I made this embossed snowflake card and added some waxed to the embossed details to really highlight the snowflakes.
To start, I made a distressed background on a piece of watercolour paper cut to 41/4″ x 51/2″. To distress I chose the following distress ink colours; speckled egg, uncharted mariner, tumbled glass and broken china but you could pick any combination you like. I dabbed a bit of ink from each colour’s ink pad directly onto my neatness mat.
Side note here, I love these mats and can not say enough good things about them. You can buy them in a pack of 5 from the online store or we also sell them individually in the store. I personally got a 5 pack and am so happy I did as I can work on a project and if it needs some drying time I can just pick up the whole mat and move it and voila, my desk is ready for the next project.
Back to the card- after dabbing the ink onto the mat, I took my mister and sprayed a bit of water onto the ink and then swiped my watercolour paper through the various colours until I got a look I was happy with. Once I was happy, a simple spray of water from my mister and a quick swipe with a cloth and my mat was clean and ready for the next steps.
After it was dry, I placed the distressed background in my embossing folder and ran it through my die cutting machine to emboss.
I then took some wax, in this case I used Sterling Foundry Wax by Ranger but it could just as easily work with any of the Art Alchemy waxes we have in the store or Vicki Boutin glazing or Lunar pastes would also work really well for this technique. I applied it with my fingertip with a light tough to try to keep the wax on the raised portions only but did not stress too much if a little bit got in the debossed areas. As this was foundry wax, I heat set it. You would not need to do this step if you used one of the other waxes or glazes I mentioned.
I then used this fabulous die set Seasonal Sentiments from Crafters Companion’s Vintage Snowman collection. Unfortunately it is no longer on the website but we have more arriving soon in the store. I linked another fabulous die set that is available both in the store and online as well as a great stamp and die set we have that would work terrific here as well. Any sentiment die or stamp and die set would work though. I die cut my sentiment from Frosted Silver Mirror card from Tonic Studios. I used the shadow die that comes with the set to cut out some vellum and matted the sentiment on that using some Tombow Mono glue so that you can not see it. If you missed how to use this glue to adhere vellum without it being seen you can check out the tip here https://scrapbookcentralbc.com/tip-for-applying-vellum/
I then trimmed down my panel and matted it on some dark blue cardstock. I used a thin strip of the cardstock across the from of the panel and adhered my sentiment to that as I felt it disappeared too much into the busy panel without the separation. I made another one of these cards and just matted it in the darker blue for a slightly different look but I brought that sample to the store before I snapped a photo. You can check it out if you are in the store.
