This Card is AMAZING!!

Viki B sent this card to me. I have never seen a card like this and I asked her the process. The card looks like it must have taken hours to make and I am so thrilled to have received it. This was her reply:

It is called parchment work and the brand name of the most common supplies and patterns is "Pergamano".
This particular type of work originated in the 1800's by monks in South America.
They used the dried skin of sheep stomachs to emboss on. Now of course, it is done on special heavy weight vellum called parchment paper that Pergamano dealers sell.
You trace the design onto the heavy vellum with a nib pen and white ink and then you emboss the areas that you want to be white with different embossing tools. Then you cut the x's with a special tool. Once that is done, you pick out the paper you want to go behind it (ie, the stardream that I used) and then use another special tool and go around the three outside edges to separate it from the single sheet of paper you worked on. It is very time consuming, but I love doing it! It is how I got into stamping. Now there are easier ways to trace (ie, white pens and there are stamps you can use with Brilliance "Moonlight white". Takes much less time than the nib pen.

My tools came from Australia (Parchcraft) and are made of metal. Pergamano sells the same type tools, but the handles are plastic and tend to break, but they are much less expensive. I haven't been able to add to my collection of Parchcraft tools as the only distributor here in the US shut down her online website 3 or 4 years ago. Since this is a tedious type of work, and not too well known, there wasn't enough demand to keep her in business. There are still internet sites out there that sell the Pergamano supplies here in the US, but this type of card can take up to a couple of days to do and most folks don't want to put that much time into a card. Me, I don't care. I love doing it.
The card that I sent you is actually two different patterns that I combined and were designed by Janet Wilson. Since these patterns are copyrighted, it is important to give her credit for the actual designs.
If you to go to Amazon.com and type in the search field by author, it would bring up her books. You can also do a search by "Pergamano" and see other books by many great designers. I have a lot of their patterns and love to collect them. I never know when I will get in the mood to do one, but when I do, I put on some good music and go off into a world of my own. I may spend 2 or 3 hours a day until I finish, but the good thing about it, is you can start and stop at your own pace. It's just not a "make and take" type of card. I have also made frames which I designed for photos and they are really neat and actually don't take as much time.