May Cards are hugs from a distance.

It’s May 2020 and we are still Sheltering in Place or SIP as we have now even abbreviated it. It started out as almost a dream- a month or so staying home and reading and crafting, crocheting, and cooking, just hanging out. Well, now we are almost three months in and we all miss our friends, and going out and about. Doing fun things together and a change of scene. and definitely missing a big squeeze from a friend or relative. I do believe that we are all doing the right thing though and we have to do this or a lot of people could die from this virus so onward we go. In keeping with the current situation this month’s theme is “Hugs from Afar” and so for the challenge group post I chose the sweet little mouse and in this post an old favorite paired with a fun technique. 

Orchid Overstamping

I started with a piece of Hero Sand Cardstock and arranged the Orchid flowers first in my Misti and stamped them with Hero Arts Unicorn White pigment ink I then stamped the branch and the leaves. This is a very important note…. Make sure you give your pigment ink some time to dry or the colored ink that you are going to stamp over it will not pop off the white.

Now line up your layering stamp with the white but before you stamp shift your card front over slightly in one direction so that the colored ink does not line up perfectly, it stamps one color over craft colored cardstock but also created a neat shadow effect where it is stamped, not over the white ink. You can do this a little bit more or less, and play around with adjusting your layers as well for different effects. You can see that the flowers have a more minimal shadow around the light edge, while the leaves at the bottom are shifted a bit further so it almost looks like a highlight on the leaves on one side and a shadow on the other.

I added all of the other layers for this set and then trimmed and mounted the panel on a cream card base and ran a very slim piece of gold thread along the side, I added a few enamel dots and Voila, a Hello and a hug in a single layer card that will travel well in the mail. 

You can try this with many stamps in your stash as long as the first layers are solid, it also works great on colored cardstock!  Enjoy and make sure to show us your Hugs from Afar cards in the Link up below for the chance to win a $50 Hero Arts gift card.  Hugs, Lee Ann