Garden Roses

My cards this week were inspired by this tutorial by Ishani S and her ideas for this embossing folder.  I received the Altenew Garden Roses embossing folder in the Craft Your Life Project Kit as part of my Cardmaker of the Year 2022 prize from Practical Publishing and Craftworld.  This is my first play with the kit and I'm loving this folder and the double embossing technique!

To begin, I dry embossed a white and a navy panel before moving on to the double embossing.  The dimension from this folder is amazing!  

One of the cards was to be for my Mum-in-law so I asked Mr L which he preferred and he chose the inked one.  

On the white panel, I used small blending brushes and Altenew Mixed Media pigment inks in Frosty Pink and Coral Berry to add some colour to the roses and Distress inks to the leaves - I can't remember which ones though! The panel was matted onto pink and green layers and mounted onto a 7" square card base.  I spattered the card with some gold Finetec paint, stamped and heat embossed the sentiment and embellished with some pink gems.

On the navy panel, I had temporarily adhered an oval die-cut of metallic card that I had lying around on my desk.  After embossing, I removed the oval and  dragged a gold ink pad down the navy panel which just gave some highlights on the high points of the panel.  The oval was glued back in place for a focal area but I felt it needed more than just a sentiment so used the stamp set and dies from the kit to create a rose.  The whole arrangement was adhered on thin foam tape.  I love thin foam tape - it adds dimension without putting the postage into the 'large' category!

This next panel started out life as a grey piece of card, believe it or not.  It was dry embossed and then I blended some Distress Oxides in Saltwater Taffy and Picked Raspberry and then some green Distress Inks on the leaves.  Despite adding colour, it seemed really drab so I thought I'd try out the double embossing.  This involved dragging a Versamark ink pad along the debossed side (the one with the label on), aligning the panel back into the folder and running through the die-cutting machine again.  After this, white embossing powder was added.  The powder was a bit thick in places so I swept a piece of card over the top to drag a little of the powder off before heat setting it.  

This is the finished result.  Doesn't it look fab?  It's got so much texture and interest and doesn't actually look like a piece of card stock any longer.

Spurred on by the success of this panel, I wanted to try out a white panel with coloured embossing powder. For the first one, I used Phill Martin's Blueberry Crush embossing powder.  As the piece of card I'd used was smaller than a card base, I embossed another panel in white and mounted the double embossed panel on top, layered on navy mats.

The last card was made the same way but this time I used Phill Martin's Baked Aubergine embossing powder.

I love this double embossing look so I think I'll be trying it out on some other embossing folders. The last two cards are my favourites - which are yours?