New Year's Fun

Yay- its time to reveal our Guest Designer for this release! We were very lucky to get this "Groovy" gal to help us out at the last minute... Click here to see who we are talking about... I'm sure she'll have some fun surprises up her sleeve! Oh yes, and don't forget my CBFF Debi's blog to see what fun she's been working on..

And now for my card for today... This card took quite awhile to put together. I worked on the front but it looked kinda plain, so I distressed the edges using my weathered wood distress ink. It seemed to still lack something, so I finally decided to add a subtle hint of bling by stamping over the images with a Hero Arts swirls background cling stamp.. Yup, just stamped right over those kids faces. Then got my trusty gold mica powder and applied it all around the images so that the gold would not get on their faces. I like how it came out. I guess you can't really see it in this big photo, but I think you can tell on the close up photo.


The borders were punched with a MS crafts border punch on my favorite gold cardstock and then layered again with a red cardstock. Here's the close up... Oh yes, added in gold glitter stickles again to make it look like its popping.


And here's the inside of the card... Do you like my lion dance puppet? I think he needs a name... Maybe you can help me come up with one...


So the reason this card took forever was also because I could not for the life of me find my old old old fireworks stamp. I have a feeling I sold it at one of the rummage sales. So I checked out my local craft stores and couldn't find any there either. I guess I'm working off season. So I jumped online and found this awesome fireworks stamp by Stampendous. Its a large cling stamp- it only fit on my largest acrylic block, but it was good to fill up the black space behind the dancers. Because most of my card was made and I was just waiting for this stamp to arrive, I had a hard time stamping the fireworks. Some of the image didn't stamp well since it was going on several layers, so I ended up filling in using my Versamark pen. This was the first time I used that pen and it was just what I needed to fill in the gaps.

After stamping the fireworks with Versamark, I applied some gold glitter embossing powder and red glitter embossing powder to the fireworks. To achieve the effect of multi colored fireworks, I would only apply the glitter to a portion of the fireworks and tap off the excess, then apply the next color, etc... Then it was embossing time... If you've ever tried to emboss glitter embossing powder, its very tricky. The look doesn't change much like regular embossing powder does, so you really have to watch and make sure you are not burning the paper. I hold it up to the light while I'm embossing and you can kinda see some of the glitter glistening every once in awhile- that's my cue to move my gun around to another section.



I used the Sizzix scallop circle pop up die to make the dancers pop out. These dies make pop up cards a breeze! Finished off the card with a gold layered on red "Kung Hee Fat Choy" sentiment by Island Scrapbooking.

Here's a close up of the dancers. I dont' think you can tell, but I put some white fun flock to the lion's furry parts (around his face). I also used my favorite gold smooch to add some gold touch ups to his costume.


Phew! That was a long post! Now you know why this card took me so long to make! Plus it didn't help that I made it backwards!! ha ha ha! Oh well, hopefully you learn from my mistakes!

Don't forget to check out our Guest DT and Debi's posts for more inspiration!