I went to a class at Jen My Upline’s house recently; it was one in her series of blendability classes – one colour each time. This was daffodil delight but the thing that I really loved was learning a new technique. You start by running your cardstock through the big shot in an embossing folder; I used the Stampin’ Up! beautifully baroque one. I love the texture but have previously struggled to incorporate it into a card because it’s quite loud. I think that this technique softens it although I know it’s not to everyone’s taste.

You start off by scribbling on some plastic (a cello bag is perfect) in your blendability markers. Interestingly I used the cherry cobbler ones here. Yes, really. And no, the photography isn’t way off! After you’ve scribbled in the three different tones of the markers, you spray the plastic with surgical spirit (aka rubbing alcohol) and then press the embossed piece of card onto the plastic. If you don’t get enough colour you can respray or even re-scribble and respray. You have to move quite quickly since the alcohol obviously evaporates. You can get different looks by spraying from high or close to or by smearing the bag on itself. Basically the colour gets onto the raised portions (unless you’ve been over generous with the surgical spirit) and you get a marvellous gradation of your colour.

I had my cherry cobbler base ready for this card but it didn’t work. It really needed the rose red instead. I have no idea how the reds morphed into pinks of such different tones from the reds. I stamped the sentiment in rose red on very vanilla – it comes from a set that my sister brought over which is now, sadly, retired. Then I cut it out using the smallest deco labels framelit (again borrowed from Caro – she had a whole carry on suitcase full of Stampin’ Up! supplies!) and cut out another in rose red. I cut if in half and trimmed it a little so that I could just pull it out and show the edges for a border. Finally I glued this to a rose red base. The envelope flap was embossed using the beautifully baroque folder to match.