Essentials by Ellen December 2017 Release Blog Hop

Good morning!  Today I’m excited to be hopping along to celebrate the release of the new Essentials by Ellen December 2017 Release!  I’m the last stop on the hop today but if you’re just getting started head to the CLASSroom blog to find the whole hop!  I’m focusing on the Confetti Flinger and Yay dies!

I was inspired by a card that Julie Ebersole created a few weeks ago where she showed how you could get an interesting drip effect by spritzing A LOT of water over distress oxides.  So I started by blending Salty Ocean, Peacock Feathers, and Wilted Violet distress oxides onto a piece of bristol smooth cardstock.  Then I tilted the cardstock up and spritzed it heavily with water until the ink began to run down the page.  I set that aside to dry and blended the same colors onto another scrap piece of cardstock.  In hindsight I would have done things a little differently here…I blended the oxides onto cardstock and then die-cut the confetti from the Yay set.  I should have spritzed that panel with water as well so that the resulting confetti wouldn’t have been quite as jewel-tone bright in comparison to the pastel card.  Oh well, you learn something new everyday! 😉

Once the panel was dry I cut it down to an A2 panel and swiped a versamark pad from the top of the panel down about a third and then I heat-embossed it with gold tinsel embossing powder.  Then I die-cut the Yay word die and reserved all the pieces.  I fit them into the negative space of the die and adhered them to the inside of the card panel so they’ve be visible when you opened the card.  Next I stamped the rest of the sentiment from Celebration Lady onto black cardstock and heat-embossed it with the same gold tinsel embossing powder.  I trimmed that down and adhered it to the front of the card with foam mounting tape.

Finally on the inside of the card panel I assembled my flinger!  I made sure to configure it so it wouldn’t be visible through the cut-outs on the front of the card.  Here’s where you can really see what I meant about the color of the confetti…it would have been a little more cohesive with the card design if it wasn’t quite so bright.  On the other hand, it’s bright enough that when you open the card and something pops out at you, you know it’s not a bug! 😉 I created a slow-mo video to give you an idea of what the confetti looks like when it pops up!  It’s so much fun!!  You can watch it below or at my YouTube channel!