Hello crafty friends. I’m still playing with my Joy of Dance stamps today, but went for something of a contrast to yesterday’s card with one of the dancing girls and a little silhouette butterfly in some lovely pastel colours.

I took one of the Elements – Skies tags for my topper, then stamped the girl and a Bijou Statement Sentiment in black Archival ink.

I used an ink eraser pencil to lift the background colour from my little dancer, then shaded her in with blue Polychromo pencils. I managed to drop one of the pencils on the background and it left a mark, which I tried to rub out with the eraser pencil, only to lift some of the background colour out (you can see a lighter stripe to the left of her skirt) Grrrr! Thinking cap on, I managed to disguise most of it with one of the leafy sprays from the Summer Build a Wreath stamp set, running low tack tape along the bottom white frame so I still had a straight edge. I then added the little butterfly from the set – she looks like she’s trying to catch it.

I wanted to add an embossed frame on the front of my 5×5 card blank, but none of my embedders were the right size for the topper. Undaunted, I found a rectangle that was the right width and line it up on the card front (using the topper as a guide), then held it down with low tack tape. Flipping to the inside of the card, I first ran a bone folder, then a small ball tool around the top edge and partly down each side, to start my frame.

Having partially embossed it, I could then line up the embedder within the embossed sides and getting the lower edge into the right place (again using my topper as a guide). Turning back to the inside of the card front, I repeated the process with the bone folder and small ball tool around the bottom and down both sides to complete the frame.

Having edged the topper with a black Sharpie, it was then easy to sit it within the embossed frame which was now the perfect size!

Honestly, these stamps are just so much more versatile than they look at first glance – I’m really enJOYing playing with them!

This little miss is off to share the joy with a couple of blog challenges. Her butterfly friend fits the bill at Triple B and my sentiment works for the ‘happy’ theme at Addicted to CAS.