Distress Inks

Take Time To Smell The Flowers

Hello. I have a card to share in which a water-coloured the main floral image – something I haven’t done for absolutely ages:

The flower is from a collaboration stamp set with Altenew and Hero Arts. I stamped the flower and the two leaves onto a piece of white water-colour card, then heat embossed in white.

I then sprayed water onto the images and used Distress Inks to colour – well – I dabbed the colour onto my glass mat, picked it up with my wet brush and kinda just let it go and flow……I ‘helped’ the flow a little to reach the ends of the petals and leaves, but generally let the water and the inks do their thing…..my idea of water-colouring!

Once dry, I fussy-cut – my least favourite crafty job – and I think the white heat embossing helped cover a few little flaws with the scissors – but it also helped to guide the scissors somewhat.

I found some matching lilac/purple card stock, and then layered the WPlus9 trellis onto the top. I did have to cut the trellis twice and layer it to make it longer, trimming off the bottom of one and the top of the other – the flower and leaves cover the join quite nicely.

I placed the flower and leaves as you see, and then the sentiment, all added to the card with 3D foam.

I added some clear cabochons, and as I had stamped the sentiment in black I also added some black gems too.

I shall be entering the following challenges:

Crafty Catz – anything goes – option to say it with flowers

Allsorts – flora or fauna or anything goes

The Paper Players – green thumbs – plants/flowers/foliage

Colour Crazy – week 26 – anything goes with colouring (any medium)

Lil Patch Of Crafty Friends – anything goes

Triangles – Cardz 4 Galz

Dawn S has chosen the theme for the new challenge at Cardz 4 Galz. She wants to see ‘Triangles’. Here is my card:

I die cut the white panel using a Catherine Pooler background panel I’ve had for absolutely ages, and then attached this to a previously created purple ink smooshed panel from my stash.

I have quite a few of these panels – I love to create a whole bunch of them ready for using – either die cutting or for backgrounds like this one.

I then die cut the ‘hi’ out of black card stock – layered 4 times for dimension – and added some clear gems as you see.

I seem to be using my little gems and accents quite a lot lately – I can’t seem to stop. At least I’m not hoarding them – though I do have a lot more to use!

I’m looking forward to seeing your creations incorporating our theme. xx

I shall be entering the following challenges:

Lil Patch of Crafty Friends – anything goes

TTCRD – anything goes

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge – anything goes

Creative Fingers – anything goes

The Sisterhood Of Crafters – add layers

Sparkly Yeti Christmas

The Holly and Ivy Christmas Challenge has started a new challenge – anything goes Christmas. Here is my card:

I chose a previously created background from an online class with Jenn Shurkus, and the images were coloured during that class – but – again – not used……so I decided to piece them all together for this card.

Ink smooshed and sprayed background, a star stencil using some purple ink.

I die cut the words from Concord & 9th is silver glitter card – layered a couple of times – and that was fiddly, let me tell you!

A hillside cut in the same glitter card, the igloo and yet attached with 3D foam pads, and some iridescent little water droplets for added interest.

I hope you can come and join us with your Christmas makes and increase your Christmas stash. I look forward to seeing you in our gallery. xx

I shall be entering the following challenges:

Merry Little Christmas Challenge – anything goes Christmas

Peace On Earth Challenge – anything goes Christmas

Crafty Hazelnuts Christmas Challenge – anything goes Christmas

TTCRD – anything goes

Crafting Happiness Challenge – anything goes

12 Months Of Christmas Challenge – anything goes Christmas – option not taken

Sparkles Forum Christmas Challenge – cute Christmas Critters

Breathe……

Hello. The Alphabet Challenge has reached the letter ‘E’ and Billie A has chosen the theme of embossing – wet or dry. Here is my card:

I chose another of my ink smooshed backgrounds in pinks and oranges as a background to the butterfly stamp.

I heat embossed the image in gold embossing powder, and also embossed the sentiment from the same stamp set. I also added some little sequins for some additional interest.

I hope you can come and join us with your embossing creations – wet or dry embossing – so many options. xx

I shall be entering the following challenges:

Dragonfly Dreams – butterflies and/or flowers

Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge – It’s up in the air

Arty Divas – anything goes

2 Crafty Critter Crazies – anything goes with a critter

Sip Sip Hooray

Hello once again. Cardz 4 Galz has started a new challenge – and we have 3 new DT members – I’m so excited to seeing more creations on our themes. Dawn has chosen the theme for this challenge – ‘Sentiment as the focal point‘. Here is my card:

Once again I used one of ink smooshed backgrounds but in a bright and colourful palette, as a background to this old sentiment die panel from MFT stamps.

I layered them by using the stitched rectangle dies, and opted not to put the ‘innards’ back into the words. You can still see what it says, and I think the ‘innards’ would cover more of the colourful panel than I wanted.

I hope you can come and join us in this challenge – I look forward to seeing all your sentiments in our gallery. xx

I shall be entering the following challenges:

Seize The Birthday – birthday with real or faux stitching

Creative Fingers Challenge – anything goes

Craft Rocket Challenge – birthday

AAA Birthday – birthday and ‘Let’s Party’

Love To Craft Challenge – anything goes

Beelieve In Yourself

Hello. Popping in to share a card using a new stamp set from Claire Manning Creative for the current challenge at Festive Friday. When I saw Claire demonstrate this on her YouTube channel – I just had to have it:

This is a layering stamp set called ‘Buzzing‘, and I thought it would go perfectly with one of previously made Distress Ink smooshed backgrounds – and I like how it turned out – all that rich yellow and that stark black….

