Black doesn't have to be boring

It was my Mum's birthday at the weekend and I always try and make her a special card using new techniques. The card this year was made trying out a new technique for the first time and luckily it went alright.

I purchased some angelina fibres, also known as fusible fibres, several months ago as part of the Clarity Stamping in the Classroom with Barbara Grey workshop. I made along with the project that she demonstrated but I never tried anything else after that.

One of the techniques that you can do with angelina fibres is the one I've used in the butterfly on the left hand side.

They work with heat and fuse together when heat is applied - normally by using an iron.

For the butterfly, I cut six pieces of the film and stamped the butterfly onto 3 of them using stayzon ink. I then sandwiched the fibres in between the two pieces of film - one stamped and one plain piece, covered it with baking parchment and ironed over the top using the coldest setting.

Once ironed, the harden as well and I cut out the whole butterfly from one piece, the top part of the butterfly (including the body) from another piece and from the last piece I cut the bottom part of the butterfly (including the body). I then stuck the two halves onto the main butterfly using double sided tape on the body only. This gives the butterfly the 3D look.

For the background, I again used the angelina fibres but without sandwiching them. I took a variety of colours and laid them over a sheet of baking paper. I muddled them up a bit so they were quite random and then laid another sheet of baking paper over the top and ironed. They fused together creating a sheet which I stuck to a black piece of card using pritt stick as the background to the card.

The third part of the pack that I bought were some different petal stamps. There are many different designs in the pack but I chose one which had an intricate flower design within the petal:

I used 2 different coloured heat embossing powders on black card to create the flower. I stuck them round in a flower shape and then stuck a piece of card candy as the centre of the flower.

For the sentiment I again used black card, cut out using a spellbinders die, but covered it with perfect pearls as I have tried before when I was experimenting with inchies. Find out how I created this by clicking here.

The card was finished with some pink gems and a peel off butterfly stuck to acetate and the wings bent up to give it dimension.

Although the majority of the card used black card, with the techniques outlines above, black certainly doesn't need to be boring and can be made to sparkle as well as white card. Don't dismiss using black card next time you go to make a card!

The distressed look, heat embossing & acrylic paints

This was a technique that I tried out a few months ago and thought I would share it with you. It involves heat embossing and acrylic paint to achieve an unusual distressed look.

Here is the first card I made:

Here is what you need:

Coloured card, co-ordinating coloured acrylic paint, clear embossing powder, versamark ink pad, stamps of your choice, heat gun, large paint brush, a tissue

1) Choose the coloured card - this will be the colour that shows through your design.

2) Stamp your chosen image with the versamark ink onto the card and emboss with the clear powder.

3) Paint over the image and the surrounding card with the acrylic paint and allow to dry

4) Once the paint has dried, take the tissue and dampen it with water. Lightly rub over the embossed image to remove the paint, revealing the coloured card underneath. Then leave it to dry.

And now you have your image. Here is a close up of the flower on the card:

I applied some turquoise ink to the edges of the flower. On the background, I highlighted some of the features of the stamp, such as the watch and some of the wording, with some gold perfect pearls.

I then had a go at another card, which didn't turn out quite as expected but it can always be worked on:

The background was made using black card. I didn't have any white paint at the time (I have now purchased some so might have to try it again), so I used some picket fence distress stain. It didn't work quite as well as the paint probably would have done, because the black still shows through quite a bit.

The picture in the middle was made using red card and a bronze paint. Again, it didn't stand out as much as I would have liked because the colours were too similar, but it was an experiment and now I know what I need to change next time.

It can be a bit messy and time consuming as you have to wait for it to dry each time, but it can be very effective.