I pulled out an old Mary Jo McGraw book (my guru in those days) and made a card using a technique called "cracked tile". The sun stamp is by Laurel Burch and was my first stamp purchase ever! I stamped it in red and orange dye ink on a strip of kraft cardstock. Then the tricky part--I covered the whole piece with clear embossing ink and clear powder and embossed it. While it was still hot, I sprinkled on another coat and heated again. I have learned from trial and error (and blowing a lot of embossing powder around the house) that the best way to heat the layers after the first is from the bottom rather than across the top of the piece.
I added more powder and embossed twice more, and on one of the layers sprinkled in some gold glittery embossing powder, which becomes embedded in the clear stuff as it melts and sinks in. It's hard to see on the whole card but the picture did catch some of it in the upper left. After doing several layers of embossing, I folded the piece up, which cracks the embossed layer and makes the "tile" design. To make the tiles pop out a little, I rubbed brown ink over the whole thing, then wiped with a paper towel. It comes off the embossed surface, but sticks to the paper in the cracks in the embossing.
To finish the card I layered onto some solid red cardstock and used an old corner punch to make notches, which I used to hold a frame of orange embroidery floss. The whole thing is layered onto a kraft card.
The stamps used here are from some of my earliest Stampin' Up sets, purchased in 1997 or so. I embossed the gecko (from the Southwest set) using verdigris powder on a white piece of cardstock. Then I went to town with various inkpads in shades varying from yellow through dark brown, sponging the colors on to give the effect of a drawing on a cave wall. I used deckle edge scissors to trim the edges and layered it onto a piece of dark red corrugated paper, which went onto a kraft card. Finally I wrapped plain twine around the card several times and knotted it. I finished it with some gold sealing wax, stamped with the swirl stamp from the Stampin' Up Celestial set. My partner sent this card to her mom for Mother's Day, since her mom loves southwestern motifs.
Finally I made this card using a stamp from one of my favorite stamp companies back then, Acey Deucy. They went out of business long ago but I was excited to see that some of their designs have been licensed through Stamp Diva. Alas not this one, which is my favorite one. I began by sponging purple ink onto a white card base and dragging the sponge to make streaks and lines for some texture. Then I layered on a piece of torn mulberry paper (no plethora of scrapbook papers back then, we used art papers like mulberry and banana paper, and Japanese origami paper).
To make the main image I took chalk pastels (NOT oil pastels, this won't work) and scraped them with the blade of my Xacto knife to drop crumbs onto the piece of white card. I started with the lightest colors of orange and yellow and worked from the inside out to blue and purple around the edges. I wanted to give the effect of dawn breaking or the sun coming out of clouds. Then I stamped the image in embossing ink and embossed with Galaxy embossing powder, which is black with sparkly glitter in it (hard to see that in the picture). I layered the stamped piece onto the card and finished it off by highlighting the star with gold glitter glue.
I love all the choices of materials and embellishments that we have now but it was fun to go old school for a day, and it was a great reminder to pull out some of those old stamps that I still love!
Thanks for looking, and have a great day!
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