Hello crafty friends! Today I’m sharing a card that I made after participating in Altenew Academy’s Easy Die Cutting Techniques class.

I was inspired by the technique of inlaying a die cut into another piece of paper. This course also taught the technique of using a die cut for dry embossing. I didn’t have an embossing pad to do that technique, but I was inspired to use the inlay technique, and then emboss with an embossing folder. It’s a pretty simple technique, and definitely gives a unique look to a background. I think I’ll definitely be using this again in the near future.

I used the Craft-A-Flower Sulfur Cosmos Layering Dies as my focal point. Since I wanted to inlay the leaves into the background, I needed to figure out the placement of the leaves before I cut them into the background. First, I diecut the bottom layers of the flower so I could figure out the placement of them, then tuckes the leaf dies into place. When I was happy with the layout, I taped down the leaf dies onto my blue background, and then ran it through my diecutting machine. I then used the same dies to cut the leaves out of green cardstock. I adhered the blue cardstock to a piece of white cardstock, and then glued the green leaves into the corresponding spaces. After the glue was dry, I ran the panel through an embossing folder that had a nice leaf pattern, to give the whole background some leafy texture.

I decided the pink cardstock I had selected for the flowers at first was a little too dark, so I picked a lighter one and cut out the flowers a second time. I randomly darkened parts of the petals with a blending brush and some dye ink. I guess I could have done a better job at shading where they should be shaded… maybe there’s a class I can take on that! After assembling the flowers, I curled up the petals a little to give them a little more dimension. I used Versatile Greetings for the “thanks” sentiment.

Thanks for stopping by my blog, I hope you try this fun inlay-then-emboss technique! I appreciate you!

Altenew products used:
Craft-A-Flower: Sulfur Cosmos Layering Die Set
Versatile Greetings Die Set