The body of the bee is stamped in Versafine Black Onyx to get that deep and dark black, and then the wings were stamped. Usually, you stamp the yellow, then the black – but as I had yellow on the background panel – I didn’t need to do that.

And as we all could do with some encouraging words every now and again – then this sentiment from Clearly Besotted fitted the bill nicely – from one of their bee stamp sets.

I may have to play with this the way Claire did on her YouTube video – using a spray of water on the layers to give a water-colour effect – watch this space!

using Bee, yellow, black

ABC Christmas Challenge – J and K

Hello there. ABC Christmas Challenge has reached the letters J and K. Wei is hosting, and this time we want to see your Christmas themed creations with ‘J for Joke and/or K for Kraft‘. I was inspired to make a card for each theme:

For the first card I used the Tim Holtz die ‘Arthur’ and created him with a cream textured card stock with some brown ink blending around the edges. The hat is from a Simon Says Stamp die set – with some glitter applied to the white parts. The background is an ink smooshed background from my stash. The joke sentiment stamped onto some patterned paper and placed using 3D foam squares.

For the second card I created a shaker card using an ink smooshed background which I embossed using a Simon Says Stamp embossing folder, then applied Sizzix lustre wax. I placed this into a shaker creator from Tonic Studios, added glass beads and some thicker glitter and sealed it.

I die cut a Hero Arts Christmas cover panel out of Kraft, and stuck that down onto the front.

I hope you can come and join us with your Christmas creations – following one or both of our two themes. xx

I shall be entering the following challenges:

First card:

Peace On Earth Christmas challenge – anything goes Christmas

Crafty Animals Challenge – anything goes with an animal

12 Months of Christmas – anything goes Christmas – option not taken

Merry Little Christmas Challenge – anything goes Christmas

Second card:

Dies R Us challenge – anything goes with a brand they sell

Arty Divas Challenge – anything goes

Die Cut Divas – anything goes with die cuts or embossing folder (both)

Love To Craft Challenge – anything goes

You’re So Tweet

Hello again. Happy Little Stampers CAS Challenge has started another challenge. This time the theme is ‘Tropical‘. Here is my CAS Tropical card:

For this card I used an older stamp, stencil and die set from Catherine Pooler. I first used an oval stencil on a white card base, then placed a piece of masking paper across the bottom to create the straight line, then added the leaves stencil on top of all that.

I used two colours of Distress Ink to create an ombre look.

Whilst this was drying, I stamped the images, coloured them with Copics, then used the matching dies.

Before sticking them all down, I stamped the sentiment – I remember this time to do this before I had virtually finished the card!

I played around with placement of the images until I came up with what I liked – some snipping of the leaves so I could put them under the branch a little more.

I hope you can come and join us with your CAS cards following the theme. xx

I shall be entering the following challenges:

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge – anything goes

Colour Crazy Challenge – week 12 – anything goes with colouring

MMM Challenge – use a stencil

Perfectly CAS – CAS die cuts – one third or less

Addicted To Stamps – make your mark

Hello There…..

Here is a card created using the colours for the current Color Throwdown Challenge:

I wanted to get messy and create an ink smooshed background, so I looked through my Distress Ink swatch, and found two colours which would represent the yellow and the tan colours – and played….

I actually liked how these two colours mixed well together I created a few of these backgrounds for future use.

Once this panel was dry, I stamped the sentiment onto the bottom using Versafine ink, then die cut it using an MFT stitched rectangle die and layered it with some foam at the back onto a white card base.

The leafy square is from Simon Says Stamp and die cut out of some dark grey card stock.

I played around with the placement of this square a little, and settled for it being where you see it.

I noticed when writing this post that the past few cards seem to have a theme running through them – hello, hi etc – it would appear my mind is turned towards ‘just because’ cards at the moment and not for specific occasions.

I’m already planning what to do with the other similar coloured backgrounds….. and I even did some using the same colours of Distress Oxide – but the inks are my favourite for this – well, at the moment, anyway.

Color Throwdown

Birthday Bloom

Having recently received a new die set from Altenew, I decided to play with it:

I die cut all the layers for the flower out of previously made Distress Ink smooshing pieces of card. The leaves were die cut from a panel I had created during a virtual mixed media class with Seth Apter, and I’ve been waiting for a time to be able to use that piece – lots of inks, even glitter paint, and texture paste which I think shows up on the second photo.

If I remember rightly, we also did a lot of scoring and scratching into that panel, used a few of his inks and pastes – and it created an overall shiny piece of card.

Onto a white card base I stuck down a panel embossed using a Spellbinders embossing folder recently received as part of the Maker Mania 5 weekend.

I then splattered Distress Oxide sprays onto it to match the colours of the flower.

I stuck together all the layers of the flower and leaves and created the spray as you see.

The sentiment is from an older MFT stamp set. As I had stamped the sentiment in black, I added some black enamel dots to the background to bring it all together.

I shall be entering the following challenges:

Tuesday Taggers – add some texture

Everybody Art Challenge – birthday

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge – add a die cut

My Time To Craft – embossing – wet or dry

We Love 2 Create – anything goes mixed media

Creative Artiste Mixed Media – anything goes mixed media