How To: Keeping the focus on your hand made background

Have you ever spent a long time on making your own patterned paper, hand stamped background, or just purchase some speciality card stock you’re keen to show case? I’m sharing my tips and tricks below, using some of my favourite Hero Arts products.

Simple Stacked Sentiment

My first idea for keeping the focus on your background is simply to add a stacked sentiment to the background.

For my card below I created a gel press background that I wanted to keep the focus on, so I added a black card stock mat and cut the Thinking of You die from Hero Arts three times from white card stock and once from black glitter cardstock and adhered to the centre of my panel. I finished with some iridescent jewels from Lucy’s Cards.

Small sentiment on vellum

My second idea for show casing a background is to add a small vellum shape and sentiment to the vellum panel. For the example below I spent a while colouring the Hero Arts peek a boo Bookcase stamp, so I die cut a vellum circle, heat embossed a sentiment directly on to the vellum and added a stacked black Hello die cut to the vellum circle. I adhered the whole panel to a black card stock base and added Bubbles from Lucy’s Cards.

Window Die

This is one of my all time favourite techniques for show casing a beautiful hand made background!

I had a load scraps left over from some recent cards, all in the same colour family that I wanted to use up. I die cut the World fancy window die from Hero Arts and stamped a sentiment from the Beautiful World stamp set in black Versafine and heat embossed with clear embossing powder. I cut a piece of printer paper a little smaller than my panel, and then adhered my scraps horizontally until it covered the printer paper. I tried to vary the width, colour and texture of scraps for interest.

Simple focal die cut

On the example below I’ve created a fairly busy, textured background. I wanted to keep the rest of the card fairly clean and simple, so I die cut the paper layering feather die from white card stock four times, and adhered to the centre of my panel. I finished with a sentiment strip in matching colour card stock to the background, and white heat embossed the sentiment.

I hope you’ve been inspired, and I appreciate your time in reading my post.

Beth x

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Supplies

Hero Arts peel a boo Bookcase

Hero Arts World window fancy die

Hero Arts Beautiful world stamp

Hero Arts starry night stamp

Hero Arts paper layering feather die

Hero Arts house stamp and cut

Hero Arts Thinking of you stamp and cut

Hero Arts Hello stamp and Cut

Hero Arts Unicorn pigment ink

Hero Arts stacking circle dies

Raindrops, Bubbles and Jewels from Lucy’s Cards

Gel Press

Distress Oxides

White and coloured cardstock

Embossing Powder, white, black and clear

Versafine

Adhesive

Sizzix Big Shot

Tim Holtz trimmer

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