Inked Inlay

I hope you all are having a tremendous Thursday. I am not complaining today…about anything.

At the moment the sun is shining. It is pretty breezy and a little on the warm side for September and (almost) the first day of fall. Most years  the autumn equinox falls on September 21, but this year it is September 22, which is tomorrow. Good Grief! Where has this month gone? Wasn’t it just a couple of days ago we had Labor Day?

The best part of today is that a little line of storms went through yesterday evening and missed us altogether. That was followed by another thin line that dropped a couple of sprinkles. After that, another one formed then sort of fell apart, re-formed and we actually got a nice shower out of it. If you keep up with the weather aside from where you are, you know we are desperate for moisture. Well! That little shower re-developed and just hung over us all night, including lightning and thunder. I so enjoyed it!

This morning I dodged raindrops to see how much actually made it into my rain gauge. Holy Smokes! 4.4″! That surpassed what we had received all summer! Does this have anything to do with cards? Nope! I am just so happy that we got some rain that I had to share.

Now, on with the card.

Today is Technique Thursday. I saw this technique some time ago on a You Tube video, and recently ran across it again. This one was done by Jennifer McGuire and you can see it here. I was fascinated by the process and loved the finished card. Today I needed to make a sympathy card, so follow along to see how I did it.

I first cut two pieces of Whisper White card stock the size I would need knowing I would mat it before attaching to the card base. There are two ways of inking one of these, leaving one of them white. First, you can sponge, spray, dab, or whatever method you use to ink a background onto the whole piece. The second way is to die cut, then ink your paper.

I chose to die cut first then ink. Here is what I did:

I arranged my Flourish Thinlits die on the Whisper White card stock. I used both the large and small flourishes, cutting them at the same time using the Big Shot and the Precision Base Plate. This is an optional accessory to your Big Shot, and well worth it for detailed die cutting. I repeated the process with the second piece of card stock. To hold the small pieces in place, still in the background piece, while I inked it, I taped some Post-it Note tape over the back. This held everything in its original place. Just do this on one of your die cut pieces.

Since I wanted a soft look to the inlay, I chose to use the Distress Oxide inks again, randomly sponging over the die cut designs. I spritzed it with water, used the heat tool to dry it, then added more color and wet it again. After two or three layers I thought that was enough color and proceeded with the inlay.

After removing the die cut design from the second piece, (remember, this is still white) I placed a piece of Multi-purpose Adhesive Sheets on the back of the Whisper White negative space, using the release sheet under my card stock  to prevent the adhesive sticking to the grid paper underneath my card stock. I flipped it over and, using the inked die cut design, placed it in the white negative space like I was putting together a puzzle.

My white die cut design still had all the little pieces in the leaves and flowers, so I simply laid it over the inked piece, and using my piercing tool, pushed them down into the corresponding holes below.

This is SO easy to do and results in a very nice finished product. If you use a design with a lot of little pieces, it can be tedious, but not difficult. Instead of inking, you could glue some DSP to card stock, and cut the design from that. All kinds of possibilities open up with this technique. You could use words, glitter paper, the sky is probably the limit, or at least, whatever you can imagine.

I stamped the sentiment, from Flourishing Phrases in Faded Jeans Distress Oxide  and immediately slipped it into my Clear Emboss powder, then used the heat tool to emboss.

This finished panel was liquid glued to a mat of Pool Party and the front is finished. No frills, no glitz. Liquid Glue adhered it to the Dapper Denim card base.

For the inside sentiment panel, I stamped another sentiment from Flourishing Phrases in Faded Jeans in the lower right corner, and heat embossed the same as the front. I wanted to leave room for the white left-over flourish design, which I adhered to the piece of Pool Party, stamped with my sentiment, with liquid glue. This was then liquid glued this to a mat of Whisper White and into my Dapper Denim card base.

I hope you like this card enough to try this technique. It is fun and yields a different look than just gluing everything on top of card stock.

The envelope is stamped on the front with the same flourish design, using the stamp from Flourishing Phrases. I inked it with my Stampin’ Write markers in Dapper Denim, Pool Party, Blushing Bride, Perfect Plum and Mint Macaron.

Using those same markers, I did a striped effect on a piece of Whisper White card stock, then used my Aqua-painter to blend the colors a bit. When it was dry, I randomly stamped some leaves in Dapper Denim using the leaf stamp in the Flourishing Phrases set. This was liquid glued to the flap and trimmed.

Thank you for stopping by. I would like to see your comments on this technique. Just scroll down to where it says comment.

Card Cuts: Dapper Denim: card base 4-1/4″ x 5-1/2″; Whisper White: Inlay panels (2) 4″ x 5-1/4″, inside mat 4-1/8″ x 5-3/8″; Pool Party: front mat 4-1/8″ x 5-3/8″, inside sentiment panel 3-7/8″ x 5-1/8″

Non Stampin’ Up! products used Ranger Distress Oxide Inks

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September Card Class Tutorials

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