Background stamps

Hi there! Wow it’s been a busy week here.. thank you so much for all the orders placed! Sadly our blog has been a little neglected of late, but we will be catching up with all the latest Design Team tutorials over the coming days. Ali is here today with a beautiful card created with our BUTTERFLY EFFECT stamps and VISOMETRY geometric background stamps, which are looking stunning embossed in white…

This week I am sharing a butterfly card using my current favourites Cosmic Shimmer  Powders and Visible Image Butterfly Effect stamps. This is a 7″ x 7″ card and good fun to make. Butterflies come in all colours so you could change the colour scheme to reflect your favourites.

Tutorial

Cut a piece of watercolour card 6″ x 6″ and pick out some of your favourite Cosmic Shimmer Pixie Powders or Shimmer Shakers. I used Lime Burst, Grass Green, Denim Dash, Electric Blue and Cornflower Blue.

Spritz a little water on the back of the card to keep it flat,.

Then spritz all over the front of the card.

Starting with the lighter colours first, tap each of the colours in 3 or 4 places around the card.

When you have applied all of your powders, your card will look a bit like this.

Lightly spritz water over your card again and watch the colours burst into life as they activate.

Every time you do one of these backgrounds it will be different, pigment powders are so cool 😎

Leave your card to dry naturally if you have lots of patience, otherwise blast it with a heat gun to dry it, turn it over and heat from the other side too.

When it is completely dry it may look a little rumpled. To flatten it out, roll your card backwards and forwards to release the fibres, it will flatten out again.

Pat an antistatic pad over your card, then take the largest geometric circles stamp from the Visible Image ‘Visometry’ set and stamp it in the centre of the card, and twice just off the edges of the card using a light coloured pigment ink, I used Hero Arts Unicorn White. Heat emboss with white embossing powder.

Repeat stamping and white heat embossing using the largest geometric flower stamp.

Continue stamping/embossing with the middle size stamps and use the tiny ones to fill in the gaps.

Stamp the big butterfly from the ‘Butterfly Effect’ set onto white card with versamark ink. Then heat emboss with white embossing powder.

Tap a little of the Electric Blue, Lime Burst and Grass Green shimmer powders onto your craft mat.

Add a drop of water from the end of your paint brush and mix into liquid paint.

Paint your butterfly, blending the colours on the wings.

Add more water, powder to your paint as required. It dries out quite fast at the moment, I’ve noticed.

The heat embossed lines will repel the watercolour paint, any mica which dries on the top of the white areas can be wiped off with a kitchen towel.

Cut out your butterfly leaving a slight gap around the outside. If you cut into the embossed lines they can crack and flake off.

Apply black ink around the edges using a blending tool.

Wipe over the edges with a kitchen towel to remove the excess ink off the white embossing.

Use your blending tool to apply black ink around the edges of your card to create a vignette.

Mount your coloured card onto black card with a border of 1/16″, then onto white card with a border of 1/8″ and then onto black card with a border of 1/8″.

I use an edging ruler and craft knife to do my card matts and gut the card where possible.

Then fix this to a white 7″ x 7″ card blank using pva glue or double sided tape.

Stamp a sentiment from the ‘Lost For Words’ set onto a scrap of white card using black versafine ink, then heat emboss with clear embossing powder.

Cut out the sentiment and mount it onto black card leaving approx 1/16″ border.