017
First quick impression
This kit I picked out today is stamp free so no stamp testing needed again today (read about how I do this in Sunday’s post). I very much like the papers and the vellum in this kit, the toppers are lovely too they are all very much to my taste. I have had mixed success with illustrated Embossing Folders rather than ones with a frame or background texture but I very much hope things will be different when I try playing with this one. So let’s crack on with the crafting and see what I come up with.
A match made in heaven
My first idea involved creating a mash-up with a Hunkydory topper. As I have been working my way through my craft things (painstakingly slowly) I have targeted any Hunkydory sets where I have used some of the topper sheets and pulled these out to use up because I don’t feel organised having partial pages. As luck would have it the kit I was looking through was the Vintage Journey one and the Love’s Embrace! topper was just perfect.
How I made the card
I hate to nitpick but I had to cut my background sheet, it was too wide for an A5 card bland and too tall for 8″ x 8″. It seemed an unusual choice of size as Cardmaking features most heavily in the magazine. I went with 8″ x 8″ and trimmed the top rather than creating an even taller card blank.
I cut the backing sheet to 19cm x 19cm and a piece of gold mirror card to 19.5cm x 19.5cm. These were layered and fastened to the card front (with a glue pen) risky I know without any wriggle time but sometimes I have found when I use mirror card for a mat layer and I am using wet glue it can create sort of bubble pockets between the layers this created a smooth flat surface.I used one of the borders from the Hunkydory topper sheet and fastened this to the left-hand side with a Nuvo glue pen. The sentiment and rose image were cut from the included topper sheet. The sentiment was fastened with the Nuvo pen and the rose with sticky foam pads. Finally, the central Hunkydory topper was attached with foam pads too. A simple but effective card I am very happy with.
Playing with the Embossing Folder
So I thought I would have a bit of a play with the embossing folder. I ran it through my Gemini with some cardstock (I’m pretty sure it was a watercolour card but it was from my scrap collection…) I then gave my new Groove tool (I bought from Create and Craft last week) a go and went over it with the brush and some Viva Decor Inca Gold. This worked pretty well but some parts of the image just couldn’t be caught, maybe because they were less embossed?) A few parts of the swan had the gold within the flat parts too so I wasn’t happy with that really.I tried to camouflage this by using some Distress Oxide (Worn Lipstick, Broken China and a touch of Wilted Violet) a dabbed some bits of colour around the design and sprayed it lightly with my Nuvo spray bottle and helped it blend a bit with a foam pad. Things I learnt doing this was the fact that because the Inca Gold was water based it moved too! I was sort of expecting to see a gold design showing through a marbled background, instead, this is what I got.
I’ll be honest I think it looks better in the photo than it does in reality. I think I will keep it on my pinboard as a learning project rather than make a card out of it. So onto…
The Verdict
I very much like the rest of the cardstock and topper and of course the vellum sheets I have to come up with an idea for. I will be keeping these and using them up. I think I will keep the embossing folder for a while and try some other techniques like embossing and fussy cutting techniques. If this works well it will help me get the best out of other embossing folders maybe, learning is always a good thing! So everything is staying in my stash for now. You can find out more about my big stash decluttering project here.
Do drop a comment if you have got this kit and feel free to share an image of what you have made.
Until next time,
Gentle Hugs,
Susan
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