Embossed Garden Tutorial

Hello friends! I hope you are well and that your Easter has been good. This was a different Easter, not seeing family or friends. In Sweden, children also knock on the neighbors' doors dressed out and handing out Easter cards, getting sweets in return (a bit like Halloween, but not spooky). This year, that had to be cancelled. Instead the Easter bunny has been hiding eggs and sweets both in the garden and in the forest. 

The boys also crafted an Easter robot which can be filled with sweets. I posted some photos of that in my Instagram account, if you want to have a look.

This week at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog we have an 'E is for' challenge. Lots of options here! I went with Embossing (both dry and heat) and Ephemera. Don't miss the project by our April guest designer Tracey Sabella, with her beautiful blog Garden of Grace.

I combined dry and heat embossing on this card and used some fun techniques. It started out as a tag, but then I liked one of the non-tag technique experiment pieces best and decided to make a card instead. Ranger's Mixed Media powders are so cool and I really like their multi-colored look.

For the background, I got the idea of trying to apply color directly to an embossing folder with Scribble Sticks. I used Tim's Lumber 3-D folder and simply scribbled the sticks over the folder. The colors come from Scribble Sticks 1 and Scribble Sticks 2. Some tiny pieces of pigment will be sprinkled over the folder as they are shaved off from the sticks. Don't shake these off, since they add to the effect.

Mist a piece of watercolor paper generously with water on both sides. You can also soak the paper in water in a basin. Place it in the folder and emboss. Repeat with more pieces of paper, until there is no more pigment on the folder. Here you can see the first, second and third impression that I made, with the colors going continuously lighter. Today, I wanted a light background, so I used the piece to the right. The other two will be great starting points for other projects.

Die cut flowers from heavystock paper with Tim Holtz Wildflower Stems 2 set.

Apply embossing ink to one area at a time and emboss with various powders. Add tiny bits of other powders here and there for a varied look. I used these powders by Ranger Mixed Media: Lime, Scarlet, Sea and Hammered, as well as Mint Chip Speckle and glittery Aqua Tinsel. Always take great care when heat embossing and NEVER touch the melted powder until it has cooled down completely.

For this flower, I used Mint Chip, a little bit of white SSS powder and Sea. The sentiment comes from a SSS Sentiment Strip.

The Mixed Media Scarlet powder is a favorite of mine. I love the bits of other colors in that gorgeous shade of red.

Here you can see that the powder has a metallic shine if you angle it in the light.

I also die cut and embossed two Adorned swirls, but ended up using just one of them, to function as extra greenery. The darker specks comes from the Hammered powder.

Here you can see both Lime, Aqua Tinsel and Sea. Don't they look great together? The ephemera letter in the background comes from Tim's Field Notes pack.

At the bottom of the card there are three pieces of mummy cloth, first colored with Antique Linen. The word from Friendship Words Script was embossed with Scarlet powder. I also used a Small Talk sticker and a piece of ephemera.

The butterflies comes from the Field Notes Snippets set.

Can you spot the blue flowers in the background? We finally have some spring flowers in the lawn and the deer don't seem to eat these luckily.

I hope you will join us this week in our E Is For 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.

As you may know, the Simon Says Stamp Store is accepting new orders, but have longer shipping times for the moment due to the coronavirus. With this in mind we have made the difficult decision to suspend the $50 voucher for this challenge.

We know that many people are staying safe at home and we would love it if you would continue to enter the challenges and have fun! We are all in this together!

Don't forget to follow Simon Says Stamp on Instagram, they post great stuff daily. We also have a new hashtag #SSSUnitedWeCraft

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

Supplies:

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