PANDAS IN THE SNOW!!

Hi all, and welcome to ANOTHER snow day in Martinsville, New Jersey!

This is what I woke up to this morning!  That's my stamping room over THERE! So after shoveling enough room for my neighbor's little 20 year old dog to go potty, I ice-picked my way back up our drive-way! I made a skinny little path to the garage door so that I could go up and put the heat on (there was no way I was getting to it from the side door!) I let it heat up and then ....

after an hour I went back out the side door of the house to this:

Wait a minute, I thought I said I'd already shoveled a path an hour ago?  Oh yes, I did - it's still coming down!! 

So up to the stamping room I went, where I have been experimenting over the last couple of days with some flocked backgrounds. I played for four hours!

I'm not going to share all the samples with you today.  There will be a full tutorial done over at Sparkle N Sprinkle at some point, but I was so excited,  I just had to make one card so that I could show off at least one of these backgrounds for now!

I was in snow mode - OBVIOUSLY! Who wouldn't be after the "fun" winter we've been having? So Panda's came to mind!!!! ... so what better background than bamboo?

What do you think? So easy, with lots of texture. A Super Adhesive Sheet, an embossing folder, some flocking and a dye ink pad and that's all there is to it!

Here is what you do. Take the Super Adhesive Sheet and cut it to 5 1/4" x 4", remove the protective backing and add it to cream cardstock. Cut off the edges of the cardstock, that's easier than trying to fit the SAS onto the specific cut piece of cardstock. 

Remove the protective backing and add Palm Leaf flocking to the entire piece. Ink the inside of the Darice embossing folder with Memento Rich Cocoa Ink pad:

Close the inked side over the flocked side and run it through an embossing machine:

So much texture! OK, then I got totally carried away and made seven other backgrounds, before I ran out of Super Adhesive Sheets!  But THERE'S MORE - you can do the same thing with Sparkle N Sprinkle's Sticker Paper! However, Sticker Paper is not double-sided, so one thing that you cannot do is stick it down to a colored card base, before flocking. I mean, you can do it, but the color won't show under the flocking. 

Confused? (I know I am!) Here are a couple of examples:

The one on the left is done with Super Adhesive Sheet on yellow cardstock, with Sun Dazzle Flocking and Memento Lady Bug ink. The one on the left is done with Sticker Paper, taped down to white cardstock, but with the same flocking and ink:

The left hand side is much more vivid, but actually in this instance - I happened to like the right hand side (the Sticker Paper) version, because of the side of the embossing folder inked!  Did you notice that they are positive and negative? Yep, by changing the side of the folder you ink on - changes the outcome!! See the endless possibilities with this technique?

OK? .... and now back to pandas! 

I used Sparkle N Sprinkle Sets 465: Panda's Birthday to compliment my bamboo background.

I wanted to let the background really be the focus of this card, so tried to keep everything else minimal. Just stamped the pandas with Memento black ink and colored the bamboo with Copics, adding a little Green Iris glitter to the bamboo. The handmade ribbon tag was stamped with Versamark and heat embossed with Black Detail embossing powder. A little Memento Bamboo Leaves ink was added to the edges of the tag. The image and tag were both attached to the background with dimensionals and then layered to a black card base. 

So where are the pandas in the snow? Funny you should ask! 

Till next time, keep warm,

Hugs,

Shona