Fun with Cardmaking

I had so much fun at my card-making party last weekend! Neelam, the consultant who conducted the workshop, demonstrated some technique-heavy ideas that I thought were really great. I was so inspired.

Want to see? Today I'll show what she made, and tomorrow what we made ourselves under her direction.

The paper was heat embossed with sparkly embossing powder- this is such a striking effect, even more glittery in person than I could capture here. Then the sparkly paper was cut with a die cutting machine to create this lattice. I got to keep all the scraps - hello glittery creations!

This was done on an pressure embossing plate in the same machine as was used for the die cuts. The butterfly has a rhinestone brad in the center, which also serves to keep the wings up from the paper surface - clever!Is this guy adorable or what? Neelam colored him using regular stamp pad ink and a blending pen. Seeing the blending pen work was most exciting to me - I love the artistic options this technique gives! And isn't this little guy super cute??