My Favorite Ink Pad challenge - Lilacs in Bloom

Hi again,

I'm playing catch up with my blog posts this week, it's been a long and crazy few days at my job that pays the mortgage. Sometimes I just wanna stay home and play in my studio. Unfortunately, work is a necessary evil. 

The challenge this week over at Simon Says Stamp and Show is "your favorite ink pad".  Well that's a no-brainer for me.  It's Seedless Preserves distress ink.  But my favourite color in general is PURPLE! I love purple, I am obsessed with purple. The fact that lilacs are purple and start blooming at the end of May around here made me want to create a "thinking of you" card as a tribute to my Mom.  My Mom had this HUGE lilac tree in her backyard.  I've never seen anything like it.  When that tree was in full flower, the fragrance was unforgettable.

I dry embossed the cardstock with the Winterberries folder by Tim Holtz, added a wee bit of colour with distress markers.

Next, I coloured some white paper with Seedless Preserves distress ink and added some shaded lilac for a cooler tone. Then I went to town punching out the flowers using the Martha Stewart hydrangea punch.  I shaped them and adhered them with glossy accents.  you can see the dimension I got in the 2nd picture.  I stained the crinkle ribbon and added a sentiment on a die cut ticket.

                                   Here you can get a better view of the layers of flowers

http://simonsaysstampandshow.blogspot.ca/2013/05/challenge-favorite-ink.html

Disco Reindeer

Hi everyone, i had so much fun making these cards. Shelly Hickox (See link) http://shellyhickox.blogspot.ca/2012/11/splitcoast-tutorial-3d-dies.html made an awesome 3D reindeer head that I couldn't resist trying myself. I used the new mirror sheets from Tim holtz for Ideology to cover the outside of the deer. I didn't want to waste any of the scraps, so I made a mosaic background mirror as well. Check it out.

First up is the "traditional looking" cards made for the big game hunters in my life. Followed by the funky and fun mirrored reindeer. It was really hard to get a good photo of the mirror, but I gave it the old college try.

My Favorite Stamp

Do you have a stamp that you keep coming back to year after year?  I do.  This particular stamp distributed by "Stampa Rosa" years ago, is my all time favourite. There is something magical about it that pulls me back every Christmas season. I use it on some of my cards without fail.

I tried a technique that Shelly Hickox posted on her blog a while back called "Tarnished Silver" you can check out the link here....http://shellyhickox.blogspot.ca/2012/10/new-tutorial-on-splitcoast.html
I loved the effect, very cool, thanks Shelly!

I made five of these cards to give away, so without further taunting, here's what I did...

I made the frames with the "Tarnished Silver" however I used silver ink and Platinum EP. I didn't have the small Baroque die so I had to hand cut the inside to make a frame.

 I then stamped my image on Specialty Stamping paper from Ranger and cut the shape out on both the paper and on the packaging that we don't throw away. Right?!

 Add colour with distress markers and distress inks to give it a vintage feel

 add denim and silver alcohol inks around the plastic to create a Mercury glass feel

spray background paper with Heidi Swapp spray and emboss with  texture fade
add some silver ink and embossed lines to highlight.