Queen Bee - 01/24/2023

Arrange the large laurel leaves and smaller of the two bees in your Eureka on a square panel of black cardstock measuring 13cm.  You can work bigger and trim down after you have done the stamping if preferred.

Pick the stamps up with the Eureka lid and ink them with the White Cotton ink pad.

Press them down on to the black cardstock and lift.  If you want to add more ink, you can do so.

Leave your stamped image in the Eureka and while the ink is still wet, gently go in with a cosmetic sponge, blending brush or your finger to smudge the image.  

Pull the white ink out around the leaves and the bee to get an effect as show in the picture.

As pigment ink stays wet for longer than dye inks, you will have plenty of time to smudge the image.

Once satisfied, use a heat tool to dry off the image.

Ink the stamps up again with a clear sticky embossing ink and stamp back over the top of your smudged first impression.  Cover the stamped image with opaque white embossing powder and use your heat gun to melt it.

Use your Eureka to stamp the crown image at the top of the black card panel in clear sticky embossing powder.

This time use gold embossing powder to give the crown a gold finish as seen in the picture.  Remember to wipe over the cardstock with an anti-static bag before stamping to stop the embossing powder from sticking where you don't want it to!

You should now have a crisp white image and gold crown layered over a smudgy 'chalky' background.  You can go back in with the white ink to add further smudging as required.  As the ink pad is very juicy I would recommend picking up the ink (with your sponge, brush, finger etc) and dabbing off on your glass mat or a spare piece of black card to avoid applying too much ink to your main image.

If desired, you can add white ink splatters to the stamped panel too.  Set aside to dry.

Take a larger square of white cardstock (14.5cm) and ink around the edge with the Midnight Hybrid ink pad to create a random effect.

Rotate the stamps and make sure to stamp off the edge of the panel too.  I have used the crown and small bee from the stamp set.

Only a small amount of this stamped panel is going to be visible so don't worry about getting a perfect stamped impression every time.

All that is left to do is to layer the black focal panel on to some gold card (13.5cm square) and later the stamped border on some black card (15cm square).  I have attached the focal panel to the background with foam tape for extra height but this is optional.

As a final embellishment, add some gold enamel dots around the central bee.