Never Give Up Hope!

Today's card was made using the sketch @ Mojo Monday , will be applied @ Watercooler Wednesday for the WWC117 - Heidi's Feminine "Anything Goes" Challenge

 and will be the second card that I enter over at the Simon Says Stamp "Hint of Pink" challenge. I made it for the young mom of one of my former  pre-K students who will soon be undergoing treatment for newly diagnosed breast cancer. This disease has touched almost everyone's life...I lost an aunt several years ago and my Grandma is currently in treatment also. I am a firm believer that we need to raise awareness and support those in need all year long -NOT just during the month of October!

 The stamps I am using on the card front are from TAC (on the left + in the middle) and Amuse Studio (on the right). I trimmed all the card stock layers in pink, white and 2 shades of gray according to the sketch to fit the front of my A2 side folding white card base.

Next up, I inked the large Swirled background stamp in Versamark ink, making sure to first rub the larger of the 2 white squares (this one is from watercolor paper) with my ScraPerfect's  Perfect Crafting Pouch to remove any static from the paper that would cause the embossing powder to stick where I don't want it to....Confession Time...I didn't do this the first time around and ended up with a horrible mess! My whole square was covered in embossing powder and there was no way to salvage it with even a tiny paint brush! So I brushed all the powder off, turned my cardstock over and started again -using the Pouch before stamping this time, lol! I got a perfect impression and learned a valuable lesson! After I heat set the silver embossing powder, I used the Perfect Cleaning Cloth (not pictured) to remove any residual powder from the cardstock so that I could watercolor in the next step.

To watercolor over the embossed background, I smooshed my dye based ink onto my craft mat, spritzed it with water, picked up the color on my brush and painted a nice wash.

While that was drying, I stamped the solid ribbon to the left on the smaller piece of  white cardstock in pink Palette ink then lined up the outline stamp and stamped over the pink in Versamark so that I could heat emboss it in the silver powder. I inked the edges of that piece in charcoal ink for contrast and then stamped HOPE in Versamark on the darker gray strip and embossed it in pink powder.

The pink panel and light gray panel were both adhered flat onto the card front but the rest of the layers were popped up with some foam pop dots for added dimension. I then sponged around the edges of the entire card front with charcoal ink.

For the inside of my card, I stamped the top sentiment in pink ink and the bottom (I think this stamp came from a Close To My Heart sympathy set) sentiment in charcoal ink. This smaller ribbon is a wood mounted stamp from Stampin' Up that I stamped in Versamark ink on black cardstock and heat embossed with pink powder before I fussy cut it out and adhered it. As you can see at the bottom, my initial stamp bled through a bit from the back of the card...looks like it's time to invest in some heavier weight card bases, sigh.

Until next time~