Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge: D is for Distress

This weeks Monday Challenge on the Simon Says Stamp blog is all about distress, I took it as an excuse to use my massively underused seasonal distress inks and markers. I have been asked to make a Birthday card for a two year old girl which included a rabbit. I decided to tie the two projects together using the seasonal distress colours to allow for many fun colour options for a card that called for a nature backdrop. Here is a picture of the card.

To begin with I created my background using Mowed Lawn and Salty Ocean. I pressed the ink pads onto my craft sheet and sprayed them with Tattered Rose Glimmer Mist in Dazzling Diamonds to get the ink pooling up. I pressed a piece of watercolour paper into the ink and wiggled it around to make sure there wasn't a gap between the colours. I then lifted the watercolour paper up, tilting to the side so the colours were separate. I then set that aside to dry. Once it was dry I used Dreamweaver White Embossing Paste, to added clouds to the top of the card for some fun dimension. I spread it thinly so the distress ink could be seen through for a more realistic cloud effect.

 

Next I stamped the two (a number stamp set by Kars), bird and rabbit (both discontinued stamp sets from Hobbycraft) onto another sheet of watercolour using Versafine Onyx Black ink and water coloured them in with Distress Markers by scribbling the ink onto an acrylic block and using my water brush applied the desired colours to the images. For the bird I used Ripe Persimmon for the body and Peacock Feathers for the tail. For the rabbit I used Shaded Lilac for the body and Picked Raspberry for the ear and nose, I also added a white tooth with my Uni-ball signo in white. For the two I used Picked Raspberry. I did have a slight problem with the rabbit, that I hadn't let the versafine fully dry and it did bleed quite considerably, luckily it was outside of the image which was remedied by a bit of fussy cutting. It does say on the versafine ink pad that it is suitable for water colouring, but obviously it takes a while to dry. When the images were dry I fussy cut them out and went around the edges with the black Memento marker to make it look like I had cut it out perfectly. I did have to cut the beak and legs off the bird but I stamped that on the background so it isn't noticeable. The advantage of fussy cutting the bird was that I was able to have the tail free from the card, which made the stamped image behind look like an additional layer to the bird's tail.

The finally assembly included covering a piece of embroidery floss in Claudine Hellmuth Studio multi-medium in matte and arranging it into a curled string design, to make the number two into a balloon. I stamped out the sentiment (the Happy Birthday is from Lawn Fawn Happy Everything stamp set and the name is Kaisercraft Alpha Typewriter Font) in Versafine Habenero ink while everything was drying. I glued the bird and rabbit to the background with the matte medium and added the balloon and sentiment using foam squares. To finish off the card I added Ranger Glossy Accents to the number two to make it look like a balloon.

Thanks for looking, I hope you feel inspired to dig out your distress inks. If you are interested in taking part in the challenge too the link is http://www.simonsaysstampblog.com/mondaychallenge/challenge-d-is-for-distress/, you have until Sunday to enter.