Tropical Birthday

In this week's Ways To Use It challenge on Splitcoast Stampers, Lisa challenged us to "warm it up". We could use heat embossing, images that are hot like fire or iron, or use other techniques that use hot tools. I decided to go for a double. I used heat embossing, but I use this technique all the time, so that didn't seem like enough. To really challenge myself I decide to try the wax paper resist technique combined with an embossing folder. This involves dry embossing a piece of wax paper with an embossing folder and then using a hot iron to transfer the embossed image onto card stock, creating a "resist".

Let me just say that I hate ironing, so only a challenge could get me to finally try this technique. To make it worth my while, I embossed several pieces of wax paper with different folders, so I have a bunch of wax resist backgrounds I can use on future cards. I'm not sure if they'll be really useful, though, because I'm not sure I did this right. Maybe my iron wasn't set high enough, but even though I did get a bit of a resist, it wasn't nearly as crisp and white as I was expecting. Oh well.

To create this background I sponged dazzling daffodil, calypso coral and melon mambo inks over my background. I thought these fiery colors not only suited the tropical nature of the background, but also the "warm it up" part of the challenge. I then stamped images from the Summer Collage set by TPC Studios in Tangerine Tango in the center of the background.

I stamped several flowers from the Tropical Party set in rich razzleberry for the large flowers and Tangerine Tango for the small flowers on whisper white card stock that I then sponged with the inks used on the background and fussy cut all of them before attaching them to the card base. I did the same with the coconut drink image from the same set (minus the sponging). Finally, I stamped the sentiment in versamark and heat embossed it with white embossing powder before attaching the finished layer to the already dry embossed 5x7" card base.

The card didn't turn out exactly as I originally imagined, but I thought this was a really fun challenge and I appreciate the push to try yet another new to me technique.

Recipe:

Paper: whisper white, A7 Embossed white card base by DCWV
Ink: dazzling daffodil, calypso coral, melon mambo, tangerine tango, rich razzleberry, early espresso, versamark
Stamps: Tropical Party, Sassy Salutations, Summer Collage from TPC Studios
Accessories:  Summer Flowers A6 embossing folder by Sizzix, white embossing powder, spomges.