Introducing Love Potion

Good morning, Blogland! Welcome to the first day of Papertrey Ink's December countdown. The new products that I'm sharing over the next several days will be available at 10pm on December 15th in the Papertrey Ink store. I hope you're all in the mood to get a little nerdy with me because, well, it's going to happen. Might as well jump in with both feet.

This card pretty much says it all. I'm a bit of a dork. And by that I mean on a clear winter night I can pick out the Pleiades in under 15 seconds and I totally snort when I laugh. If any of you had any misconceived notions that I might be "cool" you can go ahead and leave that nonsense at the door. Big ol' dork up in here, y'all. I thought it would be fun to kick this countdown off with a card for my fellow nerdy types.

I started by stamping the chemical bond image with watermark ink onto Aqua Mist cardstock and tied an embroidery floss bow around my base. Then I stamped my beakers and their coordinating fillers onto a white layer. I added die cut letters and a heart with foam tape and mounted the whole white panel to my Aqua Mist layer. Yay nerds!

My second card today is a smaller-than-standard model (it measures 3 1/2" x 4 7/8") that uses the Love Potion Die Collection to cut a negative from the card base and top layer. I set out to make a Valentine or simple love note that would be nice and gender neutral.

I started by stamping my sentiment and grounding shadow onto white cardstock and die cutting my beaker from the front and base layers. Then I used the Happy Hexagons cover plate with the impression plate sandwich to give the top layer a texture that's reminiscent of a chemical bond structure. Next I sandwiched a piece of stamped Clearly Creative Cardstock in between the top and base layers to make the beaker look like glass. Just a helpful tip: make sure to do all of your stamping before using your impression/cover plate. If you impress first you may have trouble getting consistent stamping over the texture.

I wasn't having much luck getting my beaker filler to stamp consistently on the clear stock, so instead I stamped onto vellum and embossed with clear powder. Then I ran the piece of embossed vellum through my Xyron and trimmed out the image. The embossing helps the filler detail (bubble heart, in this case) stand out a little better and it gives a nice edge to follow when you're doing your trimming. I simply stuck my beaker filler into place as my last step of assembly.

Thank you for joining me on this fine Monday morning! Make sure to check in with Nichole, Betsy, Heather, Maile, and Lexi for even more countdown projects. I hope to see you back here again tomorrow as we continue with the December countdown. Have a great day!

Recipes:

Nerd Love Card

Stamps: Love Potion (available December 15th), Heart-2-Heart #3 - Papertrey Ink

Cardstock: Aqua Mist, Smoky Shadow - Papertrey Ink; white

Ink: Aqua Mist, Simply Chartreuse, Limeade Ice, Berry Sorbet, Soft Stone - Papertrey Ink; VersaMark - Tsukineko

Other: Modern Alphabet Die, Heart-2-Heart #11 Die - Papertrey Ink; Embroidery Floss - DMC; Foam Tape - Scotch

Great Chemistry Card

Stamps: Love Potion (available December 15th), Sunflower Bouquet - Papertrey Ink

Cardstock: Clearly Creative Cardstock, Stamper's Select Vellum - Papertrey Ink; white

Ink: Royal Velvet, Aqua Mist - Papertrey Ink; Noir - Palette

Other: Love Potion Dies (available December 15th), Hexagon Cover Plate - Papertrey Ink; Clear Detail Embossing Powder - Filigree; ScorTape; Xyron