Coffee embossing powder – Stamped Smiles

Hello friends! I hope you’ve been enjoying your month so far! We’ve had a few really nice days this month, but it’s still a tad bit chilly and hopefully it will warm up more next month! It’s hard to believe we are already headed into May for this year!

That means it’s time for the monthly Art Journal Page collaboration with my crafty friend, Carol (from Crafty-Stamper)! We get creative trying to use up our never-ending stash piles along with a prompt for each month. I know she always has great inspiration to share, so please check out her blog too! Here’s my AJ page with the “SMASH OUR STASH” April prompt of “HALF” -(e.g. 2 halves to create whole item/half of something):

Yes, coffee please! I’m a coffee lover and so is my husband! I don’t think we’d be able to start a day without it! I know there are lots of people who don’t like coffee and that’s OK…as long as there will be some somewhere for me, I’m good! 😉☕

It was my husband that inspired this page for me when I asked him what his favorite shape was, and he answered with a circle. Looking down at my coffee cup was the circle I saw and decided to take more inspiration from a coffee cup we purchased at one of our favorite local coffee cafes you can see in the top corner of the photo. To achieve the look, I took a cardstock color matching the cup and splattered white paint over it. The “HALF” is obviously the coffee cup that was cut out with circle dies. I cut another piece of the handle which makes it look like the view you would see from the top of the cup. The other “HALF” of the cup was placed in the corner area at the bottom and this coffee is more of my husband who likes plain black coffee. But this is certainly how we start our day together which is great since he’s retired now. The other “HALF” cup has the latte art, and I did that one with light sponging around the edge and then took my colored pencils to free hand the design. Not sure if that’s exactly what it looks like, but I gave it a try.

For the background: I’ve used a strip of wood plank pattern paper from my stash, and I’ve also heat embossed a coffee bean background stamp with, of course, coffee embossing powder that I’ve had for a very long time, and it was a great time to use it! I’ve also heat embossed the “coffee” sentiment and quotes with it. Below the embossed coffee is a sentiment that says: “Take life one cup at a time” and the other two at the bottom say: “First we drink coffee, then we do the things”😂
The coffee cup-stained background, I’ll share more about below.

I also took a big brush marker to go around the edges of the cups and the sentiment strips. I wanted the heat embossing to stand out a bit more over the brown cardstock, so I took a white Tim Holtz crayon and rubbed over top of it to brighten it up.

Have you ever made backgrounds with coffee? I had such a fun time playing with it and decided to make several different backgrounds that I could use for later!

I don’t drink instant coffee, but I have some in my cupboard because I like to make a chocolate cake that has instant coffee in it…so good! I took some of this instant coffee and made the coffee cup-stained background for my page to create more circles that went with my circle coffee cups.

I also decided that since I had a cup of it, that I would go ahead and make more backgrounds with it and just play around with different things. I splattered, I smooshed, I’ve added salt along with a few other things and let dry and make patterns with. Once dry, I cleaned them off and here are the results of my play. I wish I had done another cup circle background though.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my art journal page and been inspired in some way! Thanks so much for dropping in! Have a great weekend! Mine will be busy!

Challenges:

Art Journal Journey – Geometric Forms
Creative Artiste – Anything Goes Mixed Media
Creative Fingers – Anything Goes
Try it On Tuesday – Inspired by a Song (Can’t think of coffee with the “Coffee Song” by Frank Sinatra!)
Lil’ Patch of Crafty Friends – Anything Goes
Penny’s Paper-Crafty – Anything Goes using paper

Hello friends! Back with you today to share a card I’ve made using the January release stamp set called Early Spring Nest!

vicki-earlyspringnest-cardep-project2

I had so much fun playing with this pretty Spring image and playing with some new embossing powders on this one!

To get the background, I’ve taken a piece of watercolor paper and sprinkled it with some Nuvo Blue Blitz Shimmer Powder and spritzed it with water to also move it around the paper until I got the look I was wanting for it. I set it aside to work on the rest of my card until it was COMPLETELY dry. After it dried, I took my Static Free Bag to rub over the area and prep for heat embossing. I stamped the Crackle Background stamp (Really love the versatility of this image!) with VersaMark and heat set the image with the Robin’s Egg embossing powder. (Sounded like the perfect product to use for my card!) I also used my corner chomper to round the corners on this panel.

For the scallop layer behind this panel as well as the layer behind the sentiment, I took my VersaMark ink pad and smeared on a layer around the edges and heat embossed them with the Coffee embossing powder. I also used this for the sentiment as well as the nest image, so this also works for a nice, detailed embossing powder! I made the fishtail banner layer before I did the embossing with my Tim Holtz 5″ scissors. I took some craft foam and attached the front base panel to the embossed scalloped layer which was mounted onto a white A2 sized top folding card base.

Here’s a closer look at the stamped Crackle background with the Robin’s Egg heat embossing over the watercolor background. I just love the shimmer it has in it! You can also see the Coffee heat embossed layers. I love the pretty Copper sheen it has as well as the dark brown flecks in it! You can also see how well it embossed the fine detailed stamped images too.

There are so many different things going on with the embossing powder on this design that you really need to capture all the different angles throughout the design to see it!

vicki-earlyspringnest1

For the coloring of the image, I just used some Clean Color Real Brush markers for it. I like to heat emboss the images when I do this sort of coloring as it helps to keep the water coloring inside the lines and acts as sort of a “well” so that the colors stay where you want them.

For the eggs inside the nest, I took a VersaMarker pen and colored them in with it. Then I took the same Robin’s Egg embossing powder and heat set the eggs with it. It really creates a fun and unique look with the blue tint and speckle flakes in it, plus it gives it a nice embossed shine for an “egg like” appearance!

After coloring in the image, I used my scissors to fussy cut it out and then added a couple of feathers from my stash and attached this image over the card front panel with some foam tape. I finished off my design by adding a few random drops with some Nuvo Dazzling Blue Glitter Drops.

I hope that you’ve enjoyed my card today and thank you so much for stopping in!

Challenges I’d like to enter: