Welcome! Today I'm sharing a floral card with a shimmery twist--a glitter layer. These pansies remind me of a cake that I saw when I was little--it had sugared violets on it--real violets! I was mesmerized. . . and maybe a little bit worried about eating real flowers too. When I saw this Power Poppy Pansies digital stamp set, I knew that I wanted to try sugaring--okay, glittering the pansies. ;-)
First I printed the Pansies image on X-Press It blending card at a size that would fit nicely on a standard A-4 card front, and colored the pansies with the Copic Sketch markers shown above. I later added some Copic BG000 for a hint of sky around the perimeter of my pansies.
I cut my X-Press It Adhesive Sheet slightly larger than my colored image. Knowing that the glitter layer would tone down my colors, I made sure to keep my colors vibrant and get some dark values in there as well. The adhesive sheets work great with die-cutting and have a strong adhesive grip. They come in several different size packages or even in rolls. I usually use the 8-1/2" x 11" size for card-making though.
You can see above where I applied the X-Press It Double-Sided High-Tack Adhesive Sheet to the face of the image. I wanted to be really sure of where to put my die before having a cutting mistake. I used my light table to line up my die, but you could also simply hold it up to a window. . . if you don't work in the middle of the night. See that pencil line? That is to show me where the top layer of my "die-cutting sandwich" goes so that I won't cut into the leaves that extend past the die. I will fussy-cut those later.
Here's what I mean about the placement of the "die-cutting sandwich." The edge of the top plate is on my pencil line as it slides through my die-cutting machine.
And here is how it cut--just up to the edge of the leaves that I will need to fussy-cut around.
Here I have peeled the protective sheet off of the die-cut image. I will do the fussy-cutting after I apply the fine glitter, because then my scissors won't get sticky. (This is Elizabeth Crafts Cool Diamond Glitter.)
After I applied the glitter, the colors were lighter and somewhat muted. So I did touch up the flower centers and the leaves to add more contrast. (I inadvertently left the yellow-greens out of the picture above, but the colors that I went back and colored in on top of the glitter were BV02 and BV04; Y11, Y13, and Y17; and YG00 and YG17.) Coloring on top of the ultra fine glitter on the adhesive sheets does not hurt your Copic markers. In fact, I had burnished the glitter down so well that I didn't see even a speck of glitter on my Copics when I finished coloring on top of the glitter. NOTE: I would *NOT* try this technique with glue. The adhesive sheets are safe, but if glue were still a little wet, you could ruin a Copic nib pretty easily.
I kept the card layout simple--I couple of MFT die-namics sets (Blueprint 15 for the card front stitched layer, Inside and Outside Oval Stax for my image, and Stitched Mini Scallop Oval Star for my scalloped mat layer.) Again, the image is a Power Poppy Pansies digital image.
Thanks for stopping by, and have a lovely weekend!
