Way back in November, Stampin’ Up held the Sydney Heartfelt Event. I was honoured to be asked to present in the Product Playground section and I chose the Brayer table. Heat Embossing or Wheels were the other options I had available when Stampin’ Up called me but I don’t use wheels often and even though I do Heat Emboss from time to time I hate mess. After helping Juliette Chapman pack up the Heat Embossing table at the end of the day I definitely made the right choice with the Brayer. The only mess with that is changing your grid paper when it gets too heavily inked.

It had been some time since I’d used the brayer so it was a challenge for me to get fluent again with it prior to the event especially seeing we’d be using the new style ink pads. I was very nervous at the start of the event as I was first up but once I got started it wasn’t so bad. Mind you I only had 6 – 8 ladies in front of me most times so it’s a little different than being on stage with lots watching at once. I was so glad I chose to be first up as it meant I had it over and done with early and was able to enjoy the rest of the day rather than be nervous all day.

We needed to make some samples to show at the event on the day using specific stamp sets. This I found more challenging than getting fluent with the brayer again. I liked the sets but they weren’t all sets I would use for brayering so I was limited with what I came up with.

The stamp sets we were to use were Snowflake Soiree, Bells & Boughs & Come to Bethlehem. The other item Stampin’ Up requested we try and use was the Textured Impressions Folder – Holiday Frame.

I ended up creating 3 items and used all 3 stamp sets + the embossing folder in there somewhere.

I’m going to share one of these items which you over each of the next 3 days.

Here is the first card I made.

For this card I used the Textured Impressions Embossing Folder – Holiday Frame. I embossed some gloss cardstock and then lightly brayered some Cherry Cobbler ink over the top of the Holiday Frame Impression. I’ve then used one of the Apothecary Accents Framelits to cut out the image. Some of the ink make contact with the centre of the frame so to cover that up I stamped the Christmas Tree and sentiment from Joyous Celebrations stamp set onto some Whisper White card and punched out using the Wide Oval Punch. This was then layered onto a piece of Basic Black card which had been cut from the Sizzlits Lots of Tags die. I’ve paper-pierced around the Apothecary Accent Framelit using the coordinating Paper-Piercing template. Layered all this onto a piece of Whisper White and then onto the Basic Black Base card.

The effect of the brayering over the gloss card impression resembles a heat embossing look.

This card actually came about as I wasn’t happy with the Holiday Frame Embossing Folder. It kept pinching the cardstock on the sides and base. I haven’t played much more with it so am still searching for a ‘fix’. If you happen to know one please let me know. I know some people have had no trouble at all and yet there are others like me struggling with this one.

 With that said as you can see there are still ways to use it.

I hope you like my card.

I’ll be back tomorrow with part 2.