Spread your wings....

......the stamp said, and so I decided to have a go at something different.

The first card I have to share is one I made to highlight a stamp I got on my June Craft Stamper magazine; it is a stamp by Toby Tumble and is called Cuddly Buddly!  I used my Copics to colour him, die cut him with a Spellbinders Nestie and then put him in a commercial card that had already been dry embossed with some words. I also die cut a butterfly and added that as well as a handmade flower. Three Annabelle sprinkles were used for the body of the butterfly

The second card is made after I bought and read a magazine from USA called Stamp It! Winter 2011 (this version was on techniques) which I only buy occasionally as it is so expensive here.  However, this one has lots of great ideas in it so I forked out. The two cards were made using embossing differently.

Number one uses the flat side of a butterfly stamp to create a basic shape, and use this to stamp in Versamark, load it with EP and build up several layers doing this before turning the stamp around and stamping into the hot EP.  You then cut out the butterfly and make a card with this element. I made three butterflies and used lots of different EP before settling onto my Pipe Dream Opalettes - Tropicals.  I then used a Tim Holtz embossing folder in the Cuttlebug, with some Co'ordination brown card, lightly sanded, of wood grain, and a Spellbinders Shapeabilities label. I stamped the sentiment with Memento brown ink and sponged the label in both TH Antique Linen ink and some gold Pearlex. This is hard to see in the photo.  I also rubbed some of this over the butterflies to make them shine.

The second card in this series used watercolour paper (SU) and embossing with clear EP. Then use dye ink - my Tim Holtz distress inks were used, a green, red and blue one - and apply the ink, creating a gradient effect.  I spritzed it with water and  then put some gold Pearlex into a spray bottle of water and lightly sprayed the mixture over the paper as well.  I dried it off with the heat gun carefully, and used a tissue to clean up the embossed bike. I then stamped the sentiment with black Memento ink and trimmed the piece before rounding the edges.  I put some green silk ribbon and some twine onto the card and added the image with dimentionals.

This is a close-up so you can see the shine a bit better - it actually looks really good IRL!