Friday, April 4, 2014

Yes! You Can Emboss Chipboard!

Hi Everyone! Jana Eubank here. Today I have a new page to share with you created with the April 2014 kit, Social Butterfly kit.

I happened to have these photos sitting on my desk and loved that I was able to pull the softer yellow and aqua tones out from the kit and create this girly page.

Ever since I heard the following story about butterflies, I have loved what they represent. Because of this, I was drawn to the large chipboard butterfly included in the kit and thought it was the perfect symbol to accompany these photos of my daughter receiving a department award from her school ... because this occasion represents a part of the path my daughter is on in becoming who she is meant to be.

The Lesson of the Butterfly
A man spent hours watching a butterfly struggling to emerge from its cocoon. It managed to make a small hole, but its body was too large to get through it. After a long struggle, it appeared to be exhausted and remained absolutely still.

The man decided to help the butterfly and, with a pair of scissors, he cut open the cocoon, thus releasing the butterfly. However, the butterfly’s body was very small and wrinkled and its wings were all crumpled.

The man continued to watch, hoping that, at any moment, the butterfly would open its wings and fly away. Nothing happened; in fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its brief life dragging around its shrunken body and shrivelled wings, incapable of flight.

What the man – out of kindness and his eagerness to help – had failed to understand was that the tight cocoon and the efforts that the butterfly had to make in order to squeeze out of that tiny hole were Nature’s way of training the butterfly and of strengthening its wings.

Sometimes, a little extra effort is precisely what prepares us for the next obstacle to be faced. Anyone who refuses to make that effort, or gets the wrong sort of help, is left unprepared to fight the next battle and never manages to fly off to their destiny.
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Here is a look at my page.


I loved how the felt flower looked layered on top of the white chipboard butterfly, but I wanted the butterfly to have a bit more texture and pattern to it, so I decided to run it through my embossing machine using a polka dot embossing folder. You would probably think that chipboard is too thick of a material to emboss, but it's not. Look how beautiful it turned out! It can be a little tricky to crank through an embossing machine with a hand-crank, but it is possible. In this case, I used my eBosser machine so that I didn't have to flex my muscles too much. Hehe!


I also really love the other textures included with this kit. I used one of the BasicGrey metal pieces in between the words of my title and added a wood framed gem (by Jillibean Soup) to the center. 

Thanks for taking a look at my page today. I hope you feel inspired to create!

See you next time!



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