Freedom and Happiness - embossing themed swap card

Hi Everyone,

It's been a wet and miserable day here and I wish I could say I spent it crafting but I'm afraid I have been otherwise engaged.

I hope you have found plenty opportunities to craft instead.

However, I can now reveal this card I made for a swap I participate in. This month the challenge was to include embossing ... any and as many types of embossing as you wished. So here's what I came up with.

There's three areas embossed on this card - the large back panel, the middle blue panel and the sentiment topper.

The large panel started of as a piece of smooth white card. I inked it up with two shades of blue, one from Big and Juicy, Hydrangea, the other Tim Holtz Stormy Sky, and one brown shade, Pumice Stone. Next, it was stamped all over with a selection of flourish stamps in Stormy Sky and then brushed with Champagne mica powder - in real life this gives a lovely sheen but sadly it isn't showing up very well in the photos. (This is the technique I discovered recently in Craft Stamper) Finally it was put through the Cuttlebug and embossed with the Scrolls Background folder.

The middle panel is made of a textured blue card,  also put through the Cuttlebug, this time using the Mini Polka folder which was first smeared with a VersaMark pad. Silver embossing powder was sprinkled on the debossed side and then heated to melt into the dimples.

The sentiment topper was cut from the same piece of patterned paper, Vintedge Flourish, as the bird topper, and matted on to a layer each of Kraft and navy card before stamping the sentiment with Vintage Sepia which was then heat embossed with clear powder.

The flourishes were stamped and brushed with the mica powder on the inside too. To set the mica I gave it a light spritz of hairspray.

Materials used:
Cardstock: A4 sheet of white hammered card for base; Core'dinations navy card for layering; Docrafts Papermania blue textured cardstock; Kraft card; Westcountry Paper - A5 Elegance Satin Ice White for the large stamped and embossed panel 
Ink pads: Big and Juicy Hydrangea ink pad; Tim Holtz distress inks, Stormy Sky and Pumice Stone; VersaMark; Versafine Vintage Sepia
Patterned Paper: Vintedge Flourish patterned paper
Stamps: Dawn Bibby's Delicate Scrolls stamp set; Creative Expression's Sincere Sentiments stamp set
Embossing Folders: Darice Scrolls Background; Docrafts' Papermania Mini Polka; 
Mica Powder: Crafty Notions Champagne
Embossing Powder: Stampendous Clear; Heat It Up Silver 
Ribbons: caramel organza ribbon; navy satin ribbon

All the materials for this card came out of either my stash of supplies or my endless pile of snippets so, on that basis, I'm popping over to Di at Pixie's Crafty Workshop and submitting it to Sunday Snippets #42.

I won't be around on Friday - I'll be up in a Glasgow hospital undergoing a couple of exploratory, and somewhat invasive procedures, which will keep me occupied for much of the day - but hopefully I'll be back, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, on Saturday.

In the meantime, I wish you all a great Poet's Day (Push of Early, Tomorrow's Saturday) and a happy weekend to come.

Happy crafting,