I am absolutely in love with Neenah Premium Extra-Heavy Black Cardstock! It’s 100 lb (that’s the weight of 500 sheets of this paper) weight and rich black color make anything created with it feel so luxe!

These 3 techniques: heat embossing, brushing on Perfect Pearls, and heat embossing with shimmery watercoloring seemed to really take advantage of the cardstock by contrasting the fantastic shine from these mediums beautifully against the deep black paper. The weight of the paper also held up nicely to extreme heating as well as super wet watercoloring.

The first card I made using a Venetian Mask from So Suzy Stamp. I stamped it out with VersaMark Ink and used Ranger Queen’s Gold Royal Satin Embossing Powder. I also prepped the card base with the EK Success Powder Tool and masked off the edges of the card and inked on a thin 1/8″ border that was heat embossed to frame but not distract from the bold yet intricate mask image. This was super fast and easy but has such great impact.

The second card was made using an old Inkadinkado Patterned Poodles stamp set. I chose this stamp set because each image had fun, full patterns that I thought would pick up a lot of the Ranger Perfect Pearls powder colors well. I again prepped the card front with the EK Success Powder Tool and used the MISTI Tool to make sure that I could re-stamp the images if the patterns were not crisp with a first stamping of VersaMark Ink. I then took my time brushing on the following Ranger Perfect Pearl colors with a thin dry paint brush: Blue Smoke, Kiwi, Perfect Gold, Perfect Bronze, Perfect Copper, and Rust. I wanted each poodle image to have multiple shimmery colors blended together for a fun look. To add a little more sparkle, I used a Sakura Gelly Roll Pen in Stardust (this is slightly more opaque than a Clear Wink of Stella Pen) to doodle on faux stitching around the edge of the card and varying sized dots in the open background spaces.

For the third card, I heat embossed the gorgeous Penny Black April in Paris stamp using more Ranger Queen’s Gold Royal Satin Embossing Powder. Again I prepped the card front with the EK Success Powder Tool and used the MISTI Tool to ensure clean crisp stamping without too much stray powder adhering. Then I put the heavy weight Neenah cardstock to the wetness test. I used lots of water to paint on and water down shimmery Gansai Tambi Starry Colors watercolors in Red Gold, Light Gold and White Gold to color in the roses and leaves of the image. It performed beautifully! It dried so fast and absorbed so much pigment that I was even able to immediately doodle on more details on the leaves and rose petals with Sakura Gelly Roll Pens in White and Metallic Gold. For a final little detail, I added some dots and dashes around the edge of the card front with more of the Sakura Gelly Roll Pen in White before popping it onto a white card base.  BTW, I have found that the Mono Sand Eraser is an awesome tool to fix slight stamping smears and even light embossing errors! It hides a multitude of sins!

The following is a process video of all three techniques:

These cards are being entered into the following challenges:
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Stamptember Stamp It Challenge
Simon Says Stamp Monday Stamptember Stamp It Challenge
Simon Says Stamp Work It Wednesday Stamp It Challenge
Creatalicious Anything Goes with Optional Mythical Creatures Challenge
Crafty Gals Corner Use Your Favorite Color(s) – Gold
Word Art Wednesday Anything Goes Challenge
Not Just Cards Anything Goes Challenge
613 Avenue Create Anything Goes with Optional Distress It Challenge
Crafts Galore Encore Anything Goes Challenge
Through the Craft Room Door Anything Goes Challenge