Good morning, crafters!  Today, as I struggle with a nasty cold and cough, I really felt like some bright and happy colors would cheer me up.  Luckily, I have enough patterned paper on hand to last two lifetimes, so it was easy to find this cute teal colored plaid paper from Doodlebug.  I knew I wanted to use that wonderful heart stamp from the Kat Scrappiness Swatches stamp set, and I decided to make the image pop by using some turquoise embossing powder.

After cutting my paper to 4×5.25 inches, I used a pencil and ruler to find the center of the piece and add faint lines for a guide.  I knew I wanted to create a “burst” pattern of hearts and wanted to keep things well-spaced.  I then dusted over the paper with my anti-static tool and reached for my favorite sticky embossing ink, VersaMark.

The stamping might look complicated, but it’s really quite easy!  I just stamped 4 hearts in the center, keeping the bottom points and top dimples on those pencil lines.  I also left a little space around each heart so they wouldn’t look crowded.  I added my first round of turquoise embossing powder and melted it in, heating the paper from behind to smooth the powder out nicely.  The second round of hearts was first done by adding another 4 hearts right in line with the first 4, then adding angled ones between.  Don’t forget to gently erase all traces of the pencil lines when you’re all done heating!

For my sentiment I am using Kat’s awesome new scripty word die Hello My Crafty Friend.  I love that the words are already arranged for you.  To take advantage of that, I cut the die out of black card stock cut to the same size as my patterned paper.  Now I was able to use that as a template for my words.

To make sure nothing shifted, I lightly taped the template in place with some low-tack tape.  I cut the words from a piece of 100-lb white card stock and added small dabs of glue to the back with my glue pen.  It was very easy to just snuggle the words right into the template, and I then waited about ten minutes for the glue to set before gently lifting away the template.  Perfect!

And that’s my project for this week.  I hope that you enjoyed this card, and that it inspires you to start using word dies in your own creations.  Stay tuned for more beautiful projects from our Design Team using all the new items for the April release.  Happy crafting!