I received The Newborn King stamp set in my Big Order last week – so heavy that I actually strained my wrist! I’d stocked up on paper when it was on sale and that’s heavy. At least that’s my excuse. I really like this stamp; my brother thinks it looks a bit “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”-esque, I think it’s more like the inside of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. For my first card using this stamp, I decided to just go straight down the middle. The photo is a little dark, but it shows off the silver embossing better than photos with more light.

Details:

Base: 8.5″ by 5.5″ Night of Navy

Mat: 4 5/8″ by 3 1/8″ brushed silver

Top layer: 4 3/8″ by 2 7/8″ Night of Navy – the odd measurements due to cutting the top layer until it looked “right”.

Stamp set: Stampin’ Up! The Newborn King

Other: Versamark, silver embossing powder, embossing buddy

This is my favourite kind of card – clean and simple. I think that the brushed silver mat saves it from being too simple. I used the embossing buddy on a decent sized scrap of Night of Navy (you DO keep your embossing buddy on top of your versamark ink pad, don’t you?) and then inked up the stamp with Versamark. I sprinkled on the silver embossing powder and used the heat tool to give this fabulous image. This was the first time that I’d stamped the image so I hadn’t grabbed a full sized piece of card – I was just testing it out, but it came out so nicely that I wanted to make a card out of it. This meant that I’d either have to have a large mat or a lot of the base card showing. I tried both and chose to make the silver mat a quarter of an inch bigger than the top layer. I think it sets off the image really well.

I remember seeing a video on Brian King’s site showing the effects of different sized mats; I think I need to play with mats some more.