Dry Embossing and Printing Layout

Hello crafters! I hope you had a fun weekend! I was planning to have taken the Christmas card photo of the boys this weekend, but it was rainy, so it has to wait a little, since we have a tradition of always taking it outdoors.

This week at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog we have a Thanks/Thankful theme. Don't miss the gorgeous Thanksgiving project by our November guest designer Jo, aka Let's Art Journal.

I started out planning to do an autumn themed project, and felt like a scrapbooking page. As I was looking through a pile of photos, thinking about thankfulness, I came across this photo of a humble little Common Daisy, or lawn daisy. I had to google the English name, in Swedish it is called a Tusensköna, which translates to something like 'beauty of thousands' or more literary 'thousand-beauty'. My grandmother had many of these in her lawn and she thought they were weeds. I couldn't understand why since I thought they were so pretty and almost colored the lawn. My favorites were always the ones with purple tips. I was happy to discover them in our lawn and they always make me think of my grandmother. She lived on the countryside and had a huge lawn, which must have been hard work. She used to cut the grass and then rake it all into a pile for us to jump in. 

So instead of an autumn project, I made a cheerful layout about thankfulness, for both the little things and the big things, with journaling on the back. 

The background panels are left-over from a gel printing session. I like to use dry embossed papers to make impressions and patterns when gel printing and sometimes those very paper end up looking even nicer than the prints. I have a tutorial coming soon on the printing process too. The panels were cut into squares, and I also distressed the edges. I used paints by Dina Wakley and Ranger's gel printing plates for the printing.

I wanted this page to be full of words and used a bunch of different sentiment stamps. They were stamped on left-over printed papers, so they coordinate in color with the dry embossed panels. Some were stamped on white paper. I used the following stamp sets: Inky Antics/Andrea Ockey Parr The Queen's Quips, Darkroom Door Nature Walk, AALL & Create/Tracy Evans clear stamp set #44, Tim Holtz Way With Words and Nature's Wonder.

For some additional flowers and even more color and happiness, I die cut flowers and leaves from more left-over gel printed papers, using Tim Holtz Sizzix Wildflowers, Funky Floral 1, 2 and 3.

I wanted the title to be white, and die cut it from white mat board using Tim's new Letterboard die. The letters were coated with Glossy Accents, which makes them look really nice and shiny.

I love the random paint on these panels and on the papers used for the sentiments and die cutting. A couple of the sentiments from Tracy Evans' set were small enough to stamp in between dry embossed areas. The third sentiment here comes from the Darkroom Door Nature Walk set. The embossing folder used for this panel is the Sizzix 3-D Lily Pond folder.

I really like both of these sentiments, and on that different path, you might also be more likely to see the flowers. The first sentiment is from Tracy Evans and the second from Tim Holtz's Nature's Wonder. All the panels were stitched to the background.

Some of the panels had only been used for one print, while others had been pressed on the gel printing plate more than once, giving them a multitude of colors. This is dry embossed in the Tim Holtz Gridlock folder.

The page needed more life and I stamped three adorable Garden Birds by Darkroom Door, designed by Godelieve Tijskens. They were stamped on more gel printed paper.

Here's another lovely sentiment from the Tracy Evans set. The photo was layered on vellum and cheese cloth.

Yesterday, when I was out walking, the weather was pretty grey and damp, but with a sense of wonder, you can find little treasures and beautiful things everywhere. So the theme for my walk ended up being moss and bark, both of which have gorgeous colors and interesting textures. The embossing folder used here is the 3D Leaves folder.

This lovely sentiment comes from The Queens Quip's stamp set by Inky Antics, designed by my SSS Monday Blog team mate, Andrea Ockey Parr. It was stamped on a die cut Stitched Oval.

I went wild with favorite sentiments on this page, since I wanted it to be filled with colorful words.

And I just had to add one of my favorite Tim Holtz sentiments, which fits well on a page about thankfulness.

This tiny Darkroom Door sentiment, fit perfect with the theme and the flowers.

To the right of the photo, there is a little cluster of wild flowers. Die cutting them from gel printed papers give interest and variation to the flowers, while also being very quick.

And another adorabel bird.

Here's a close up on the effect of the Glossy Accents on the letters.

I hope you will join us this week in our Thanks/Thanksgiving challenge. As always, you have a chance to win a $50 gift voucher to do some fun shopping at Simon Says Stamp. You have until next Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in.

Don't forget to follow Simon Says Stamp on Instagram, they post great stuff daily. 

Do you use Instagram? If so please add #sssmchallenge so we can see your entries there too.

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my blog today!  

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

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