I had recently taken a card class at my local shop featuring these beautiful Opal glimmer polish from Comic Shimmer, in the class, we also used the Polaroid frame die and I knew I wanted to try and put my own spin on what we had learned and of course, use these fantastic products. 

If you are not familiar with these polishes I highly recommend checking them out. They go on different depending on the color of cardstock you use as you can see from below.  

To be honest, these were not the cards I had initially planned on, I was going to do a cute unicorn card but the universe had other plans because I botched up the coloring trying to stamp over the image to make the black lines crisp after coloring with pencils.  So I had to improve and change course last minute. Has this happened to any of you, where you start with one project and you finish with a totally different one? I would love to know. lol

So here I am figuring out what I was going to do, rummaging through my stash of amazing Paper Rose products, I land on this Balloon die and then think back to the class I had recently taken and had an AH HUH moment. So I  pulled out a few more products from Paper Rose Studio, along with some embossing folders and card stock and started to play

I started out but cutting down some heavyweight cardstock both in white and black to 5½ x 4¼ I later go in and trim it down for the cards. I ran the cardstock through my die cutting machine several times using both a happy birthday embossing folder and rose embossing folder.  From there it was time to play and figure out what I was actually going to do, lol

 I tried a few ways of applying the polish on to the embossed card stock.  Tips and techniques I learned from the class. For the white panel, I applied the polish in sections, going straight back and forth, I kind of wanted to make a rainbow. ( My daughter who will be four at the end of the month is obsessed with rainbows)   For the black panel, I was more random about it just adding different colors in different sections.  

Once I had finished my backgrounds it was time to figure out the rest of the card. I went back to my die cutting machine and cut out a whole bunch of balloons in both black and white, as I really loved how you got two different looks with the same polishing and wanted to incorporate that more. While  I was at it I die cut several of the polaroid frames from both black and silver cardstock, as well as the happy birthday die. Before I die cut the sentiments I did end up adding some stick it adhesive sheet to the back side of metallic cardstock and white, this made adhering down these beautifully intricate sentiments much easier to do. 

Now that I had all my elements die cut It was time to go back in with the opal polishes,  the colors I used were Pink Thistle, Blue Parakeet, Lavender blue, Blushed Peach and Golden glow. 

Once I was happy with the coverage on the balloons, it was time to put it all together.

I created my card bases which were standard A2-5½ out of black and white 110lb cardstock. I decided I would layer each of the embossed panels on the opposite color just for little extras interest and to help the color pop. I cut down the layering panels to 41/8 x 53/8 and trimmed down the embossed backgrounds to 5x 5¼. I glued down the layering panels to the card bases, the black on the white and the white on the black. I then added fun foam to the embossed panels and glued to each of the bases.   

From there I took each of the frame dies and arranged the balloons the way I liked. To make it easier on myself and keep things from shifting and trying to remember how I had it, I pulled out my press and seal from Glade, ripped off a piece and pressed it down to the frames and balloons. This really helped me glue things in place and add to the panel. Before I added it on to the card I did layer some vellum underneath behind the balloons to give it that picture feel and mute out a little bit of the embossed background.

Finally, I added it to the panel, adding some foam tape for both the Polaroid and the sentiments. For not having much of a plane when I started, I really like how these turned out. 

I do apologize for the photos, it's really hard to get clean crisp shots with all this shimmer going on. I hope you found some inspiration, please do leave me a comment I would love to hear from you. 

Don't forget to share your creation using Paper Rose products over on our community Facebook page, 

Have a wonderful week ahead. 

~Nancy