Embossed Anniversary -Celebrate the Memories

Today's card is my first as a Design Team member for the new Mix It Up Challenge Blog...each month we will highlight a technique and challenge you to share a project with us -with or without using the optional highlighted technique. For the month of May, our technique is Embossing(Heat or Dry)...read on to find how how I incorporated Heat Embossing into an anniversary card I made for my in-laws.  

The first thing I did in designing was to determine what size card I would need to accommodate the large diecut opening I knew that I wanted...so this card ended up being about 4.5" x 6.5".  I cut the gold metallic cardstock to fit the ivory card front and ran both layers through my Amaze machine at the same time to make sure they lined up perfectly...just took a few extra passes to get the cuts complete. 

Next step was to stamp the Today Flower clear stamp from Technique Tuesday in Versamark ink 4 times on the gold card front panel -once in each corner - and once on the inside of the ivory card so that it would show through the diecut opening in the front. Using my 10 x 10 Stamp Perfect positioning tool made things super easy to get lined up precisely. I then heat embossed all 5 images with Gold Detailed Embossing Powder.

Because of the shine off both the embossing and the metallic paper, it proved to be a challenge to capture the beauty of this card in a photo (but I still tried, lol)!

I also stamped and embossed three sentiments on the inside of the card as you can see below. For the coloring, I used 4 colors of Spectrum Noir pens -2 for the flowers and 2 for the background.

To blend the 2 background colors alittle better (because my Spectrum Noir pen collection is still rather limited) I also added some iridescent light blue chalks around the flowers with a light touch, which you can see better in the last photo below of the inside details of the card.

One thing I learned in the creation of this card is that metallic cardstock shows no mercy when it comes to impressions...if you look closely, you can see the rectangular outline of where I had placed the washi tape to hold my diecut in place when I sent it through my Amaze machine in step one...I think this was in part because I had tried to send so many layers through at one time and the sandwich was snug...oh well, lesson learned! And here's to hoping that I am the only one who truly notices it, lol. 

Until next time~