Ethereal Winter card created for Chocolate Baroque

Good morning. Here is another of my recent show samples using the lovely Winter Dawn stamp from Chocolate Baroque. This time I tried a bit of parchment craft. I am still a learner at this technique. I would of liked more time to get the embossing and highlights a little better (it’s always a rush for the posting deadline when making TV show samples). I also ran out of time to snip out the frame so simply straight trimmed around it. However, I was reasonably pleased with the results. I added some subtle sparkle too with fine glitter – difficult to see in the photo.

Materials:

• Winter Dawn stamp
• Seasonal Journey and Seasonal Elements stencils
• A5 card blank, black card, parchment
• StazOn Inkpad (Opaque White)
• Pergamano sticky ink, mapping pen and extra fine glitter (crystal)
• Ribbon and small brads (black)
• Groovi plate (Claritystamp) to create scalloped frame
• Embossing tools and foam mat

How it was done:

1. The image was stamped onto the parchment with white ink.
2. Working from the back I used an embossing tool and the Seasonal Elements stencil to emboss the twiggy branches. I also used the crescent moon shape, turning the stencil to create a full circle outline for the moon. On a separate piece of parchment I embossed the outline of the sentiment using the Seasonal Journey stencil.
3. Again working on the back, I added white highlights with embossing tools. Working slowly, gradually stretching the parchment and building up the intensity of the white embossing. It can get a little confusing when doing this as usually you are adding darker shading to images on white paper. Here you are adding the white highlights – the deepest ‘shaded’ areas are left untouched.
4. I used the Clarity Groovi system to emboss the banner outlines and create a frame around the image. This could be done manually but it is simply so easy using the Groovi plates.
5. The image and sentiment were mounted onto black card using small brads, then this was glued to the card front. I added a ribbon and bow to ‘anchor’ the design.
6. Finally …. I just had to do it …. I added some sparkle using sticky ink and extra fine glitter. Parchment doesn’t like getting wet. The Sticky Ink works really well and you can get extra fine detail using a mapping pen – so it doesn’t overpower and spoil the delicate parchment effect.