I wanted to carry on with die cutting but also felt that the Tattered Lace embossing edging folders and dies were worth a mention. I’ve created a frame here using them to highlight the main image. I’ve stuck to a basic colour palette of black red and gold. This is a simple card using a little die cutting and embossing.Nothing too complicated but looks effective I hope. No ink in sight.
What will we need?- Here’s my suggestions:
- Black and red card;
- Red and gold glitter card;
- Tattered Lace ‘love is in the air’ die;
- Tattered lace edging embossing folder- swirly pattern, not too wide;
- Edging die small scallop;
- Heart punch;
- Gilding wax- empire gold;
- Gold gem stones;
- Red satin ribbon;
- Black alcohol marker;
- Black double sided foam tape and small white square double sided foam pads;
- wet glue.
How is it put together?
Run the die through a die cutting machine, once using gold glitter card and once in black card.
Take the black die cut and punch away the loose bits. Lift out the tiny ‘love’ and leave to one side. Then carefully take scissors or a craft knife and cut away the black bindings on the balloon, the figures, basket and trailing ropes. This is the trickiest bit and takes a little careful snipping.
Next, using a wet, acrylic glue, preferably with a fine tip or a small applicator stick the black bits on to the gold die cut, lining up all of the parts apart from the ropes where I decided to offset it slightly. Then carefully stick in the ‘love’ in gold so it stands out against the black. I then edged it in black using an alcohol marker.
Next stick this on to a rectangle of red card ,placed towards the top. I then took my gold self adhesive gold stones and placed them randomly around the main image to depict stars on the top two thirds of the red card. I mounted all of this on to a black C5 card blank. You could stop there. This will still look striking. However, I decided to add a frame.
To make the frame I took four black strips and the strip edger embossing folder. To emboss them I used the Tattered Lace baby blue machine and the long plates. For this technique two B plates are required.
Once the strips have been embossed I changed the plates to the A cutting plate and B plate. I lined up the strip edge die against the embossed pattern, lightly taping it in place and ran it through the baby blue on each side so that I achieved a small scallop down each side. I repeated this technique on all four black card strips.
To add a vintage metallic look I decided to enhance the raised pattern by using gilding wax. Top tip!…use your finger with a tiny amount to rub gently over the top. You barely touch the card! Also wipe your fingers because it goes everywhere! The surface can then be buffed with a tissue to create more shine.
Cut the strips to size to create a frame around your die image. Then place double sided foam on them, I’ve used black, to create dimension.
Finally, it was time to add the hearts….of course! I punched them out of red glitter card and edged them in black so they would stand out. I placed small square foam pads on the back so that they would be raised up. I then placed them in a ‘swoosh’ shape! I wanted to create the effect of hearts on the breeze to fit in with the idea of the rising balloon.
Finally, add a red satin bow in the corner because we can !!….. what do you think?