Always Believe That Something Wonderful is About to Happen

Hello and Happy May Day!!!  It's Wanda with you today.  It's been very wet and chilly here in Southern Iowa and I'm ready for the warm weather to come back.

I recently bought a Royal Sovereign Laminator (Model CL-1223) and have been testing it out with foil.  Very fun!!!!  For this card I wanted to try using Transparent Embossing Paste.  Onto a piece of Mixed Media Paper (Ranger), I put the paste through the Butterfly Kaleidoscope stencil scraping it mostly flat, removed the stencil (clean your stencil before the paste dries), let the paste completely dry on the paper, put a piece of foil over the paper (Therm-O-Web iCraft deco foil, Emerald Watercolor), placed the paper with the foil on top inside a folded piece of parchment paper,  ran it through the heated up laminator, pulled the piece of foil off and, ta-da!!, gorgeous foiled, dimensional butterflies!!! 

I added background color to the piece with Distress products.  I sprayed some water on the paper first, then sprayed Distress Spray Stain Picked Raspberry just in the center of the paper (but, of course, you get speckles toward the edges of the paper), blotted with a paper towel and dried it.  Around the edges I inked with Distress Ink Mustard Seed and Squeezed Lemonade and then also distressed the edges.  When I was putting the card together I decided to add a bit more to the background and did some random stamping with the Crackle Background using Distress Ink Mustard Seed. 

For my center piece I also started with Mixed Media Cardstock (Ranger), inked the Crackled Background with Distress Oxide Ink Cracked Pistachio, gave it a very light spray with water and then stamped it onto the paper, dried it, stamped the quote (Always Believe) with Archival Ink Jet Black, sprayed the paper with Distress Spray Stain Squeezed Lemonade, blotted it, dried it, dripped on some water, blotted it, dried it, cut it out with a Stitched Circled die (Elizabeth Craft Designs), and inked the edges with Distress Ink Mowed Lawn.  

The "flowers" are Elizabeth Craft Designs ModaScrap Dandelion Fluff diecut from colored cardstock, inked with Embossing Ink (Ranger), embossed with clear powder, and white dots added to the ends with a Posca Paint Marker.  The butterfly is metal (Finnabair Mechanical Grungy Butterflies, Prima).  I used my finger to dab on some Ranger Ink Enamel Accents (a mix of Classic Cherry and Wild Orchid).  I've also used a paper doily and some twine on the card. 

I hope you've enjoyed this card.  If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

Thanks for following along!!!!

Hugs, Wanda