POTW Floating Frame

 Today is my turn to do Pick of the Week over at The House that Stamps Built. I do a lot of surfing on Pinterest when I can't sleep at night and I have been seeing cards and directions for Floating Frames so thought I would try my hand at making not only one but bonus - you get two cards.  

Lets gather some stamps and inks - the "secret" material will be in the next couple of pictures.  

Lets get started:  I used a variety of flower stamps from sheet 10300 Flower Power Separate Series which has so many floral options to go with for this card.  I stamped the solid image flowers in various ink colors and then used the solid leaf in green to fill in some empty spots.  I had a couple more  empty places I needed to fill so I used 5123-C  Butterfly Sil. small to made this work out the way I envisioned it.  So now that I have my stamps picked out I stamped and fussy cut each image out (I like to fussy cut so find it relaxing).  

I see you saw my Press and Seal in the photo which you also need for this project.  I always have a roll in my kitchen drawer as it truly does what it says presses and seals.  

On a piece of 4 x 5 1/4 inch piece of white cardstock I laid out my cut images in what I thought looked eye appealing.  Yes you are supposed to have some pieces off the edges as we are going to trim it up in a couple of steps.  As you can see I used my floral, leaf, and butterfly images.  

"Carefully" lay the press and seal over your layout - (there is one side of the press and seal that has a sticky feel to it, that is the side that goes face down on the images.  smooth it out again carefully.  Yes there is going to be left over press and seal on the edges.  

Here is where you turn it over and trim your your edges to the cardstock.  

At this point gently remove the white cardstock from the back - just leaving your press and seal and images. This is really optional but I had a problem cutting the rectangle out with the white cardstock still on the back.  But if you do remove, the images will stay in place.  Choose a die cut for the center of your card - can be just about any shape from rectangle to circle, I choose rectangle.   

In this picture you can see focal images for two cards - I then die cut the bigger frame out again with a rectangle die just leaving a nice frame.  

Here is where the "floating" part comes in, apply pop dots or foam tape to the back making sure you have pop dots on most of the images.  Get creative and cut your pop dots in half  to use in the corners.  Remove the pop dot seal on each of the pop dots and then bring your white base cardstock to your prepared image.  

Using a sentiment of your choice ( I used 6113-K Life is not) stamping with versafine ink as I wanted  nice crisp image.  I added some bling just because...

Now what to do with the center you cut out, well we stampers waste not so we use it for the focal image of another card.  

Again using pop dots on the back apply the pop dots and remove the backing of the dots and apply to another card base.  For this one I choose a yellow dotted note card - thought it was bright and cheery.   For the sentiment I used 1807-F I'm so glad.  I used a pretty little die cut for the sentiment and layered with with black.  Add some bling if you wish (I did). 

Try your hand at this technique - here are a couple of hints.  Solid images really do work best.  Make sure your press'n Seal does not have any wrinkles - so smooth it out as you are working with it.  Make sure you use plenty and I do mean plenty of of pop dots on the back as that is what gives the illusion of "floating frame".