While I had my heat gun out I decided my next card needed to be a variation on a technique I learned years ago at my local stamp store. (Which is now closed. I miss them so much!)

We did this technique with water color crayons originally I think, but I thought I’d see how it worked with the painted backgrounds I had left over.

What you’ll need to do this:

• Clear embossing powder
• black embossing powder
• A clear embossing ink like versamark or the perfect medium
• Black dye ink (Tim Holtz’s distress ink in black soot worked great)
• a foam sponge or applicator
• a paper towel or tissue
• a couple pieces of patterned paper or altered paper
• A stamp with a lot of rubber to cover. I used a background stamp from Judikins that was mostly rubber, with small dragonflies carved into it.
• A heat tool
• Another stamp that relates theme wise with your background image
• Distress inks in three colors
• A non-stick craft mat

First card background:

Ink up your large background stamp with the clear embossing ink, and stamp it onto a piece of your patterned paper. Cover the stamped image with the clear embossing powder, tap off the excess, and use a heat gun to melt the powder. With a foam applicator or sponge, apply black distress ink to the unembossed parts of the image, and rub off any excess ink with a paper towel.

Second card background:

Ink up the large background stamp with the clear embossing ink, and stamp your patterned paper. Cover the image with the BLACK embossing powder, tap off the excess, and use your heat tool to melt and set your embossing powder. If you have any spots with incomplete coverage you can color them in with a black marker.

To make the focal image, stamp your distress inks onto your craft mat, and then use the ink beading up on your craft mat to ink the stamp. Give the stamp a little twist to help the colors blend together when you’re inking your stamp. Stamp the image onto white cardstock and trim it closely. (aka Fussy cutting it!) Attach it with foam adhesive, and you’re all done.

This is another example of cards that didn’t quite turn out as I wanted or expected. They are fine, but I expect more from myself. 😉 After all, I want these to be good enough to send to all of you!