A New Year, a new start

Hello everyone, 

My name is Alison & I live in beautiful Melbourne, Australia. I have been blogging since 2020 but last year was a really tough year for our family. Sadly we lost both my Mum & sister within a month of each other. On top of other illnesses & a car accident involving my daughter plus the duties of being executor of my sister's estate I decided that I needed a break in late August. It was intended as a break of a few weeks but I found that I needed more time. With the new year here & a reduction in my work hours I can now comfortably reboot my crafting addiction & continue on with my blog posts. 😁 

For those of you who have previously visited my blog & are now returning, thank you. For those of you who are here for the first time, welcome! Here's a little bit about me. I love creating cards & gifts for my loved ones & this blog will show you how to create something special for those you love. I blog twice a week, once on a Sunday where I mainly showcase a stamp set or dies, embossing folders, projects & sometimes special DSP and Wednesday evenings when I highlight a technique, fun folds or tools & tips. I would love to hear from you if you have any questions or suggestions & my email address for that is crafedbyalison@gmail.com.

This mid week post is a quick post about blending. I love using my inks for more than just stamping & blending allows me to get a lot more use out of my pads & some unique results as every one is different. I intend to make a few posts about blending so this one will focus on blending & heat embossing.

First of all I gathered together my supplies - cardstock, stamps, embossing powder, Versamark ink, ink pads, blending brushes, embossing buddy & tray.

After wiping the surface of the cardstock with the embossing buddy to get rid of any static, I stamped the lavender images from Painted Lavender in Versamark. I then applied clear embossing powder to the image & heated the powder with my heat tool. 

Using the blending brushes I applied Lost Lagoon & Highland Heather over the stems & blooms. The coloured background highlights the areas that are embossed & retains the white colour of the cardstock. In the picture above I have shown how the image would look if the image was stamped after the blending was done. It doesn't give as bold an image so if you want to blend first then emboss with white for a different finish.

To create a card with the image I cut it down using a die from the Perennial Postage dies, mounted it on a Shaded Spruce matte, added it to a Shaded Spruce card base with a Perennial Lavender matte & finished them off with a Braided Linen trim bow & hanging sentiment.

Here are the finished cards I made with the embossed image which I am sending out to my customers with a complimentary copy of the Mini catalogue. As you can see I added a stamped Basic White matte to the inside of the card 

So that's it for this week. My next blog is on Sunday where I will show you cards I created using a brand new stamp & die set called Bee My Valentine from the new mini catalogue. In next week's Mid Week blog I will be casing the catalogue using the same stamp set that I used this week. There are some gorgeous creations featured in the catalogue & I'm looking forward to playing around a little more with this suite. I hope you can join me for both of them.

Til next time, take care & keep creating! XX Alison