Fun with Dies and Embossing

 Hi there! So glad you stopped by today.  I was fooling around with my Artistic Dies and had cut out the open-work branch of leaves die for another project I was making.  That left me with the 'negative' of the leaves as scrap.  Now, I really have a hard time throwing away paper (or anything else for that matter) that I think I can find a use for.  Just ask my hubby, he'll be glad to tell you all about that problem I have!  ;)  Anyway, this piece was sitting on my table letting me know I shouldn't ignore it.  So here it is - repurposed into a cute card.

I had just read on a blog about putting the negative piece onto a card front then embossing the whole thing.  So that's what I did here.  I embossed it with the Tasteful Textile 3D Embossing Folder.  I ended up trimming off an inch from the open edge afterwards and will probably use that somewhere soon.  I was surprised after embossing.  I thought at least a little of the embossing would be inside the leaves, but I was wrong - it didn't show up at all!  And what was even more interesting, it didn't show up on the backside of the flap or inside of the card - whatever you want to call it.  It left a plain leafy impression only.  I had thought to put a layer of the cute You're A Peach Designer Paper on the inside left to make it a little different than the usual card.  But I decided that I liked the very subtle non-impression from the embossing folder and would leave it blank.

Can you see it here?  It's more of a tactile feature of this card rather a visual one.  But I really like it and will now have to incorporate something like this again, maybe as more of a focal point.  Don't you love when you get a wonderful unintended consequence?  Too bad all of life can't be this way!

At this point, I moved to the inside of the card.  There is the layer of the You're A Peach Designer Series Paper inside the card, that's 4" x 5 1/4".  Since I had trimmed off 1" from the front flap to show off the DSP, I needed to figure out the size and position of the Basic White cardstock layer inside the card for writing on.  I used a piece about 2 1/2" x 3 3/4".  When this was attached to the inside of the card, I off-set it so it wouldn't show when the card is closed.

Back to the front of the card again.  I thought butterflies or dragonflies would be a good accent.  I ended up with the butterflies because the size fit better.  The Brilliant Wings die set was used to cut one filigree butterfly and two smaller solid butterflies from Balmy Blue cardstock to match the teensy flowers on the DSP.  

The filigree-style butterfly is attached with a skinny strip from the edge of a sheet of Mini Dimensionals placed just under the body.  The two smaller butterflies are attached using Mini Glue Dots.

The sentiment comes from the Beauty of Friendship stamp set.  I just wanted a tiny sentiment in the corner and this one worked out fine.  It's stamped with Old Olive ink on a Basic White strip of cardstock, then just trimmed down with Paper Snips.  It's popped up on the card with Mini Dimensionals. 

After looking at several different types of bling to enhance this card, the clean and simple look seemed the best for the overall design of it.  Thus, it is naked of bling.  Oh my!  So that's it for this pretty card.  It's simple, but not too simple in design.  Hope you give this layered embossing a try.  It's quite nice in person when you can really see the embossed look and touch it too. 

If you're planning on ordering this month, please use the Host Code shown to the left.  I would greatly appreciate it.  I do appreciate all of my customers and have fun mailing out cards and/or little goodies each month.  Will I be sending you something special for this month?  I hope so!

Happy stamping and stay cool,

Sharon