Saturday Step by Step - Spectacular Card

Hi everyone and welcome! It's Jenny here with the step by step I promised on Wednesday. To refresh your memory here's the finished card;

Looks complicated? Actually it's not - and there are plenty of opportunities to correct mistakes as we go along! (always helpful eh?!) Grab a cuppa and let's get started...

Cut a strip of card 9.5cm by 20.5cm (roughly 3.75 inches by 8 inches) and cover in white gesso (this matters so don't skip it.)

Spread embossing paste through the Vintage Quilt stencil concentrating on the top left and bottom right hand corners. Don't panic if it's not perfect - that's fine for this!

Pour white embossing powder over the wet paste and when dry heat set.

Did you know you can use your alcohol inks for more than just metal?! They work brilliantly on top of a gesso'd background as this prevents them from sinking into your card immediately on impact. Spray a little water over the embossed areas of the card. Then splatter Butterscotch alcohol ink using a small paint brush. You can drip the ink directly onto the card but I found I had more control using a brush, starting with a few drips and adding more as required. Blot off the excess ink and water with tissue before moving on. You'll find this will lighten everything too, so don't be scared when using darker/bolder colours.

With the first layer dry spray a new layer of water and drip on Meadow ink, repeating the process of dabbing and drying as above. Drying as you go prevents the inks from blending into a brown puddle.

I repeated the process with Mountain Rose ink (water, splatter, pat dry).

The beauty of adding a little at a time and blotting as you go is that you can always add more if the colour isn't intense enough. You'll see here I went back to the Meadow ink.

Finally I splattered Mushroom ink over the water/embossed areas to add that touch of 'vintage'. Set your base layer aside to dry completely.

Stamp flower heads onto card using Jet Black Archival Ink. Originally I stamped two flowers but as you'll have seen I ended up making three to balance the final design.

Use a mini blending tool to apply Tea Rose Archival Ink to the flowers, starting and concentrating on the centres before working outwards.

Cut out the flowers, then apply embossing ink, Frosted Crystal embossing powder and heat set. The trick with this stuff is to under heat it as it reaches melting point super quick.

Mix embossing paste with a little Fern Green Reinker (you could use the Meadow ink at a push) and spread through the Vintage Floral stencil. I used one side for the lower stems and flipped the stencil over to do the upper stems.

To break up the stencilling I splattered a little Picket Fence Distress Spray Stain over the background.

Finally edge the background with Gathered Twigs Distress Ink and a Distressing Tool. The bonus with having a gesso layer is that if you add too much ink on the edges you can rub it back with tissue and even blot some off with wet tissue!

I stamped a sentiment in the corner with Jet Black Archival Ink before adding the flowers (raised up on foam pads) and sticking it onto a card blank. And hey presto!...

Hopefully you'll have enjoyed this tutorial and picked up a few hints and tips along the way. There are links to all the products available through The Funkie Junkie Boutique below.

And of course if this has inspired you to get embossing there's still time to enter our 'Enjoy your Embossing' challenge through to Tuesday, February 9th.

Have a great weekend and take care of yourselves. Jenny xxx