Red Hot Teddies with Gold Leaf

Ah, Valentines - the day we celebrate love. And who could me more in love than these two cuties? This is the QKR Stampede image Bear Hugs and the Sentiment is from the Best Wishes Werdz Set. What really sets this particular card apart is the Gold Foil detail, and you can order Gold Leaf in several colors.

It's Technique and Tutorial Day for QKR and Eureka. Deb here to tell you about my experiment with Gold Leaf  for this post. I've never bought Gold Leaf before because I've always heard it was really fussy and hard to work with. The truth is that crafters won't have any problem handling this beautiful product. If you already work with glitter or embossing powder, this will be a piece of cake for you.

I used Cricut's Plantin cartridge to cut a heart from the backing of a pad of paper since I didn't have a chipboard heart in my stash. Then I placed the heart on a piece of Scor-Tape and trimmed around the edges with non-stick scissors, keeping a small border of tape (just enough to cover the cut edge of my heart). When that was done, I flipped the heart over onto a scrap sheet of paper and peeled off the backing.

I opened the bag of gold leaf, and that's when the fun began! Beautiful pieces of varigated colored red and pink gold leaf just waited to be taken out of the bag. I carefully lifted out a small piece, carefully applied it to the sticky heart and just as carefully smoothed it out as best as I could. So far, so good, and so very pretty! In no time I relaxed and picked up the pace. I found I didn't have to be too fussy about covering the entire area because, when I picked up my brush and started removing any excess pieces of foil, they naturally stuck to any areas that weren't already foiled. There was very little waste, but you could return any crumbs to the bag. I was surprised at the very generous amount of gold leaf you receive in the bag.

Well, covering the heart was so much fun, I decided to run a strip of 1/2 inch Scor-Tape across my 5 1/2 inch designer paper and foil that, too.

At this point I cut a label with a Spellbinder, stamped and heat embossed my sentiment, and adhered that to the upper corner. I cut a piece of red cardstock at 5 3/8 inches, and a base card at 5 3/4 inches from white Stardream Metallic cardstock. All the layers were then adhered.

I colored the fur of my bear couple with Copics. After allowing them to dry, I moistened a scrap of old washcloth with Blender Solution and dabbed the bear bodies to create the look of fur. When that dried, I colored their clothes and patches, and adhered the bears to the font of the card with pop dots. Adhering the foiled the heart was all that was left to complete the project.

Unfortunately, as you can see below, The Boss was not impressed with how much time I spent creating this card. She placed her body strategically between me and my supplies - a strong signal that NOW would be good time to pay attention to the cat.

Check out this blog for all our great previous posts, see what my Technique and Tutorial team mates are cooking up on the Eureka Stamps Blog and visit me anytime on my blog I Love It!. Thanks for visiting today, and hope to see you next Wednesday for a new Technique and Tutorial. Deb