I fell down the rabbit hole

Hi everyone, after a year of procrastinating I finally did it and bought myself a Glimmer Hot Foiling system by Spellbinders. At the moment I only own one hot foil plate (apart from the freebies that came with the machine, which were a lovely surprise).

Unbelievably after I finally said I am going to buy it, it then took 3 weeks to arrive and we were on a wee break as a family but my lovely neighbour minded my parcel for me whilst I was away and as soon as I was unpacked when I got home, I had a go. The box also had some free foil in it too which was also a nice surprise and so I thought I would use what I foiled for this week's challenges that I am entering.

Below is my first ever hot foiled image; no extra shim between the 2 plates using my old black SU! Big Shot machine with the hot foil platform. I tried again with a layer of card stock between the 2 plates and got a bit of over-foiling at the edge which is kind of  irrelevant as I am going to die cut out the image once I have coloured it up.

I have used the Glimmer Specialty paper which is very smooth but I haven't tried hot foiling on any other normal card stocks that I normally use. I tried gold embossing my sentiment from the stamp set on the excess Glimmer paper but the paper shriveled up with heat from my heat gun. I also feel the final colour ink blended through the stencil were more muted on this paper than when I ink blended onto whisper white (and yes I still have WW in my stash). 

I then tried some Copic markers on the Glimmer cardstock and it was weird. I guess it would be like using them on Yupo, a bit of a wet messy blend on top of the paper rather than the colours blending in the card stock. So for me I can see that this paper is great for hot foiled sentiments and the blending worked but in a muted way.

Just Add Ink kindly provided a sketch to follow and Less is More asked for embossing so I just had to colour up my images and work out which ones I wanted to use. Carissa Wiley did a really dreamy card using the same set the other day in really soft colours so she was my inspiration for colouring . My card looks nothing like hers but it also made it really easy to decide what colours I chose (some of them were also all I had available in soft tones too). If you want to check out Carissa's card click HERE.  

I've just realised Carissa was inspiration for the monthly challenge over at Pinkfresh Studio and my card has gimmer, the "right colour palette" and as my wish list at Pinkfresh is gi-normous I definitely need to enter and cross my fingers and my toes.

Supply List:
Stamps, Stencil, Hot Foil Plate, Dies: Brighter Days (Pinkfresh Studios)
Ink: Peach Fuzz (PF), Ballet Slipper (PF), Mint (PF), Sahara Sand (SU!) and Versamark

Paper: Whisper White (SU!), Glimmer Specialty (Spellbinders), Caramel glitter (American Crafts)

Dies: Sentiment strips (MFT), Stitched Nested Labels (SU!)
Other: Glimmer Hot foil machine, Rose Gold embossing powder (ALT) and foil (SP), Layered Leaves dynamic textured impressions EF (SU!), Sizzix Big Shot, Peach Fuzz rhinestones (PF), blending brushes (TE)

Challenges: Just Add Ink #611, Less is More #468, Pinkfresh July Challenge

Well I do feel like a very excited Alice and I and not sure why it took me so long to "fall down the rabbit hole" but I am looking forward to having some more glimmer on my cards (roll on Christmas cards).

✿ Karen ✿