Gilded Card - first experiments with gilding flakes

Afternoon All,

The postman brought me a pot of gold last week, well, gilding flakes actually. I've been dying to try these after seeing a YouTube video of Sarah Lawrence of Crafty Notions - link here - demoing the deckle-edged effect. So on black card I applied and spread the glue, then sprinkled and rubbed in the flakes as instructed. The result was nowhere as good as Sarah's but it was my first time!

Not wanting to waste this first effort , however amateurish, I made this topper using up bits and pieces from my stash and adhered it to a ready-made ivory base card. I stamped Hero Arts' Wavy Stars, a favourite of mine, with black ink onto the gilded panel, then with VersaMark onto the black card which I then brushed with gold mica powder. The panel of music note card, although creamy in colour, was a bit too light for my liking so I embossed the edges with gold powder.

The inside and back are decorated with gold embossed stamping. As this card could be used for any number of occasions, I'm leaving the greeting/sentiment for now.

Materials used:

• Card: Ivory Luxury 5.5" Square Card (140mm x 140mm); black card for gilded panel; music note patterned card from Payperbox.
• Stamp & Inks: Hero Arts Wavy Stars; Stazon Jet Black; VersaMark Watermark Stamp Pad
• Other Materials: Gilding Flakes Sunshine,  Light Gold Mica Powder Paints & Craft Adhesive, all by Crafty Notions; Heat It Up Gold Embossing Powder; two jewelled heart embellishments from The Works; black satin ribbon & gold raffia from stash box.

This was fun so, after this first foray into using gilding flakes, I'm now looking at other ways to use them. There's nothing like getting your fingers sticky and covered in gold stuff  ; )

After blogger getting into a tizz last week and being down for a couple of days it's nice to be back to normal again. However, I didn't sit twiddling my thumbs waiting for blogland to get back to normal. No, I took advantage of the enforced downtime and sorted out, chucked out, re-organised and cleaned the craft space and today it's positively gleaming. Even the EM got caught up in the flurry of activity and, after inspecting my handiwork and passing it as impressive, decided I deserved another shelf. So after a quick visit to B&Q, and donning his handyman overalls, the job is done.

Now there is less stash on the floor and more space for The Boss to curl up in - as you can see she likes to keep an eye on me while I play : )

Okay, that's it for today - got a lot to do and so little time to do it in so I'd better get a wriggle on.

Take cared all of you and happy crafting,