Beautiful

Let's begin at the bottom layer.
A 4.25 x 5.5 inch piece of cream colored
card stock was stamped with a Tim Holtz image.
I used several shades of brown and one green ink
from Ranger's Distressed Ink. After stamping
it was misted heavily with water to cause
the inks to run and fade. This is why I did
not do my background on the card base.
When the background paper was attached to
the card base with Crafter's Pick Ultimate glue
it spent a few hours under my huge college dictionary
to flatten it nicely.

After the card base had become flat by the pressure
of the dictionary the next step was to
dust the front of the card with talc.
Now the Stampscapes pine tree image was
inked up with black pigment ink and
heat embossed with fine line black embossing powder.

The deer image is unknown. There was no maker
ID on the wood of the mount.
It was stamped with black pigment ink
on cream card stock and heat embossed
with Rust embossing powder.
After the deer image
was cut out the edges were distressed with a
Tim Holtz thread cutter. Dark brown ink
was sponged around all four edges of the
deer image and the card base.
This was followed by a narrower sponging
of black ink to give a burned look.

The scripture is one of my own creations.
It was cut out with a Spellbinders die.
The edges were sponged with dark brown ink
followed by a burning of black ink.

Birthday Cards

The rust and cream color scheme is stunning.
Note the differences in the cards and decide which
you like.
The top card has a metallic Cheery Lynn Designs
butterfly cut from highlighting foil from the beauty supply.
The bottom butterfly is cut from rust card stock.
Both have a peach "lining" second layer underneath.
The peach has been sponged with Ranger
Rusty Hinge Distressed Ink.
This color of ink was also used to
sponge the edges, inside and outside, of
the Spellbinders Label and Oval frames.

The happy birthday is computer generated
in Paint Shop Pro X. It was cut out with
a Spellbinders Label and the edges also
sponged with Rangers Distressed Ink Rusty Hinge.

The frame and the phrase are made 3-d with layers
of cut up paper egg carton. Two layers under the frame
and one layer under the phrase.
Note that there is rust under one phrase and
peach under the other.

The rust flowers are the same, but the leaves
are different. One is silk leaves
and the other is punched card stock leaves
with the flowers and butterfly.

Sponging on Steroids

This background has been done entirely by
sponging with Rangers Distressed Inks.
The PSX tree is stamped in medium brown and
the Inkadinkado rearing horse in black.
The edges have been sponged deeply with
dark brown ink and then black.
Since the Distressed Inks remain moist
for a short period of time, holographic sparkle
embossing powder was spread over
the entire card and where it stuck, it stuck.

I really do like the randomness of the embossing powder.
It was a little surprising where is adhered and where it didn't.

Tiger In The Jungle

I was showing my husband all the cards that I had made using the Safari papers from DCWV. He said I needed a more jungley look. Since his comments are usually pretty accurate I started playing with my fern and jungle foliage stamps on cream paper. Each type of leaf is done in a different color. I did a random stamping to cover the entire 4.25 x 5.5 inch paper. I then heavily sponged into the rectangle with Coffee Archival ink from Ranger. There is a narrow band of Ranger's Jet Black Archival ink sponged around the outer edge.

After all of the ink was applied and dried, the entire surface was heavily talced. I almost always do this before using embossing powder. Especially with a paper that has been handled as much as this one was.

The tiger image was stamped with VersaMark and embossed with fine line black embossing powder. I then carefully sponged Ranger's Marigold Distressed in over just the tiger image.

I have no idea who designed the tiger image. It was a sheet of various tiger images that I received from master stamper Eva Hays as a gift. I think the fern and leaf images are from Rubber Stamp Avenue.

When I am going to be doing a lot of inking and manipulation on a card, I don't work directly on the card front because this ink and handling tends or warp the paper. I have a stack of white and cream paper cut to card front size. When I am all done I use my Crafters Pick Ultimate glue to attach the design to the card front. It is immediately placed under the trusty college dictionary to become a very crisp smooth perfectly flat card after several hours. (also known as "booking it")

II Timothy 1:7

I have been gone for a while. I spent last week in Kearney NE attending workshops for my job in Agriculture Statistics. A friend commented this morning that she had noticed that I had not put anything on my blog in a while. So I'm back with one of the latest cards.

The papers are from the Citrus stack by DCWV. The scripture is a stamp from Our Daily Bread Designs, the butterfly and little flower are dies from Quickutz, embossed flower images are a Cuttlebug product and the label is from Spellbinders. I used Distressed Inks from Ranger to sponge the yellow and orange inks around the edge of the label.

I had thought that this label was going to be in the trash as I embossed the flower images backwards, meaning the flowers are indented rather then raised. Then I decided to try a little sponging to see if I could resuce it. I think I like it better than the raised embossing on some of the other cards done that were similar to this one. The embossed flower image on the plain orange paper is raised by the Cuttlebug embosing, sanded and the edge cut with a scalloped decorative scissors. You can do the sanding to expose the core of the paper if you use white core papers.

Christmas Card Designs

It's getting to be that time of year again. I have been playing with several ideas for Christmas cards. While I like both of these designs, they are to labor intensive to make 50 of them.

The pine bough image is from Hero Arts. The lovely Merry Christmas image on the top card is from a company called My Sentiments Exactly. The Merry Christmas with holly is from Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers, which is no longer in business. The pine cone image on the second card is from PSX, aka Personal Stamp Exchange. I have found a few of their stamps at Sierra Enterprises. They have a very limited supply and may not have the pine cone stamp.

I used Ranger Distressed inks for the pine bough and the distressing around the edges of the cards.

The phrases on both cards have been embossed with fineline black embossing powder. Gold fineline embossing powder was used on the pine cone.