Die Cut Dreams

Hi everyone. Hope you're having a relaxed and productive weekend. I've been cooking up some backgrounds and playing with that glass bead gel. More of that very soon. In the meantime here's something put together today using a die I won from the fabulous Christine Emberson of Hope and Chances.

This all started with the background - mist and mica spritzing residue lifted from my spray box. You never totally know what you are going to get but it takes about two seconds to achieve. The 'heart in the mouth' bit came when I used my Dyan Reaveley harlequin stencil to add Picket Fence Distress Paint over the top. Initially it went a slightly muddy colour as the ink and mica underneath wicked into it, but fear not - this stuff is truly magical and when dry it returned its familiar white, chalky look.

Working with vellum always makes me nervous. The slightest touch of moisture and it seems to shrivel up and distort immediately. Thankfully it was ok with the mix of WOW! pearlescent EP's and Brilliance/Distress Ink stamping.

The starting point for the rest of the design was the frame underneath the butterfly. It is one of my die cut frames covered in Silver Ferro texture paste, embossed, and then covered in Distress Ink and Indigo Treasure Gold wax.

I layered that frame over a 'Twisted Metal Accent' frame die cut from textured CS which was also covered in Indigo Treasure Gold wax. It is wonderful the way you can layer up die cuts from totally unrelated sets and still get the sense that they were made for each other.

Of course the background needed  far more embellishment so more pieces of coordinating CS were die cut, but not all in the way that was intended. You can see above that I have used half Rose Creations pieces and the edges of Fleur de Lis Squares. Those have been layered over a Sizzix Thinlit strip. Still borrowing scrapping ideas too - many layouts seem to have another layer of CS to frame the main one and adding stitching to it helps to pull the design together somehow.

A touch of ruched seam binding, some stitching and some thin silk cord added some much needed texture to complete the background. I love that there's a lot going on underneath the frame but it doesn't detract from that fabulous butterfly.

I think you can see from this shot that the pearl embossing was done with a mix of several colours from the WOW! Sheena Pearl kit, including White, Green and Red (which magically became more of an aubergine to coordinate with the background even more). And of course that butterfly (from the Fanciful Flight set) cut in a gorgeous glitter CS that has flecks of green and purple works perfectly when shaped slightly.

Rather thoughtfully Hels is asking for purple in her Sunday Stamper challenge - Purple Haze.

They are having a die cut frenzy during June over at the Country View Crafts challenge blog.

The WOW! Embossing Powder challenge is Nature (hopefully a butterfly counts!)

Now I'm off for an exciting evening of cooking, ironing (whilst seeing whether Jason Plato can win his third race of the day) and Poirot on the telly - it's fast and furious here I can tell you:)

Hope you have a wonderful week ahead, take care of yourselves, hugs Jenny xxx