Welcome to the May 15th & 16th Blog Tour ~ Tour #5, Stop #20

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Welcome to my blog!! My name is Selene Kempton and I'm so excited about the blog tour today and to share this fun project with you! I decided to share another box today. This time, it's a box to house 7 cards for a girlfriend. I started with my basic box (listed about a week ago on my blog with directions), and changed the dimensions a bit to create this card holder.

I started with the box itself and quickly scored it at 3" and 9" and flipped it and scored it again at 5" and 8" a few cuts and adjustments and I had a quick box. I layered some designer series paper on the front of the box and labeled it "cards", but it still needed a little something. I had a leftover birdy from a package of chipboard. I grabbed a sponge dauber and my tempting turquoise craft pad. I added ink to the front of the chicky, then heat set it with my embossing gun.

I let that cool off, and then I took the smallest flower from my featured stamp set ~ Garden Greetings ~ and inked it up in versamark. I stamped my flower right on the birdy. Next, I took some iridescent ice embossing powder and poured it on top.

Quick tip: whenever you're embossing something, in addition to using an embossing buddy, it's good to have a paintbrush near by. I used my paintbrush to clean up my birdy **before** I heated the embossing powder to melt it on. The word "cards" on the front of the box was also stamped in tempting turquoise craft ink, and is pretty sparkly in real life from the iridescent ice EP.

I knew this project was going to take me a bit, because I wanted to fill my box with a bunch of cards, so next I took an 8 1/2" x 11" piece of very vanilla paper, and made my own background paper. I simply stamped the entire piece of paper with the flowers. It's important to start with the largest flower first. I picked the lightest color for that one, and then I went to the medium image and so on. If you start with the smallest flower first, you may not have enough room for the bigger images. :)

On to my main card element. For many of the cards, I decided to use Kelly Purkey's paperpin technique. You use mod podge to stick 3 layers of paper together, stamp on them, then paint each layer with crystal effects to seal it. The way I learned this technique, I was "supposed" to use stazon and here's why... The regular classic inks are water based and crystal effects is water soluble, so if you don't do it properly, your ink could run and you could end up with a mess! The trick is to paint a thin layer of crystal effects on your stamped image with a paint brush and let it dry, before using a big thick layer on top. This helps seal your image and makes it so your water based ink doesn't move! Shown here is the layered image on my cardfront. I used dimensionals to attach my pin, but in reality, if I were making this into a pin you could wear on your jacket, you just need one of those pin backs and you can use crystal effects to adhere it to the back of your pin. If you are going to do that, make sure you seal the entire paper (including the back) with crystal effects so that water wont be able to get to it. Once the crystal effects is completely dry, a little rain water shouldn't bother it.

Next, I want to highlight another cool product I used while creating this set of cards. I just love the flower brads with this stamp set. The brad, fits perfectly with the smallest flower image and for all three flower images in this set! I couldn't leave the brads plain! I mixed a little crystal effects with some dazzling diamonds and WOO HOO!!! It's sparkly!!

Now that I have shared with you some of my favorite highlights of this card set, I'll tell you the cards went together so very quickly. I used very generic and simple layouts and added the fancy flowers to many of the cards as the "wow" element. I really had fun with this set!

Finally, I'd like to share a small image of each of the 7 cards in the set. If you're looking to see it in a larger photo, just click on the thumbnails below. Please note, some of the cards are still wet! I really laid the crystal effects on thick. That will just protect those gorgeous pin embellishments. (you can see other projects made with this technique a little further down on my blog). I think these are wonderful, quick, cards that are easy to reproduce. I had an extra piece of stamped cardstock that I didn't use in this set. I'll be posting a page in the next day or two, I hope you come back and visit soon.

I hope you enjoy all the other bloggers. There is some beautiful work out there! And I hope you have time to stamp something FUN today!

Thanks for stopping by! Don't forget to book mark my site because the links will disappear at midnight on May 16th. Also, please leave me a comment to let me know how you liked my blog! If you want my updates right in your inbox when I post, go to the top right hand side of my blog and enter your email address. Thanks again!