Merry Gold

Christmas in June? Well, I tend to post them as they line up, so that is what you are getting today. I really really love using embossing paste and stencils now that I know how to do it correctly. If only I could learn how to tie a bow better. This one looks screwy.

Take a stencil and tape to a piece of card stock. You can use textured card too as it just fills in when you swipe the knife across the stencil (always make sure to clean your stencils right away-keep a water bath to soak them nearby as you finish your project). Swipe a swath of translucent embossing paste across the stencil and scrape off any extra for a level playing field. I bought my scraper in the kitchen aisle. It's from Wilton and made for icing a cake! 2 bucks. If you go into the art aisle, you will pay a lot more. Same danged thing too.

When the paste is dry, take a glue pad and place the stencil over the design again and tamp on the glue. Remove the stencil and clean. Heat the glue until tacky and place the gold leaf on it and press down to stick. Let cool and using a stiff stencil brush, and using circular motions, rub the leaf flecks off (save them for later) and ta da-there is your image.

I mounted it to layers of scraps that I felt were prominent in the leaf. Gold and teal here-then I layered to a plain textured folded card. It was a bit plain, so scrounging thru my ribbon stash (like others stash chocolate, I stash stuff I can't eat) I found this metallic ribbon and laid a straight piece using the Trio. I then tied a bow in the middle of the piece and fiddled with it to sorta be straight.

As a finish, I found some small pearls in the dollar bin and added them at the bottom. I do need to work on the ribbon deal a bit so that may change but this was pretty quick (other than the paste drying which took about 20 minutes) so you could do this assembly line if you needed to-the first would be dry as you finished the 20th maybe?