Dry Embossing with Stencils and a New Year!

Hello and Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and that 2019 brings you peace, joy and good health! While I believe that January 1st represents fresh starts, I admit I'm not one to make resolutions. Rather I tend to look at a new year as more of an opportunity to set some achievable goals for myself. To me, resolutions are firm promises you make when you are determined to do or not to do something. With resolutions they seem more set in stone and you tend to go "cold turkey" with them, whereas goals are more malleable and can be achieved gradually hence making them more realistic. When it comes to crafting I've set some goals for myself this year. I want to become better at watercolouring, explore mixed media, blog more, participate in challenges and apply to a design team for one of my favourite stamp companies.

Speaking of favourite stamp companies, today I'm sharing a card using the Anemones Stamp Set by Pretty Pink Posh. But before we get into that, I just want to mention that I recently purchased a colour wheel and I love this thing! For two reasons. One, it helps me with mixing paint colours and two it tells me what colours look good together. For example, did you know that red-orange is a complementary colour to blue-green? I didn't, but now I do and those are the colours I chose to create today's card with. Without my colour wheel, I probably would never have paired these colours up, but I'm sure glad I did because I think they look awesome together!

I started by creating an A2 sized note card from Coastal Cabana cardstock by Stampin' Up. I trimmed a card panel to 4" x 5.25" from white cardstock and dry embossed the Simon Says Stamp Square Dance stencil onto it using a Spellbinders Embossing Pad and my Big Kick. The result is this beautiful but subtle textured background. I then foam mounted the panel onto the note card using white fun foam.

Next I stamped the anemones and leaves onto Strathmore Bristol Smooth Watercolour paper (non-textured side) using Versamark Ink and heat embossed it with Lawn Fawn Gold Embossing Powder. Using my Zig Clean Color Real Brush Markers, I watercoloured the images using #023 Scarlet Red, #042 Turquoise Green and #043 Olive Green. Once they were dry, I adhered them to my panel using tape runner adhesive and 3-D pop dots.

For my sentiment, I gold heat embossed the word "bestie" from the CZ Design Besties Stamp Set onto white cardstock. I then used the coordinating die to die cut it. I attached small pop dots to the back of the word and adhered it over the flowers. On a piece of black cardstock, I stamped and white heat embossed the words "You Are My" from the Besties stamp set using Ranger White Embossing Powder, trimmed the strip using the thinnest of the Lawn Fawn Everyday Sentiment Banners and adhered it just above the word "bestie". For the finishing touch, I added Onyx Crystals by Studio Katia to the centers of the flowers.

And that's my completed card! I'm really loving the look of dry embossed stencils as a background. Stencils are very inexpensive and I love that there are many uses for them. Thanks for taking the time to visit and I hope you have a great day!