Not My Favorite Technique...

....and not sure I'll use it again!
What am I talking about?  I'm talking about a technique that was demonstrated in the online Card Camp class I'm taking.  It was a technique by one of my favorite people in this wonderful world of stamping and paper crafting...Jennifer McGuire.  I've taken classes with her before and have been wowed by the techniques she has taught.  BUT NOT THIS ONE! 

Anyway, here is my finished card:

I will say that when Jennifer demonstrated in her video her project came out looking pretty nice.  It's basically a sort of reverse embossing technique where you "kiss" of some embossing powder (before it's melted, of course) with a stamp image.  After several tries with several stamps I own I decided it's the kind of stamps I have....you really need stamps with large parts stamped out. That makes no sense, I realize that and I don't know exactly how to explain it but let me try again.  Most of my images are line drawn so when you stamp with ink (say you use black) you get a line drawing of your image and then you can color in with paints or watercolors or inks or whatever.  Those kinds of stamps do not work well for this technique.  You need a larger area that if you were to stamp with a traditional ink would have a lot of ink on it.  Know what I mean?
OK...here's a stamp set from Hero Arts.  The stamp on the bottom left might work ok for this technique but the one on the top right would probably not do quite as well.

Basically what you do is you take your Versamark ink pad and just press it down (to leave a rectangle of Versamark) onto a piece of paper...Jennifer used watercolor paper and that's what I used as well.  Then you sprinkle embossing powder on your ink on the paper....shake off the excess and THEN you get your stamp and ink it up with the Versamark and press it down onto your embossing powdered and what happens is the part of the image that has the ink on it will pick up the embossing powder off your paper as you "kiss" it.  Got it?  Then what you kind of have is a reversed embossed image.  You melt the powder so the image is sort of framed by the embossing powder but your image is actually NAKED.  Then you can take watercolors, inks, whatever you want and color your image. 

As I said...I think Jennifer's card came out beautifully but I think my problem was not having the right kind of stamp.  I tried several but didn't get the look I wanted so did it with a Hero Arts sentiment stamp.  After I got it embossed I painted it a few times with some Twinkling H20's I had on hand (which I had to have a few years back and rarely use!).

Anyway, the card is simple in design but took me forever to make! LOL!  I embossed and embossed and embossed and embossed...I had a mess!!! But fear not...my nice clean room is clean once again!

To finish off this card I used Paper Trey Ink printed papers and cardstock, some Kraft cardstock I had, Swiss Dots embossing folder, Paper Trey Ink satin ribbon, and some buttons I have had on hand as well as a little twine. 

I will say it was half fun to make but half aggravation, too.  I don't know that I will do this again....

OH....and for those of you who saw my post yesterday about our trip to see my kids' grandmother I was able to get a picture of her wedding photo.   The photo is actually sealed in a frame so could not be scanned...this isn't the best image but isn't it lovely.  A.G. and N.B.G's great grandmother is on the top of the stairs and her sister is on the bottom.  I just love this photo of these matching brides....don't you?  I imagine it was taken in the mid 1940s.

Happy Crafting!