Christmas Swirl

Hi,

Last week I was lucky enough to win the draw on Sue Wilson's blog. I hardly ever win anything so image how I felt when I was at Ally Pally on Sunday and Sue asked me why I hadn't been in touch to claim my prize! It was great -I got to choose 2 stamp sets from the Particraft Stand. I chose the stamp sets below. The first one is called Falling Leaves and the second is Christmas Swirl.

I just love the trees on both of these sets. If you pop over to the Particraft blog you will find a stunning card that Sue has made with the Falling Leaves stamp set.

I've only had time for a little play this week and would like to share this card with you that I made from the Christmas Swirl stamp set.

For this card I used a really cool technique which the lovely Karen Lines showed me on Sunday. This technique was used to make the diagonal stripe background. I ran a Perfect Medium Ink pad over the raised areas of one side of the Cuttlebug Candy Cane embossing folder. I then placed a piece of white card in the folder and ran it through the Cuttlebug. I added metallic silver embossing powder to the side of the card which had been on the side that received the ink - the debossed lines held the powder. I then heat set the powder and covered the whole area with Faded Jeans Distress ink using cut & dry foam. I then added Cosmic Shimmer Aurora Crystal embossing powder which stuck to the distress ink. I then heat set it. BEWARE - the glitter from the embossing powder flies everywhere! Anyway, what you're left with is a textured glitter card. Really cool, eh? Give it a go. Some embossing folders work better than others. It's fun trying them all out (you'll be covered in glitter by the end of it!).

Here's a bit more of a close-up.

The background for the fancy tree was made using Eco Green acrylic paints. Many of you may have see Julia Andrus on Create & Craft last year demonstrating the range of Eco Green Crafts but here's a re-cap of this technique.

I used a piece of packing material board 3" x 4". I painted a based layer with the Blueberry paint. When dry (it dries really quickly), I covered the area with a slightly watered down layer of Eco Green Glue. I left this for a few minutes to dry a little but remain tacky and then I painted over it with a layer of Eco Green white paint. I then dried it with a heat gun and it crackled! Be careful not to be too close or for too long or the paint may bubble (this is a different effect which you may not want on this piece). I then buffed the area up with a piece of kitchen roll. I added some Chipped Sapphire distress ink using cut & dry foam to tone down the white.

I made sure the Distress Ink was dry and then I wiped the surface with an anti-static pad. I stamped the tree from the Christmas Swirl stamp set using Perfect Medium, added Cosmic Shimmer Black Sparkle embossing powder and heat set. To do the edges, I swiped each edge along the Perfect Medium Ink Pad and added Metallic Silver embossing powder and heat set. It's a good idea to do one side at a time.

The greeting is from the Christmas Swirl stamp set and is on the second size up of Spellbinders Labels 20. I made a faux nestie by drawing around the outside of the same die and cutting out.

I layered all the pieces up, added ribbon and 3 blue Eco-Green glass glintz (yeh, I know they look black in the photo but they are blue in the flesh!).

Hope you've enjoyed reading - do have a play with the techniques.
Julia