Kim Thompson, Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrator: It's Time to SALE-A-Brate again!

Welcome to the Creative Card-iology Team August Blog Hop - we are so glad you've joined us! After you are finished here at my blog, I hope you'll check out my teammate's projects as well. You can hop along with us by clicking on the links to their blogs toward the bottom of this post. We always appreciate your feedback, so please let us know you've stopped by and leave a comment.

Our theme this month is Sale-A-Bration! I know, I know - it’s not winter! But Stampin’ Up! scheduled a second Sale-A-Bration this year, and it continues through the end of September. There are some awesome stamp sets, papers and dies that you can get free with $50 or $100 purchases.

This month’s project inspiration came from a card I saw as I was scrolling Pinterest. I don’t remember who created the project, although I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a Stampin’ Up! stamp used. I’m not sure I could even find the card again! I’m horrible at taking note of where I saw something, so I apologize to the creator of the card for not being able to give credit. I was just very drawn to the combination of embossing and coloring on navy cardstock. I’ve spent several nights since I saw the card trying out various embossing powders, cardstock colors and different colored pencils to color with.

When I first saw the card while scrolling, I thought the simple elegance of the card would be very suited to a sympathy card I needed to make for a co-worker. And the Delicate Dahlias stamp set (free with $100 purchase) might be the perfect set to use for my card.

I often find it hard to convey to someone who has experienced such a devastating loss how sorry I am for what they are going through, but I hope that I can share a little bit of my heart through creating a card.

I stayed with the initial combination I saw of gold embossing powder and blue colored pencils on Night of Navy Cardstock. I prepared my Night of Navy card base by cutting a sheet of cardstock in half to measure 8-1/2" x 5-1/2" and then scoring at 4-1/4. I created a gold frame from a piece of gold foil cardstock using 2 rectangle dies from the Stitched Rectangles collection, the inside rectangle die being 2 sizes smaller than the larger one leaving me about 1/4" frame all the way around. Doing that left me enough room for my stamped and embossed layer to have something to be adhered to and allowed me to have a stitched rectangle shape that I can use on another project and not cover up all of the beautiful gold foil!

I cut a piece of navy cardstock about 4” x 5-1/4" and trimmed as needed to leave about 1/8" of the gold foil frame showing when the layer would be adhered to the frame. I then stamped my floral images and sentiment onto the layer with Versamark ink, applied gold embossing powder from the Metallics Emboss Powders collection and used my heat tool to make the magic happen! I like using the Stamparatus when stamping in Versamark ink so that I can stamp a second time if my first impression wasn’t clear enough.

I then colored in my images with Balmy Blue, Pacific Point, Night of Navy and Coastal Cabana watercolor pencils. After coloring the images, I adhered my stamped layer to the gold foil frame, and then adhered that to my card front.

I decided to be a little non-traditional and emboss my stamped sentiment and a floral image on the inside of the navy cardbase as well. I used stamps from the Quiet Meadow stamp set for the inside of my card. I also cut a piece of Navy cardstock to fit the flap of my envelope and stamped, embossed and colored floral images from the Quiet Meadow and Delicate Dahlias stamp sets on the flap. Of course, using the navy cardstock meant I needed a pen that would show up on the dark background. A gold metallic gel pen did the job splendidly!

I hope you enjoyed this project! The metallic embossing powders give such an elegant impression and work beautifully for so many projects. Can you imagine it for wedding invitations or a set of thank you or encouragement cards to gift someone along with a metallic pen for writing a note? What other projects would you create with this technique?

There’s a new mini catalog available now with gorgeous fall, holiday and winter stamp sets, tools and papers, and you can check out the new products when you visit my online store. To check out the products used for today’s blog project, you can click on the links below.

This second Sale-A-Bration brings with it great hosting benefits and also a great join special - $125 in product for just $99 plus a free bundle from the July-December 2021 Mini Catalog. If you’d like to hear more about this awesome opportunity to share your love of stamping, you can click here: Tell me more!, comment below or reach out to me through email at kimskeepsakecreations@gmail.com.

I'd love to connect with you through my newsletter and share inspiration, updates on what's happening with Stampin' Up! and information on any scheduled classes. Just click here to fill out the form to opt in to my newsletter and receive a free tutorial as well!

Thanks for hopping with us today! Don’t forget to follow the links below to visit my teammates’s blogs!

Diana's Blog

Jessica's Blog

Product List