I ordered Anna Griffin's new Mix and Match Folders from HSN. They arrived this past Wednesday. It had been a week since seeing the show, so I was just playing around in my craftroom with no real designer inspiration to get me started. This is what I came up with first.
The cardstock is the darker pink from a Recollections Preppy Beach pack. I embossed it dry. (I'll explain more about that below.) I used a sponge dauber and silver encore ink to highlight the wreath and bow. I used a retired Stampin Up marker in Cameo Coral to highlight the chain around the center and the dots on the folder. Since I didn't need a Cuttlebug machine, I bought the option with just the folders. That means my set came with the clover and rectangle dies to cut out the center sentiment. I cut the clover out of white wausau cardstock. Before I removed the die from the paper, I held it in place and traced the inner edge with the Cameo Coral marker. Then I ran the sentiment through the folder. After that, I used my sponge dauber in silver to gently edge between the maker line and the edge of the die. I used the brush tip on the marker to highlight the sentiment text. Pop dots are under the sentiment to give it a raised dimension. I finished it off with three frosted glass half beads by Recollections. This card is not a complete representation of the folder as I trimmed the top and bottom to fit the card base I had on hand.
Today I began playing with the folders again. This time, I taped my paper in place with a bit of washi tape, gave it a gentle mist with water and ran it through the machine. Then I opened up the folder, used a brayer to apply Summer Starfruit ink (by Stampin Up) to the indented side of the folder, and ran it through the machine again. The lower left corner simply refused to transfer the color. Eventually, I resorted to misting the inked folder with water and running it through the machine again. Doing this caused some of the ink to run down into the embossing crevices and thus ink is now on the raised portion of my embossed image there.
When I say I dry embossed one and misted the other with water, this is what I'm talking about. I found that by misting the paper with a little water relaxed the fibers enough that when I ran it through the machine, there was less ripping and thus less jagged edges on my raised portions of my image. In this photo, you can see though that it does cause your paper to curl some. Left sentiment was spritzed and right was done dry. It is not easy to see in the photos, but there is a difference up close and in person.
Here is the final card.
Card base is made from Antique Paperie by Colorbok stack. Cream embossed layer is Wausua cream inked with Stampin Up Summer Starfruit. The dragon fly is cut using Dragon Delight dies by Spellbinders out of the extra paper from the card base. The ribbon is Summer Starfruit by Stampin Up.
Since the paper for the card is double sided, I needed to add another card piece to the inside. More Wausau cream. The blue die is cut using one of the Anna Griffin dies in her Lace Trimmings collection - also cut from the original 12x12 piece of cardstock that makes up the 5x7 card base.
