Black and white and red all over...

I wanted to make a special a card for my brother and SIL's 13th anniversary next week (Happy Anniversary to you...) and I decided to use one of the Flourishes stamp sets that I bought oh, so long ago and have not yet used (so many stamps, so little time!).

I do have to admit that I have a bit more trouble using clear stamps (as opposed to good old red rubber) but am making a concerted effort to appreciate them. One of the common complaints is that they do not ink or stamp a very good image reliably. One of the ways to rectify this is to rub your new clear stamps with a white eraser (or any eraser really) to remove the residue left from the manufacturing process, then clean them with stamp cleaner. Another helpful hint is to use hybrid or chalk inks as the clear stamps pick up that ink better.

For this card, I used a Whisper White card base and adhered a piece of paper from the Night & Day set from Stampin' Up- it's a wonderful collection of all black and white patterns- so versatile! I layered a strip of Real Red underneath that patterned piece and scored lines a few inches up to set it off a bit.

The heart in this set is very swirly and pretty and is perfect for Valentine's, but can also be used for weddings and anniversaries. I stamped the heart in Memento Tuxedo Black and cut it out using my nested heart dies on my Sizzix machine. I stamped the image again in Real Red, cut out the inner heart and pieced it over the black image to make it stand out. I added a few rhinestones for bling and layered it onto another set of nested label shapes cut out of Basic Black and a different pattern from the Night & Day collection.

To assemble it, I ran a piece of red silk ribbon around the card and glued it down where it would be hidden by the image. I then tied a big fancy bow at the top where it would drape over and frame the image- love this ribbon! The main image was layered onto the card with dimensional dots to give it some depth and the greeting was added to the bottom to finish it off. Since this was a formal card, I pulled out my fancy tag dies for the fisrt time- definitely going to be using those a lot more!


Now that it's done, it does look a bit more appropriate for Valentine's Day, but I am sure they will appreciate the effort. Thanks for stopping by and hope your day is less soggy than ours here in Houston!

 

Supplies:

Paper: Whisper White, Real Red, Basic Black, Night & Day Designer Series paper

Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Real Red

Accessories: Sizzix machine, nested label dies, heart die, fancy tag die, dimensionals, rhinestones, Score-Pal