Totally Techniques - Black Magic

September is almost over and that means another International Blog Hop with the talented Totally Techniques Design Team. This month's technique is Black Magic and I have to say that I was a bit challenged by this technique.

I hope you love Marine's project as much as I do!

I followed the Splitcoast Stamper Tutorial which seemed pretty straight forward. I will let you be the judge though. This is this month's creation:

A square card . . . for a change. Base card is Basic Black, lined with a square of Berry Burst and then with a square of Whisper White to marry in with the almost black board approach to this project. The stamped canvas is a square of Basic Black.

I heat embossed the Hello stamp from Floral Statements with White Stampin' Emboss powder directly onto the Basic Black card stock and also onto a scrap of the same coloured card. I then applied Craft White Ink to the two flowers using a Blender Pen ~ I heat set the craft ink. This is obviously different from how others will have approached this technique, as they were stamping in Craft White ink.

Following the tutorial I then coloured over the White Craft Ink with a white watercolour pencil, and proceeded to layer the colour on top of the white base - I started with the Real Red pencil and layered over the top with Rich Razzleberry. My goal was to match the brightness of the Berry Burst card stock.

The green leaves are the two green pencils in the Stampin' Up! Watercolour Pencil pack - I would like to think that they are close to Old Olive and Always Artichoke but I can't be certain. I then fussy cut the sentiment letters from the scrap paper that I heat embossed at the same time as the original image. The letters are stuck down with mini dimensionals. I needed to make the sentiment pop.

A scattering of pearls to add an element of luxury was the final touch to overcome the starkness of the black background.

I hope that you won't limit this technique to just stamped images given that you can colour in the voids of stamped images with the Craft Ink and a Blender Pen.

Good luck with this technique if you decide to try it!

Don't leave us yet as Zoe's project is next!

See you next month!

Cheers
Shanni xx

Order of Blog Hop - September 2017

Pattrice Halliday-Larsen (New Zealand)

Nadine Weiner (Germany)

Marine Wiplier (France)

Shannean Moncrieff (Australia) that's me!

Zoe Tant (United Kingdom)

Barbara Meyer (Austria)

Fancy Folds - Simple Pocket Card

Welcome back to another Fancy Folds Design Team blog hop. This month we are doing Simple Pocket Cards. Yu have possibly just come from Aude's blog - isn't her project cute?

Here's mine:

I followed the YouTube Tutorial but varied the design again by using a 12"x 12" card base which I simply cut a 6"x 6" square from one corner so that it's a square card with the pocket front.

The base card is Whisper White and it was basically 3 squares that fold together with the front being the pocket as per the tutorial and the cack section being a standard card. I wanted to be able to slip some gift cards in the front and write a bigger message in the back and I also like my cards to have a little weight in them.

It's never too early to start getting Christmas cards together and this year is no exception especially with the beautiful new Holiday Mini! The inside of my card and the note card are both lined with Gold Foil Card Stock and Whisper white is the "canvas" in both instances.

I also feature the Year of Cheer Specialty Designer Series Paper because it's my favourite and I can't resist gold and silver for the festive season.

I stamped the Little Drummer Boy Silhouette from Musical Season stamp set using Early Espresso ink onWhisper White card and I cut the stamped image out with the matching framelit frontage Musical Instruments Framelit Dies. Both Sentiments are from the Musical Season stamp set and stamped in Early Espresso which contrasts nicely with silver and gold and is not as stark as black.

I embossed the "note tag" with the snowflake Winter Wonder TIEF - it's beautiful but I wanted it slightly off the card. I basically lined it up on the card stock so that it could still fit through the threat of the Big Shot. I embellished with a few rhinestones because it's Christmas and that's what we do - sparkle!

The words were perfect for the "theme" of the card.

The embellishment is a gold foil star from the Foil Snowflakes Embellishment pack. I layered this on top Gold Metallic Thread which is toused at the back and some Gold Mini Sequin Trim. 

I added some contrasting snow flakes in Silver Glimmer Paper and Silver Foil Card Stock which I cut out using the border thinlit from the Swirly Snowflakes Thinlit Dies (I just trimmed these up with scissors). You might notice that I added a rhinestone to the centre of two of them. The stamped image is dimensionalised on the top.

So the whole card is really simple and I know I will be making a heap of them as gift cards are the best presents for family and friends further afield.

I hope you got some inspiration from the hop today.  Don't leave us yet though - please check out Miranda's creation this month!

Until next month- get your sparkle on!

Shanni xx

Blog Hop Order September

Monica Gale (United Kingdom)

Satori Willard (Japan)

Tanja Kolar (Germany)

Aude Barbara (France)

Shannean Moncrieff (Australia) that's me!

Miranda Mols-Heidenrath (Netherlands)

Astrid Hoffman (Austria)

France Martin (United States)