Heat and stick with gilding sheets.

Last week was a bit of a downer for us to put it mildly. 
Not only was my dad was in hospital having two operations.

We travelled the 200 miles to visit him and get his  little bungalow adapted and cleaned ready for his arrival home.

Not long before we left home Hubby received news that the mother of one of his close friends had died.

 I also received news that one of our friends/neighbours had also died that day.

Which left me wondering and worrying as to who the third would be as these thing tend to come in three's  I didn't have to wait long  to find out .   Just a day or two  after arriving home from dad's,  I received a telephone call  from my foster mother to tell me,  my foster brother Tony had died the same day as our neighbour.

So my next cards are sympathy cards, This is the first one. 
Tony was not a religious man and he doesn't want a religious funeral, So it doesn't seem right to send a religious card.

So I thought I'd try something different.


Here I used the Hello doily background stamp from Stampin' up.
I inked it up with versamark ink and stamped it onto black card. Instead of using  embossing powder,  I  chose to use Heat and stick powder.
You use it the same way as embossing powder ( but don't heat it for as long )

Once the  heat and stick powder had melted I covered it with an Abalone gilding sheet and pressed it down and rubbed  it into the  heat and stick. 
With a fairly stiff paint brush,  I brushed away the excess gilding sheet paying particular attention to the lacey areas  until the stamped image was  revealed .

 Warning,....I did find, if I brushed or rubbed a little too hard I wiped off the gilding,  so in some areas I had to apply more gilding flakes, which was fine as I had some flakes left to patch up the areas, I just kept on applying the flakes to the areas  that felt sticky until they no longer felt sticky.
The centre sentiment  comes from the Stampin' up set Hopeful thoughts and I  stamped the words  on to brushed gold foiled card,  using  Black Stazon Ink and then die cut the circles. 
I picked the green and the gold colours from the gilding sheets as the colours for my mounts.