Hero Arts Snowflakes card using heat and bond powder

Hi blogging friends - and a special welcome to my new Followers

I do have a Christmas card to share today, but you will have to scroll down past my holiday snaps.

I have just returned from a holiday at Bright, in north east Victoria.  We had lovely spring weather and it was wonderful to see how green and lush it is up there after our awful 10 year Victorian drought.  Note you can click on any of my photos if you wish to have a bigger looky.  The holiday house we rented backs onto the Ovens River and here is a view of what we looked at every day:  beautiful, isn't it?!!

And this is where we walked through into the township every day:  hard to take, isn't it?!!  

Bright was resplendent with azaleas, rhododendrons, spring bulbs and roses - truly a glorious sight:

There was a little family with 2 ducklings which stopped by every day for a feed.  It was really hard to take a photo of them as they were always moving!  The mother is on the far left; the father has the darker brown head:

There is an awesome Scrapbooking and Giftware store at Bright called "Little Shoppe of Memories" run by Cindy Cherry and I spent a lot of time in there!  Cindy is a lovely lady and a very talented scrapbooker - and loves all things vintage.  

Since I returned, I have been laid low with viral gastro and are still not 100% - ick - but I need to get my skates on with Christmas just around the corner and I don't have many Christmas cards done yet.

The card I am showing you today is a quick and simple card that would be easy to mass produce.  I have actually done a couple of cards in different colours which I will show you over the coming weeks.

To achieve all the glittery goodness, I used Stampendous Stamp and Bond powder which is my first time using this product.  I have recently "discovered" Kristina Werner's blog:  KWerner Design, and on Day 12 of Kristina's 25 days of Christmas cards 2011 videos, Kristina used Stamp and Bond powder so this is how I learnt how to use it.  I will say, that if you don't want to have glitter and mess everywhere (note that I am a pretty messy cardmaker!), I would recommend doing it somewhere like outside on a verandah or decking in nice, calm weather  (or maybe in hubby's garage if he doesn't mind all his tools and his car being glittery LOL!!) - and you will need to have access to a powerpoint for your heatgun.  By the time I tried different types of ink and different coloured glitter and had a good old play to see what worked and what didn't, I had glitter absolutely everywhere!!   And I mean - EVERYWHERE!!  Next time, I will definitely do it outside!

So onto how it's done:  I lined up the 3 individual Hero Arts Snowflakes (note: comes as a set of 4) on my acrylic block, inked them with Versacolor Violet pigment ink (you have to use a slow-drying ink for the Stamp and Bond powder to work - and you really want a juicy ink pad - not one that is getting a bit dry as the technique doesn't work as well), poured on the Stamp and Bond powder and removed the excess from around the images, then heated it with a heat gun until the powder melted which takes very little time.  As soon as it was melted, I poured on fine Crystalina glitter and of course, shook off the excess and used a small paintbrush to remove any surplus glitter from around the card.  It is helpful to have everything ready at hand - any delay might mean it doesn't work

Next, I inked up the sentiment with the same colour ink (I masked off the star which is after the word 'Wish' as I wanted to add a star brad instead), poured on clear embossing powder and heat-set it.  

As my purple star brad wasn't quite the right shade of purple, I held the prongs with a pair of tweezers, inked it with the same ink, added the Stamp and Bond powder, heated it with my heat gun then poured on the same glitter.  Yay - now it matched!  You do not want to handle the brad till it cools down of course and you don't want to handle the brad too much anyway because it is very easy to scrape off the glitter/embossing.  I usually cut off my prongs with a pair of pliers and glue brads to my cards with Crafter's Pick Incredibly Tacky glue as I have a hard time poking a hole in just the right spot on my card and lining my brads up - it's just easier for me that way.

The white card base was embossed with my Big Shot and the Snowflakes embossing folder from the Cuttlebug Winter Wonderland set, corner punched the top and bottom RHS, wrapped some Lilac Twine around it (LOVE my twine!!) and popped the main panel up on dimensionals.  Finished card size is 5" x 5".

Here is a close-up of all that gorgeous sparkly glitter:

Challenges:

I am popping my card into the following challenges -

Splitcoaststampers, Free for all Friday F4A88 - 'A True Free for All' - nice and easy

Winter Wonderland Challenge - Make your card sparkle - use lots of glitter or glitter card

Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Card Challenge CHNC45 - Bright colours and/or sparkle

For those of you who (like me) are a visual learner, here is Kristina Werner's video from You Tube where Kristina demonstrates how to use Stamp and Bond Powder on her Christmas card (Kristina is using Stampin' Up brand which is called 'Heat and Stick' - it's the same thing).  Enjoy!  (And thanks Kristina!)



Thanks so much for stopping by.  I'll be back in a few days!

Jocelyn


Card Recipe:

Stamps:   Hero Arts Four Framed Snowflakes cling rubber, Sentiment by Stamp-It Australia - A little Christmas Wish 1607C

Ink:  Versacolor Violet pigment

Accessories:  Acrylic block, Big Shot, Snowflakes embossing folder from Cuttlebug Winter Wonderland set, heat-gun, Stampendous Stamp and Bond embossing powder aka Heat-and-Stick in other brands, Fine .008 Crystalina glitter, small round paintbrush, Crafter's Pick Incredibly Tacky glue, dimensionals, star brad (from stash), The Twinery lilac twine, cardstock: white

Punches:  Stampin' Up corner