Stampin! with Jaydee

Hi everyone.  Happy Monday.

I managed to combine two challenges togeether this weekend.  Retrosketches - who have a wonderful tag as our sketch and simply less is more who want us to use metal on our creation.  Here's the sketch:

I decided to make a tag using metal leaf.  I really do love metal leaf, and I was thirlled that Jen McGuire has a video on her blog showing how to use it on a card.   You can check out Jen's video here.

To make my tag, I used the SSS leaf stencil and dabbed Versamark over the masked off area of the stencil.  Once I had done that, I quickly covered the area with Heat and Stick powder and then sprinkled the metal leaf onto the warm heat and stick powder.  It took a few minutes to get the metal leaf to stick, but I love the overall effect.

Instead of using flowers, I decided to decorate the leaves with butterflies.  I punched out three butterflies from the Bitty Butterfly punch and then put some versamark on a retired SU background stamp and pressed the butterflies into the versamark.  I wanted just a little texture and the versamark works well on darker colors.    The original tag is Very Vanilla, but I decided it was too bright, so I used a Distress Ink called Vintage Photo to darken the tag. 

Here's my card:

The "celebrate" stamp from the Hostess set "Express Yourself" was the perfect fit for the top left hand side of the tag.   I then took a Copic marker and colored an SU metal button and threaded some baker's twine through the button.

The butterflies are secured, with their wings lifted, with double sided clear tape.  All that was left to do was to mount the tag onto the base with double sided tape and added a couple of jewels to each butterfly.  A little gel roller was used on the wings to add just a little bit more, subtle, bling :-)

On a personal note:

I promised to share some snow photos with you.   here's one I took on Saturday morning outside of our house.  

Got snow?

Now, this is outside our house.. in fact, you can see the tree that we planted just after we moved in.  The three is around 18-19 feet high.   Lou is over 6 feet.   So, I think the answer is.... yes, got snow!!!

The wetlands look so gorgeous, but it is really hard to get a feelin of how much snow is out there.

As we were driving down the road, the sun was shining, the snowplow had made an initial removal, but the trees looked beautiful.

As I've said before, I love this time of the year, and this year has been particularly pretty from a snow perspective, but it's gotten cold again.... and I think I'm ready for this to be the last snowstorm of the year :-)  Afterall, we have had snow on the ground since November!

I'll be back on Wednesday withh another card.  In the meantime, warm hugs and prayers for those of you who need a little lift tonight.

Warm hugs

Jaydee

Card recipe:

• Stamp:  Express Yourself (SU)
• Card stock:  Very Vanilla (SU).  Vanilla heavyweight 120# (Ginak).  Cajun Craze.
• Inks:  Basic Black.  Distress Ink: Vintage Photo.  Versamark
• Tools:  Heat and Stick Powder.  Metal leafing (mixed colors).  Lil Inker die.  Simon Says Stamp leaf stencil
• Accessories:  Basic Metal buttons
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