Head Pain!

Today is a muffled day! I have a terrible head cold, and have no energy. I have so many things to do today, but can't seem to get motivated. Guess I'll go up and craft something...yeah, that's it! That's the ticket!

In the meantime, I have been spending alot of time over at Splitcoast participating in all of the weekly challenges. Here is a card I made last Sunday for the Featured Stamper Challenge



This was such a fun card to make! I started by stamping my image (which I love by the way) onto white cardstock, and then embossing it with clear embossing powder. I then used and Inkssential blender tool, and blended in Distress Ink Fired Brick. It just makes the image POP and I love that color! After I cut it to the size I needed, I took the leftover scrap that had no color applied, and used that as part of the background. I used Tim Holtz's technique to dab distress inks on my stamp, misted it, and then stamped. I love that you can get a watercolor look with just a spritz of water. The colors just blended so nicely. I then used an aquapainter dabbed in some Distress Ink, and then just kept pulling the brush apart to make it spatter. Subtle, but so fun. Crazy Card was the inspiration, and I just essentially used her layout to create this card.

Now I am off to play!

PS.. Most of the supplies I am referring to, I have recently purchased at Rubbernecker Stamps. They have alot of the Ranger products, and the Inkssentials all in one place, and if you look closely at their website, they have some fantastic sales going on right now... Nestabilities etc. On Tuesday's they have a treasure hunt, and usually have a stamp for free if you make a purchase....How Cool is That!

Distress Inks!

Did I mention how much I enjoy working with Tim Holtz Distress Inks? They can do so many cool things, and the last two cards I have just really played with the stuff to get an idea of how they react. Since they are water based, they will react every time you spritz, stamp, splop water on them. Splop...nice word! ha!

So I am going to show you how I got my chicken wire background image for my Old Strawberrian card. Here are the supplies I used:

Tim Holtz Distress Ink Re-Inkers Peeled Paint
Perfect Pearls
Mini Misters
Rubbernecker chicken wire stamp
Paper

To mix the Distress Ink with the Perfect Pearls, I use 1 full dropper of ink, and then 1/3 tsp of perfect pearls. Add water to the E on the side where it spells Ranger.

Then mist the paper with this combo:

I blot off some of the color, but you can also use a heat gun to dry it. Once it's dry, mist up your rubber stamp with water

And then stamp image onto paper. You will see the color lift right back off the paper, it's like bleaching the image without having to use bleach! HOW COOL IS THAT?

Then heat set it and the image becomes even more apparent:



While the image is still wet you can emboss it. That's another great thing about these inks. You don't necessarily need to use a seperate embossing pad to emboss with. These inks stay wet for several minutes, so it would allow you to stamp several images, and then go back and sprinkle them with embossing powder.

More on the techniques later. I need to actually make a card! haha!