Warm and Cozy

final_product It’s a cold (California) evening, and I was feeling like making something cozy. This cute snowman card was fun to make, and highlights the new Shimmer Paint.

The card base is Balmy Blue, and is made by cutting a sheet of 8.5×11 paper in half. I like to score first, at 4.25″ on the short side, then flip and cut it in half at 5.5″

The background was a fun new technique I was playing with. The paper is standard (not thick) Whisper White card stock, cut at 4×5.25″. I embossed it first using the Cable Knit embossing folder. Then I mixed in a ramekin:

Four drops of Balmy Blue Ink
A good sized “glop” of Champagne Mist shimmer paint
About 2 tablespoons of regular rubbing alcohol

Here’s what the solution looked like:

Ramekin

Then I used a sponge brayer and rolled the mixture onto the paper. The sponge will absorb the whole amount of the liquid, but you can dab it off on the edge of the ramekin. I expiremented with how hard to push with the brayer and how much to have on the sponge, and you can see that you have a lot of options using the same mixture:

Embossed Layers

I used my heat tool to help dry the embossed layers more quickly, but with alcohol, if you did these first, they’d probably dry by the time you finished cutting and coloring the other pieces.

I found using the multipurpose glue was the best way to adhere the pieces to the card base, since there are so many different heights in this dynamic folder.

For the front sentiment and the snow people, the hinge stamping feature on the Stamparatus made this go very quickly. (I’m left handed if you’re trying to figure out why I use the top of the Stamparatus at that angle.) Another trick is to use a single width stamp case under it, so you can have the plate lie flat for inking.