Waltzingmouse October Pajama Party - Challenge 1. Texturise it.

Hello! Today I am joining in with the Waltzingmouse Stamps October Pajama Party - challenge 1 - Texturise it. You can check out the full details here http://waltzingmouse.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/welcome-to-october-pj-party.html .

This challenge was to use embossed textures but without using an embossing folder. I decided to make my own embossing plate by cutting lots of the Gingerbread Family shapes using my WMS Cutting Edge dies.

I started by cutting lots of the smaller gingerbread boys and girls out of thick greyboard, so that I could use them to make an embossing plate. While I had the dies out I also cut several of each size and shape out of some self adhesive cork sheet, which was ideal as they looked like real gingerbread men!

I took a piece of smooth, thick greyboard and marked out the size of my card blank (5" x 7") in pencil. Inside that I marked out a 6" x 4" panel with a small border to represent the area which I wanted to emboss. The card was also divided vertically, horizontally and diagonally in order to assist with the placement of the tiny gingerbread boys and girls, which I stuck in place with some strong red - lined double sided tape. 

Here is the finished embossing plate complete with eighteen little gingerbread men in neat rows.

I took a piece of 6" x 4" Core'dinations red Kraft-Core card from the Tim Holtz Nostalgic collection and held it in place with some low tack masking tape to prevent it from moving as I passed it through my Grand Calibur machine (using the tan mat and pale pink embossing plate). The photo above shows the embossed piece before I sanded it to reveal the kraft core.

Here is my finished card, matted and layered onto a Kraft card blank with red paper and kraft gingham card. The cork gingerbread men were stamped with Versamark ink, coated with Zing Opaque White embossing powder and heat set to give the effect of icing. They turned out really textured too and I think they look very effective! The sentiment was from the same stamp set - Oven Fresh Gingerbread Joy - and was heat embossed onto a small stitched sentiment flag die cut from a Lil' inker designs die and using kraft card.

I'm very happy with my first Christmas card make of this year and I have enough pairs of Gingerbread men ready to make eight cards in total - so that's a result! Thanks for looking!

Lynn