Iris and Lace Card

This is the Darice Embossing folder I bought on Sunday. Originally I tried to do the letterpress thing where you brayer ink onto your embossing folder and then emboss it. I had planned on having a powder blue background with white lace, but unfortunately my letterpress things never look the way I envision them. So far, most of mine turn out blotchy and messy looking, so I revised my plan.

This time, I embossed a light aqua card and went over it lightly a couple of times with white ink and a sponge dauber. I wanted the white to contrast more than it did, but wasn't too bad, and I sort of liked the way a bit of the ink smudged onto the background so it wasn't just a solid color.

Then I kept playing with colors to mat the card with until I came up with these colors, which reminded me of some of the iris and hydrangea dimensional stickers I had from K&CO.

After I matted everything, I cut a white rectangle for the center and went around the outside of it with a Brilliance ink pad. Then I tried combinations of the iris and hydrangea stickers until I decided I liked this simple one. I added some fancy paper with glittered swirls from my stash to the rectangle as a background for the iris, cutting it just a hair smaller than the white rectangle. It was quite easy using my newest Fiskars trimmer with the wire thingy to show where your cut line is! Then I mounted the center dimensionally and added the sticker and a bow.

I was trying to decide whether or not to add a lot of flowers and things, or to keep it simple and let the glittery lace background, the embossing and the iris and bow be the stars of the show. In the end, I decided just to add four rhinestone to the corners to mirror the glitter in the center.