Gently does it...

“Remember to be gentle with yourself and others. We are all children of chance and none can say why some fields will blossom while others lay brown beneath the August sun. Care for those around you. Look past your differences. Their dreams are no less than yours, their choices no more easily made. And give, give in any way you can, of whatever you posses. To give is to love. To withhold is to wither. Care less for your harvest than for how it is shared and your life will have meaning and your heart will have peace.” ~Kent Nerburn

The spotlight over at Crafty Cardmakers this week is silhouettes and our sponsor is Stitchy Stamps.  I adored this digi stamp from the moment I saw it and I had all sorts of ideas bouncing around my head about what I was going to do with it, but I wasn't sure whether any of them would work! lol

I decided to be a little adventurous and see if one of my ideas would work.  I had been wondering for a while if Cosmic Shimmer Mists would work on a glossy photo paper so I set about with a few sprays, got my hands into their usual inky mess and crossed my fingers that it would work.  With the careful application of a piece of cling film to spread the ink around a little, and then an even more gentle removal of said cling film, I was then scared to touch the paper incase I smeared it, but I was brave and gently carried it to my workstation using the sheet of baking parchment I used to spray on and set about it with my heatgun on a low setting and very gentle strokes across it to stop it from warping.  I have used gentle a lot there, but I found that being gentle was the key to doing this successfully!  I was worried I was going to end up with a slidey messy piece of paper to add to my messy hands, but it worked.

My printer decided it was in a good mood as well and when I set it to 5x7 glossy, it printed it perfectly!  I was in shock!  Random ideas I have rarely come off well for me especially where my finickety printer is concerned lol  You should see some of the disasters I have had in the past with it, especially when I have been trying to get it to print on vellum - you would think I had asked it to print on toilet paper the amount of times it has refused to feed the paper through properly!

I trimmed the image to a square then backed it onto a slightly larger square of black paper and added some matching diecut corners.  I would swear that die hates me as sometimes it cuts perfectly and other times it half cuts the pieces and I have to finish it off carefully with my craft knife.  This was one of those times grrrrr.  But still, the effort was worth the end result!  The diecuts frame off the image nicely.  I decided to leave the card as it was as I didn't want to detract from the main image.