CPS 240

Hi everyone!

Well, after such a long break from making cards, I was finally "in the mood" to work on one tonight! :) I was inspired by the great sketch over at the CPS site and figured I'd give that one a try. Here's the sketch:

Here's my take on it:

I've had this Hero Arts stamp for a long time! I saw a card that one of my fave crafters, Jennifer McGuire, did with it and I was dying to try it out. Hers was stamped in a metallic silver but I did love the technique that she used.

I started out with white cardstock and I stamped the image using an orange pigment ink. Then I heat embossed it. I wanted it to look like it was sunset--hence the orange...That's when the fun began! :) I used my fantasstix tools and started coloring in the image with distress inks. I would first dip the fantastix tool in a bit of water and then grab some ink right off the ink pad. The flowers were inked with a milled lavender and then with dusty concord. The leaves were first inked with shabby shutters green and then with pine needles green. After the image was colored in, I used a paintbrush that was dabbed in water to smooth out the coloring. I mounted the panel on white cardstock and then started working on the background. I knew I wanted a purple background. But the color cardstock I had was the wrong the purple--too red. So, I grabbed my dusty concord distress ink and colored in that wrong-colored purple cardstock and transformed it in the rich color I wanted. Then I realized I needed something else for the background. I used the "Happy b-day" definition stamp from Hero Arts and stamped that in silver pigment ink. I stamped the sentiment in dusty concord and cut half of a spellbinders label for the tag of the sentiment. The final touches were just adding some pearls on 2 corners of the card and it was done!

Hope you enjoyed the weekend and that you get to play along this week, too!
Pat