Marion breaks down the reasons why these letters appear, what each of them means and is sharing some fabulous tips on how to use your favourite translucent powders on dark cardstock without losing their gorgeous colours.

To my fabulous friend and Happy Birthday
Materials

WOW! products used

WOW! Embossing Powders Happy Birthday & A6 Hexagon stamp sets
Luscious Lime, Blue Tang & Oasis WOW! embossing powder
white WOW! Superior Smooth cardstock
clear WOW! Ultra Slow Drying Embossing Pad
WOW! dual-speed heat tool

**Other products used **

Unicorn Hero Arts Pigment Ink
Onyx Black VersaFine inkpad
3D foam pads
Brutus Monroe Stick n Stamp mat
acrylic block
stamping platform
manual die-cutting machine
circle nesting dies

How to create
1 Cut an A4 sheet of WOW Superior Smooth cardstock down the centre, lengthways and score in the middle to create anA6 tent-fold card blank.
2 Trim a panel of black cardstock to be slightly smaller than the front of your card and place this panel in a stamping platform. We will be stamping the same image multiple times and need to be sure that the stamp will be in the exact same position every time, so a stamping platform is needed to get the best results.
TOP TIP! Using a sticky mat inside your stamping platform will help hold that cardstock in place whilst allowing you to stamp across the entire panel as no magnet or tape is needed.
3 Prep your cardstock using an anti-static tool.

(At WOW Embossing Powder, we work hard to ensure that our powders and jars are free from static so we would not normally need to use any form of anti-static treatment to the cardstock however, this doesn't prevent our powders from sticking to any moisture that may be present. Black cardstock in particular is very porous, and will be prone to picking up any natural oils present in your skin when it is handled, so the powder in the anti-static tool will prevent the embossing powder from sticking onto any of these areas.)

4 Place the hexagon background stamp on your panel and pick it up with the lid of the stamping tool.
5 Ink up the stamp with Unicorn White pigment ink and stamp this onto your black panel. Repeat this again, before using Setting 1 on your Dual Speed Heat Tool to dry the ink slightly. Now stamp one final time in this White Pigment ink to ensure you have a really good white base image, before drying again using setting 1.
6 Now ink up with WOW Ultra Slow Drying Embossing Ink and stamp, repeat this twice to get a really good impression. (If your panel has shifted slightly, like mine did, then you're going to get a really interesting drop shadow effect with the white showing. This wasn't intentional but it can create a really fun & unique effect! If you don't want this to happen, definitely clean your sticky mat before using to be sure that it is up to its full stick capabilities or place your cardstock down into the corner of your stamping tool.)
7 Select three of your favourite translucent powders, I used Luscious Lime, Oasis and Blue Tang.
Place a sheet of scrap paper underneath your panel and drop Blue Tang onto several areas of your stamped image. To remove the excess, flip your panel over quickly to avoid the powder sliding down and sticking to other areas of your stamped image. Give the back of your panel a gentle tap and then funnel the excess powder that landed on your scrap paper back into the jar.
8 Repeat these same steps with Luscious Lime.
9 Now pour Oasis all over your panel to be sure that the entire image is now covered. This third colour will likely cover the largest amount, so I like to save my favourite colour until the last!
10 Hold your panel with some reverse tweezers, or even just a wooden clothes peg, to keep your hands out of the heat, then thoroughly heat your entire panel from below. You'll see that the white ink created an opaque base that allows those colours to show up, even though they are on black cardstock.

Now we can turn this one beautifully embossed panel into two cards
Cut a circle from the upper centre, the leftover piece can be used to create another card.

1 Stamp a sentiment onto a strip of cardstock using Onyx Black ink. Trim the end to create an angled detail and then trim another piece of cardstock which is just slightly larger than your sentiment strip.
2 Press this larger piece onto your WOW Ultra Slow Drying Embossing Ink and pour Oasis embossing powder over.
The centre of this will be covered, so use your tweezers to hold it down in the centre, onto your work surface whilst you heat from above with the heat tool.
3 Adhere your sentiment strip onto this embossed piece with foam adhesive.
4 Using liquid glue, adhere your embossed circle onto the upper centre of a white card base, and then offset your sentiment strip on top of it.

For the second card:
1 Adhere your leftover piece directly onto a white card base with liquid glue.
2 Stamp the scripty 'Happy Birthday' sentiment directly into the centre using Onyx Black ink, then add a small sub sentiment underneath. I chose 'eat cake and be happy' because I think that is such a fabulous little sentiment!

So there you go, that is how you can emboss translucent powders onto dark cardstock; the trick is WHITE!

Thank you so much for spending this time with me, I hope you enjoyed it and don't forget to share your own creations with us!

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