Laurel Bee - 02/01/2023

Place the Honey Bee stencil over an A6 panel of white cardstock.  I have added some masking tape across the bottom to create a 'hinge'.

Use a blending brush to blend the 3 shades of distress oxide over the stencil (Rustic Wilderness, Crushed Olive and Speckled Egg).  

Start with the darkest colour at the bottom of the card panel and finish with the lightest to create an ombre effect.

You can use the masking tape hinge to pull the stencil back without moving the paper to see if you are happy with the blend and add more ink as desired.

Once you have achieved a blend that you like, you can remove the stencil and the masking tape.

There will be a lot of ink left on the surface of your stencil.  A good way to clean it is to spritz the stencil with water and press a clean piece of cardstock over the top.  This gives a reverse impression of the stencil and can make soft, watercolour effect backgrounds for other projects.

Take the laurel wreath embellishment from the Bee Sweet embellishments pack and colour it with the same distress oxide inks.

You can swipe over the embellishment directly with the ink pad and use a blending brush to spread the ink and soften the colour.

Try to be gentle while doing this as the embellishment is delicate!

Alternatively you could use sprays to colour the embellishment.

I added the inks to the laurel wreath in the same order as the background so that it has an ombre look.

Take some of the smaller elements from the embellishments pack.  I used the smaller leaves and two of the mini bees.

Press the embellishments face down in to the sticky ink pad.

Place them on a piece of scrap paper and cover them with gold embossing powder.

Melt the powder with a heat tool.  Either hold the embellishments with tweezers while doing this or hold them steady on your glass mat with a pokey tool.

Once the embossing powder has melted, the embellishments will have a gilded look.

Place the stencilled card front in the Eureka and place the laurel wreath embellishment where you plan to position it on the final card.  This will help you position the small bee from the A5 Queen Bee stamp set in the right place on your card front.  Remove the laurel embellishment before closing the Eureka and picking up the bee stamp on the lid.

Ink the stamp with the Midnight Hybrid ink and place it down on the card.

Stamp the bee a second time on a separate piece of white cardstock in the Midnight ink.  Cover the stamped image with Super Fine Clear Embossing powder and pour the excess back in to the pot.  Melt the powder with your heat tool.

This second bee image is going to be layered on top of the original bee on the card front.  

Spritz the confetti inks liberally with water in their pots.  I have used Oyster and Lagoon.  

Pick up the colour with a fine brush and watercolour your image.  The embossed artwork will resist the paint so the black lines will not be covered.

I used the oyster on the body of the bee and the lagoon on the wings.

Once dry, cut the bee image out.  Do not worry about cutting out the legs and antennae - simply cut the wings and main body out.  When you layer this over the original stamped image the legs and antennae will appear from the layer below.

Adhere the coloured bee over the original stamped outline. 

Before assembling the final card, I trimmed approx 1cm off the stencilled card panel.  I used my blending brush to blend the Rustic Wilderness distress oxide ink to the bottom of an A6 card blank and adhered a thin strip of gold card to the bottom of the trimmed card panel before adhering it to the card front.

Simply assemble the card - adhere the laurel wreath and stick the gold leaves on top of that.  Adhere the gold mini bees as further embellishments if desired.

Stamp the sentiment in clear sticky embossing ink on to a strip of black cardstock and cover with white embossing powder.  Melt with a heat tool and trim out the sentiment.  Adhere that below the main focal point on your card front.

This should give you a dimensional (but very light) finished card!