Heat embossed dragon card

I have just got a heat gun and embossing powders.
What blissful Shiny shiny!
I had thought previously that I couldn't see what the fuss was all about with heat embossing as I had only seen it in photos which so does not do it justice, and had no idea how good it was until I saw it demonstrated.
It's just magic how the dull powder turns liquid and sort of boils into gorgeous shinyness right in front of your very own eyes.
~Lovely shiny magic~
This is a card for a man, which I'm really pleased with because I've no interest in making men cards (where's the bling going to go?) but this one well meets my quota of shiny content.

I used a set of Dovecraft stamps called "Fantasy Emblems" (Not to be confused with Fantasy Embolisms which I don't think would sell very well). I embossed with sparkly black and copper "Heat it up" powders. I painted the dragon with Cosmic shimmer watercolour paints in Lava Red, Purple Violet, Emerald Gold and Olympic Gold. If I do it again I'm going to heat emboss Happy Birthday in black as well. The background paper is one from Papermania Inspirations Colossal paper pack. I used a Pritt glue stick for all the glueing.

If you are even newer to all this than I am, save yourself some crafting sadness with this tip about how to prevent card or paper from warping and wrinkling after glueing.
I do this if I glue any large area with a wet glue or even with a glue stick if the paper or card is thin. I compress the glued pieces on a hard flat surface with 3 sheets of plain white paper above and below it and put a real heavy weight book or two on top and leave it to dry 1/2 hour or so (longer with a wet glue). Use plain paper as anything with print on it may transfer onto the art piece because these pieces of paper absorb the moisture. I have also finally found, after twenty years or so of gathering dust, a use for that ginormous illustrated Oxford Dictionary that needs a small crane to lift it and that seemed like a good idea at the time.
It's the lure of a book with pictures that gets me every time.

Spanky does The Mona Lisa

What if the Mona Lisa had woken on the day of her portrait sitting and thought
"I need a stylist to make me look beautiful and mysterious."
What if she'd made an appointment with Spanky?

ABAA photo challenge, Great Aunt Rosina, May 2009

Jaqi kindly sent in this photo of her great Aunt Rosina, and after reading the challenge post I promptly forgot the lady had a name and that she owned her own bakery so she became Evangeline. Sorry Jaqi!
(On reflection it's obvious that she's an Elizabeth Bennett, what with owning her own bakery and her intelligent, beautiful and sassy face, I'm guessing that the Victorian love of symbolism has been used in the empty birdcage to portray her escape from the constraints of being a man's chattel, living in a man's world and the straightjacket of Victorian values to be a woman of substance!
However I got completely carried away with the idea of Spanky, Ferdinand, Evangeline and her fairygodmother.)
The more I looked the more I loved this picture.
I still couldn't see the bird until someone said it's on her shoulder.


Anyway, back to Evangeline. I love to see a story in every picture, so I thought I would try a picture book for this challenge, as I've never done one before.
It turned out to be a five page 6"x 6" book.
I tried "really" hard to remain authentic to the 1880's hence the handwriting; circa 1970's public school.

Evangeline is a young, exuberant and innocent Lydia Bennett type character who has recently left home and is feeling decidedly out of sorts.



Have you seen Ferdinand?