Papertrey Ink Make It Monday #131

Good morning fellow crafters! Are you glad it is the weekend? I sure am! It has been forever and a day since I was last able to post on my blog, in fact, I haven't been able to spend any time crafting at all in the last couple of months to be honest. We took our family vacation to California at the end of July, then came home and jumped right back into another school year. I am amazed that we are already 2 weeks into September. I feel as though there isn't any time anymore to just sit back and relax, enjoy time with the family you know? So far our days are filled with crazy mornings, then we're all off to work and school. After that we spend a couple of hours doing homework, then it's showers, cleaning, and dinner. Dinner usually is the only time we have to really catch up with what's going on with everyone, and I am sad to say that this is how it has been every day since school started. I feel like the kids don't have any time to themselves any more to just relax either.

So here we are on a Saturday and for the first time in a few months I do not have to work and it feels great! Had a simple breakfast with my oldest daughter and now she is watching some Saturday morning cartoons. My DH is out at school this morning for a Saturday class and my youngest is still actually asleep. She knows not to wake up early on the weekend. The last few days have been cloudy and rainy. I had the day off on Thursday and despite the fact that it was pouring rain, decided to make the trip across town to Michaels because to be honest, I haven't stepped foot inside a Michaels store in over 5 months. Making this trip finally got me feeling creative again and I decided to attempt making a card for this weeks Make it Monday Challenge over on Nichole Heady's blog.

The challenge this week is Striped embossing. I was amazed at how easy Betsy made the technique seem when I was watching the video, and I just loved how bright her colors looked against the Kraft cardstock. My only problem is that my Embossing Powder collection is actually very small. I have a range of about 12 colors, and nothing bright. Aside from neutrals, I've got baby blue, hot pink, red, and green, and I just had no idea how to do striped embossing with these colors without making an ugly mess. So I finally settled on Glam Gold, Copper, and Black, and used Papertrey Ink's Nuts for You Stamp set and the Wonderful Words: Hello stamp set to make my card. I embossed the nuts in the gold and copper embossing powder as well. I colored in my cute little squirrel with Prismacolor Markers in Cocoa Bean, Walnut, and Light Umber.

I have to admit I tried this technique over and over and over. I wasted many Kraft cardstock bases trying to get this just right. My embossing powders were just not sticking! I finally realized I needed to use a different embossing pad. I was trying to use a Stampabilities Embossing ink Pad, but I realized that the ink seeped into the cardstock way too fast before I could get the embossing powders to stick. So I finally decided to switch my embossing pad and used Ranger's Perfect Medium Stamp pad instead, and this worked perfectly. I was able to line up my post-it's without worrying if the embossing ink would dry too quickly. I like the overall look and the colors of the card. I think I will make a couple more cards to make a set, this would be a cute Fall card set!

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and enjoy the upcoming week. I hope to spend a little bit more time here in my craft room in the next few days, I am way behind on Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas crafting!