Remember these alcohol ink backgrounds?

Last week I posted about some sparkly alcohol ink background pieces I'd made (this is the post HERE) and promised to come back and show what I did with them. These were the pieces, just to remind you:

At the time I didn't have the die I was really craving from Simon Says Stamp, one of those used by Jennifer Mcguire. After asking your opinions (huge thanks for all your lovely comments and emails!) I bit the bullet and ordered just the one die that was my favourite - then waited to see what would happen with the likes of our UK Customs and the possibility of being charged VAT - plus a fee of £8 for Royal Mail to collect the VAT if that was the case. This is the die in question, which works well either in portrait or landscape:

Well, it arrived here yesterday (Thursday) in super-fast time with nothing further to pay. But it was pretty well under the £15 UK VAT limit. Was it worth it? I think probably yes, if you really, really want something  - so long as you watch the prices - and of course the postage was astronomical. Interestingly, the dies are designed in conjunction with Memory Box - just wait, they'll perhaps pop up with similar dies before too long.

However, I was too impatient to wait for the package to arrive (I expected it to take much longer to be honest) so I'd already set to and made a set of four cards over the weekend. All fairly similar, yet different, if that makes sense:

For each one I used:

- white card blanks, cut to sizes which suited the 'frames' I was using

- frames all from one die cut using the Impression Obsession 'Rectangle 6 in 1 frames' and one piece of Stick It backed white card

- various pretty die cuts, again cut from Stick It backed white card

- pieces of the sparkly alcohol ink pieces, trimmed to suit whichever frame I wanted to use and then the white frame added without pressing it down too firmly at first if I wanted to tuck a stem underneath

- then I added the white die cuts and where the frame covered a stem I carefully snipped the stem to size before firmly pressing the frame back down on top of it

- backed each framed image with a smaller panel of white fun foam to add dimension

- stamped the sentiments using the Misti and Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink

- and finally glued the framed panels onto each card

Underneath each of the cards I've added a little bit to say what size the card is, which dies I used and also which sentiment sets (again, mostly for my own future reference). Other than that, the process was the same for each card:

6" x 4" card blank, Memory Box 'Dragonfly Stems - Left Corner' die and a sentiment stamp from the Paper Smooches 'Sentiment Sampler' set

5.5" x 4" card blank, Memory Box 'Prim Poppy' die and a sentiment stamp from the Paper Smooches 'Sentiment Sampler' set

5.5" x 4.25" card blank, Memory Box 'Geneva Vine' die, Memory Box 'Mini Butterflies' die and a sentiment stamp from Uniko's 'Simply Said' set, hand snipped and stuck onto the image using red line tape (and many thanks to Sue M who sent me this lovely sentiment set some while ago)

4" x 4" card blank, MFT's 'Hello There' set of dies, Memory Box 'Mini Butterflies' die and a sentiment stamp from the Paper Smooches 'Sentiment Sampler' set

I thoroughly enjoyed making these cards, even though it was almost impossible to pick up the sparkle when the time came to photograph them. And there was very little wastage of the backgrounds as well, which made me happy.

It's a total joy to see a background suddenly take on a whole new life with the addition of some white contrast. Thanks to Jennifer McGuire this is my new favourite style of card :)

Going back to my new Simon Says Stamp 'Dahlia Corner Frame' die - that's waiting here to be used when I make a new batch of sparkly alcohol ink cards. It will mean less fiddling about when you can just add one single die cut - but in truth you can easily look through your own dies and come up with very similar results without having to go for the 'all in one' frame and flower dies.