Wintery Days!

Don't you just love the paper, the swirls the trees?? I just finished working last weekend for Rubbernecker Stamps, and this tree set was one they sell. I love it, and we did the coolest demo with it which I will have to post later. I got to play around with the Distress Inks from Tim Holtz (ranger industries), and just love that they react to water. Sadly I forgot that when I when to soften my tree by spritzing it... ha ha! Those were not Distress Inks. Anyway, the blender tool that I used is also from Ranger, and it comes with two pads. They absorb the color, and then you lift up the inside edge as you scuff the edge of your paper. I just love the look and how soft and wonderful it is. I may have to demo that tool here as well....awesome, and for $5 it's worth it!

I stamped the large tree in kiwi, then wento over it in old olive. After I cut it out, I used the liquid applique to soften the branches with "snow" which by my looking at needs a little help...oops!

I used several dimensionals to pop it up. I also stamped the smallest tree in the package, and stamped again for a softer image behind the darkest one. I lightly tapped again on my color, and then stamped again, and then the lightest image. I cut a piece of acetate, and mounted it over the top. Once I had my card figured out, I cut a circle on my Belle Rose paper by laying the large tree on it to determine where to cut the circle, and I used my nestabilities and cuttlebug to cut that out. I attached the trees, and then mounted it on the white cardstock. I should have edged the white cardstock before I mounted the images, but oh well, that's the way it goes! Anyhoo, I used Fired Brick to get the red color, and it matches the Belle rose paper so well. I just think it made the whole thing look like the Belle Rose paper and images were laying on a bed of snow. I used Papertrey ink Blush to use as the card. I went back over it and stamped the white swirl with white craft, then I just embossed it with white embossing powder, and mine had silver speckles in it too. I think it just looks so wintery.

Hope you like it.... stay tuned for a tutorial on some of those Distress Inks. If you have never seen them or understood what makes them so cool, I will show you.

Inky Hands

Hey people! I spent the last two days working for Rubbernecker Stamps at a Loveland scrapbook show! What fun! Of course I am fried today, but it really was an experience that I will soon repeat. In fact, I'll be traveling to the Springs this weekend to be a demo again. Perhaps you have a need to get dirrrty with me.

I gotta say, I was not super pumped for the demo I ended up having to do. In fact, to me it was a real dog, but people seemed to think it was the best thing since sliced cheese. I sold alot of product, and I was using the crackled paints from Distress Inks, and the Tim Holtz products from Ranger. Never ever used them before, but they are fun!

So by Sunday, the first demo we were highlighting, sold out of product, so we had to come up with a new one. Cindy.... aka Mothermark... Yeah I know, I was working with a Splitcoast Celebrity! So exciting, and she is extremely funny! I think at one point we went to hold our hands up, and hers were black and mine were dark red...uck!

Back to the story, I decided I really needed to dress up my "dog", or should I say... "put some lipstick on my pig". I just couldn't make it another day making those ugly cards. So I went back to some of Tim Holtz's techniques, found at timholtz.com, and found a layering technique that would highlight several products that don't move all that well. Honestly, we did such a good job the day before, we really needed to focus on some other things. Dave from Rubbernecker Stamps is such a wonderful and encouraging person, you just want to help him sell stuff.

Now many of us tend to layer layer layer with cardstock, so imagine coming up with a design with no layers but stamping, embossing, inking, misting, painting, daubing, blending etc. Nothing else. NO Paper layers. It's hard! But the products were fun to work with, and I think by the end of the day we all had some success selling our products.

I know that MotherMark, as I will refer to her, didn't really dig her demo either, she thought it was a little ugly, but it was Halloween, and I thought it looked great. Maybe we are all a little too critical of our work? Ya think? It sure was fun, lots of laughs, and sore aching feet by the end of the weekend. So now I am off to play with some of the goodies I received! Post a card later. Big Ups to my chica's Madeline, and Cindy/MotherMark! It was fun!