Some days – in fact, many days – I’m all about pulling out a whole bunch of ink pads and stamping my heart out. But on others – like this past weekend – all I really wanted to do was play with my cardstock swatches and come up with some fun new color palettes. Do you ever feel the same? If so, I think you’ll like the little card duo I’ve got for ya today!
The Essentials by Ellen Abstract Sunset and Abstract Mountain dies fill an A2 card panel and can absolutely be used on their own for a clean and simple look. As you guys are probably aware, clean and simple cards are my jam, which is probably why these appealed to me! I decided to zhuj them up a bit with a few extra touches including foil, stenciling, and extra dimension.
Starting with the Abstract Sunset, I chose mostly warm tones – Concord and 9th cardstock in Ballet Slipper, Grapefruit, Sorbet, Sea Glass, Oceanside and Peacock. On the Abstract Mountain design, I went with Grapefruit, Sorbet, and Honeysuckle, as well as a leftover scrap of The Stamp Market Fuschia and Hero Arts Plum. In each design, I wanted one of the die cut layers to be foiled – specifically, the same color of foil as my sentiments. But what if you don’t have cardstock that matches? Cue the Pinkfresh Studio solid foil plate!
In an earlier session, I made a whole bunch of Casual Greetings, and used Champagne colored foil for them. (As a side note, I was having a bit of trouble getting the images to foil well on my go-to Hammermill cardstock, but they were crisp, clean, and flawless when I foiled on yupo paper instead! Just thought I’d mention it in case you ever have the same issue.) I don’t have any metallic cardstock that exactly matches that foil, so instead, I made my own. To do this, I simply cut a piece of foil the same size as an A2 cardstock panel, let the solid hot foil plate heat up on my foiling platform, then placed my foil, cardstock and shims on top. Once the timer finished, I ran it through my die cutting machine, peeled back the foil, and voila – flawless champagne cardstock!
Ok, back to the sunsets and mountains. I used the cover dies and cardstock bits in my selected palettes to die cut all of the pieces, using my DIY champagne cardstock for a little slice in each. For the mountain card, I decided to make it look like the sun was coming up in the background. The Pinkfresh Studio Sunburst Layering Stencil Set comes with 3 pieces, but I just used one of those and some white pigment ink to create the sun ray look you see below. Once that pigment ink had dried, I trimmed about 1/4″ off the top. This was necessary because I wanted to space the pieces out a little, and still needed all of them to fit on my A2 card base. I backed each piece of the Abstract Mountain scene with foam tape, then mounted them on the base.
Moving over to the Abstract Sunset, I simply arranged all of the slices onto a piece of plain printer paper, lined with double-sided adhesive. (You could absolutely use taperunner if you like.) Once the panel was covered, I used an Essential Arch die which gave me an arched frame, as well as the center area that I backed with foam tape for dimension.
With the mountain and sunset scenes complete, I finished each card with a foiled Casual Greeting sentiment, layered over a small circle of vellum and adhered with foam tape. The designs are super simple, but I think the little bit of foil shine, stenciling and dimension added to each take them up a notch. What do you think? Do you have a favorite?
PS… a stamping sale!
Before you go, I wanted to let you know that Ellen Hutson is currently having a stamping sale (yaaaasssss) and you can save 20% when you use the code SAVEONSTAMPS22. The sale ends 3/17/22 at 11:59pm PST, so be sure to stock up on your faves before then. If you shop using this link I’ll earn a small commission, and I’m so grateful, as always, for your support!
