I’ve finally made peace with the fact that I like to cut things out. For a long time now almost everything I’ve made has involved using images that I’ve cut out of paper and I kept saying things like, “I must be crazy for cutting out all these pieces.” When I use to make 20 cards at a time it was a lot of cutting. But for all my complaining and making excuses I kept returning to my scissors. (By the way, my favorite detail scissors are the Cutter Bee Scissors by EK Success)

Today I was doing another chapter in  Artist Trading Card Workshop by Bernie Berlin. It called for painting a background and then covering it with a glass like surface using thick embossing powder. The only problem was that I didn’t feel like painting, I felt like cutting.

And so, I cut.

I cut pieces of printed scrapbook paper and glued them onto the card blanks. Then I cut out images that I had re-sized and printed with my computer. Then I got to do my second favorite thing, playing around with the placement of the images before I glued them in place.

When everything was just the way I liked it I covered the surface of the card with Versamark ink from a pad. Next, I sprinkled on and melted two layers of thick clear embossing powder. On a few of the cards I pressed a stamp into the warm embossing powder. (Be sure to coat the stamp with the Versamark or a pigment ink first)I added a bit of paint or Perfect Pearls over the stamped designs.

There was really only one drawback to coating my cards with the embossing powder. As it melted it made some of my printed images a bit translucent. The girl with the fish looked better without the embossing. On most of the cards that wasn’t a big issue and the hard, clear finish really jazzed them up.