Metallic Sheets: CAS-ual Fridays and Add a Little Dazzle Hop

Hi Folks! I've been blessed with some good, quality time in my craft room recently. There are lots of posts coming in the next week or so, starting with this collaborative blog hop between the CAS-ual Fridays design team and the Add a Little Dazzle design team. So much fun!

We received a generous package of metal sheets (thanks Add a Little Dazzle!) and have had fun seeing what they can do. I've got two projects to share. First up is a little "scrunch and go" number that could easily be for a man, woman or child ...

   

Sounds easy, and it is! For the most part. For the background I just cut three strips of the metal from different colors, scrunched them with my hands, loosely flattened them back out and mounted them on chipboard. What an effect! I wish you could see how it sparkles and shines with the slightest movement of the card (makes sense with all those different angles achieved in the highly technical scrunching process).

 The tricky part comes with the sentiment. I wanted something to sit on top of the scrunched metal, and be clear enough to show off all the sparkle. Cardstock and vellum were out, leaving acetate. Stamping on acetate would have resulted in a hard-to-read sentiment, so I turned to heat embossing. Anyone tried heat embossing acetate before?! If so, let me know your secret! Keeping the acetate from curling into a little ball is difficult! I had good luck with the process for the following three reasons:

1) I used a thick acetate (from a plastic silverware package I saved);

2) the section of packaging I used had a seam along the top edge (which I later cut off), keeping the material more stable while embossing; and

3) I moved the heat embosser VERY QUICKLY across the acetate before any serious curling occurred. 

 

Quite honestly I was amazed it worked. Any scratches that were on the packaging originally, or any stray embossing powders are more difficult to see since the background is so busy and shiny. The sentiment is stamped from the Shenanigans set.

The next project uses a die cut with the metal sheets.

This card uses the Sleigh Bells set for the bell (stamp and die), and the Snowflake Splendor set for the sentiment. The tinsel is from Paper Source (half off after Christmas last year!) and is wrapped behind the chipboard I used to pop the panel up. Since the tinsel is somewhat bulky in the middle, I cut a channel in the chipboard so that the whole thing lies flat on the card, no gaps.

Did you know that you can heat emboss on these metal sheets? They hold their shape amazingly well! Also, one trick I learned to keep the die cut metal smooth is to put a piece of chipboard underneath before sending it through the die cutting machine. This prevents the metal sheet from looking like the bottom of your cutting plate (don't know about yours, but mine is totally trashed!)

Now, let's talk prizes! You must leave a comment on all blogs (including company blogs) for a chance to win 1 of 2 prize packs!   You have until Sunday, October 26th midnight (MDT) to enter. The winners will be announced on both company blogs. 

Here's a list of all the places on the hop today (also see Day 1 and Day 2 if you're interested)!

CAS-ual Fridays Stamps

Add A Little Dazzle

Kelly Griglione <--You are here

Deepti Malik

Martha Lucia Gomez

Vicki Dutcher

Keren Baker

Cathy Parlitsis

Kate Capper

Lee-Anne Crosse 

Lee Ann Barrett

Lydia Evans

Thanks so much for looking!

-Kelly