Make It Monday - Debossing Stamped Images

I'm grateful that a few of these PTI challenges have inspired me to get back into cardmaking.  It's fun to see a technique and get ideas about how to apply it, and the chance to win some supplies from Papertrey Ink is an added incentive.

Last week I stayed up really late to finish my card and was glad to get it posted on my blog (which has been severely neglected).  When I woke on Monday morning, I realized I hadn't added it to PTI's blog... oh well.

Here I am again late Sunday night trying to get my piece posted...

I don't have many stamps with matching dies.  While driving to work, I thought about what image I could use.  It seems that my go-to image for many challenges has been Up, Up and Away.  I do have dies for this set.  However, I forgot that the die is connected, with all three images in one piece.  So I cut four of each of the balloons from thin chipboard and glued them together.  Then I used the thick diecuts to deboss the stamped images.  It was a little tricky to line them up just right over the images...  I found that the results were better from embossing rather than debossing; can't say why.

The good news is that now I have a few graduation cards, a very timely addition to my stash!