Tamara's Paper Trail: "Black Beauty" - Stampin' Creative Blog Hop

Thursday, January 28, 2021

"Black Beauty" - Stampin' Creative Blog Hop - New Beginnings

Happy Blog Hop Day for a very cold Edmonton, Alberta Canada! I'm excited you're here! Every month the Stampin' Creative Global group of Demonstrators bring to you projects around a common theme using exclusively Stampin' Up! products. THIS month the theme is "New Beginnings".

There are sooo many ways that theme could go! Cards for wedding, new home, new baby, new YEAR, new job, retirement ... soooo many options! I decided to make a wedding card for a bride and groom with Black and Gold as their colours. The "New Beginning" of starting a life together calls for a very special card. THIS is that card!

Isn't it pretty??? I can't TELL you how much I love it! I could stare at it all DAY! The shine of the gold against that black is SO striking! Photographing gold is NOT an easy task so here is another shot to try to capture the beauty ...

Inspired by two demonstrators' projects I found on line (Tammy Beard in the US and Desiree Spenst in Canada) I wanted to make a mask/stencil out of the largest "Potted Succulents" dies and then use that mask/stencil to emboss my project with gold embossing powder. I was THRILLED with the result of my experiment (I seriously didn't think it would turn out so well!).

I made my mask and I taped it overtop of my Basic Black card layer so it wouldn't move. I grabbed my juicy Versamark pad and applied it directly to the project, pressing firmly to ensure a thorough transfer of Versamark to all the gaps in the stencil. I removed the stencil and covered my black layer with gold embossing powder. I truly couldn't believe that all the stencil lines were perfectly maintained! The stencil hadn't moved at ALL, resulting in perfectly crisp black lines in the embossing powder. Heat setting this baby was sooooo gratifying! OMG I seriously squealed as it started to melt. It was like watching a beautiful sunrise chase the shadows away over a mountain top. Truly mesmerizing! The result is just stunning.

I want a simple sentiment, one that wouldn't hide too much of the beautiful background. I decided to use the Forever & Always bundle for that. I cut out the black background and the "Always" was cut out from our Gold Foil sheets and attached with Multipurpose Glue (you could also use our Adhesive Sheets). I popped the whole sentiment up on dimensionals.

I knew I wanted black or gold ribbon to embellish the front. Alas, we didn't have anything current that fit the bill ... so I made my own! I used our Gold Metallic Edge Ribbon, which is Very Vanilla, and I coloured it black with my Dark Black Blends Marker. I was planning to use my Gold Embossing Powder on a strip of black card stock for the sentiment when my mind wondered "hey! Can we emboss on ribbon???". Turns out we sure can! Again, I squealed with excitement at how well it turned out! I simply stamped the "forever" in versamark, covered it with gold powder and heat set it. EASY!

I layered my pretty front layers onto a 5 1/4" x 4" piece of gold foil (*tip - use a rectangle die to cut a chunk out of the middle of the foil. That's stuff is expensive! No point using a full layer! No one will see the cut out chunk and you will have a pretty die cut to use on another project!)

The entire "kit and kabootle" is mounted on a Basic Black card base. I coloured three of our Artisty Blooms Adhesive Backed Sequins black with my Dark Black Blend a DONE!

It's not the fastest project (not the shortest blog post!) I've ever made but it is certainly one of the prettiest! I hope you like it as much as I do. Give it a go - I promise you'll LOVE the result!

Thanks for popping in. A list of supplies used are at the end of this post. If you are in Canada and would like to purchase any of these products (or any others!), clicking in the pictures of the items will take you directly to my online store. Remember, Slae-a-brations is still underway! For every $60 you spend you get to pick a FREE item from our Sale-a-bration brochure (over on the right side bar).

Now hop along to my friends' blogs to see what THEY have to show you ... and have a stampy day!

Tam

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