Add a little sparkle…(part 1)

Good morning!  If you’re a regular reader of my blog you know that I usually can’t resist adding a little extra sparkle to my cards, whether it be through shimmer sprays, embossing powders, perfect pearls, etc.  I decided it would be fun to make a bunch of cards using various methods to add sparkle to the backgrounds!  Some methods and products are probably quite familiar to you but some might be new!  😉 I’d love to hear which method is your favorite or if you have another way of making things sparkle!

So anyway, I ended up with way more cards than I expected…ha ha…so today I’m sharing three using two different methods!  I received a gift certificate to Papertrey Ink for my birthday (thanks Effie!) and my order arrived yesterday so I decided to play with my new stamps and dies and use them for today’s examples!

Here are the first two cards:

I have been wanting that die from PTI for ages and I’m so excited to finally have it!!  For the first card I blended distress inks onto Canson watercolor paper.  I followed the general shape of the flower die and used picked raspberry, dried marigold, and spiced marmalade distress ink.  The Canson is my new favorite watercolor paper…it blends distress ink BEAUTIFULLY and so effortlessly!  As the distress ink was drying I took a spritz bottle and mixed a blend of water and Winsor & Newton iridescent medium.  I LOVE my iridescent medium…you’ll see me use it a lot over the next few posts!  I spritzed that all over the watercolor panel until it was evenly covered with shimmer.  I let it dry naturally and then, for the first card, I die-cut the Mighty Blooms coverplate, being careful to keep the little pieces inside the die.  I turned over the die and added tiny pieces of foam mounting tape to each of the petals.  Then I simply lined up a piece of black cardstock over the die and pressed it over the foam mounting tape to transfer the petals to the black cardstock.  For the second card I trimmed the outline of the die panel and adhered it to a black cardstock base.  To finish off the cards I die-cut the Lawn Fawn Scripty Congrats and Scripty Thanks with black and light coral cardstock and off-set them before adhering them to the card front.

I like the way the iridescent medium adds a even shimmer over the entire panel but the actual bits of sparkle are slightly larger than the perfect pearls shimmer sprays.  When the water hits the distress ink it also moves the ink around and creates an interesting texture.  You can dilute the iridescent medium as much or as little are you want…it can be subtle or quite bold!

Then here’s my third card…this card was originally intended to go in a totally different direction but it just wasn’t working the way I envisioned.  However I did a little improvisation and this actually might be my favorite card now!  Ha ha, put on your sunglasses…this card practically glows!

Sparkly, huh? 😉  Ha ha…so for this card I blended an odd combination of distress inks onto watercolor paper.  From the top I used Tumbled Glass, Salty Ocean, Peacock Feathers, Evergreen Bough, and Festive Berries!  I love that purply shade that the Evergreen Bough and Festive Berries create!  Next I pressed my versamark ink pad all over the panel and then sprinkled it with Wow Clear Hologram Sparkle embossing glitter.  I set it with my heat tool and once the powder melted it created a gorgeous sparkly background.  That embossing powder has big pieces of glitter throughout as well as a clear shimmery powder…it’s simply stunning up close!

Next I die-cut one of the butterflies from Papertrey Ink’s Beautiful Butterflies with vellum and white cardstock.  I stamped one of the layers with versamark and then heat-embossed it with the same powder.  I turned the vellum layer upside down and colored it with two copic markers.  I adhered the butterfly layers with foam tape and then glued the white cardstock to my background panel with multi-medium matte.  To finish the card I stamped the sentiment from Altenew’s Label Love with versafine and heat-embossed it with clear powder.  I wound a little bit of white thread behind the sentiment and then adhered it to the panel with foam mounting tape.  I added a sprinkling of black sequins and then offset the panel onto a white cardbase.

Of all the cards I created, this one definitely has the most obvious sparkle.  I purchased the hologram sparkle embossing glitter a few weeks ago but wasn’t as excited with it when I used it for a sentiment…however, using it for highlighting an inked background?!  Bestill my heart, it’s gorgeous!

So there you have it…my most subtle sparkle along with the most in-your-face sparkle! 😉  Which one do you prefer so far?  I’ll have four different examples tomorrow!

Supplies:

Interested in the products I used?  To make them easy for you to find, I have listed them below. (Affiliate disclosure can be found here). Your purchases help keep my blog running and I thank you for the support!)