Quick Little Post

Hey Kids! I went a little outside of my comfort zone for this gift card holder, I admit it. But oh boy was it FUN! I had a few oopses that I ended up running with, but isn't that the nature of the creativity beast?

First off, I started out with a fun "chalkboard stamping" technique that I ran across in a magazine, super cool! I will toss together a tutorial for it in the future...but in this card, the winged heart is stamped using this technique (supplies for that were white pigment ink and chalks, the stamp used is part of the Rhonna Farrer "Love with a Flourish" Set)

Then I decided to distress the heck out of the card with Tim Holtz distress inks (I used frayed burlap and tea dye)...now I thought that it looked pretty darn cool, but not cool enough...lol. The heart seemed to be "floating" with nothing holding it down so I had a weird idea to try embossing some of the distress ink, so I loaded the card up with embossing powder...big mistake...it turned into a solid sheet of powder...lol. So I scraped and tapped until their was a random dusting of the powder and then heat set that.

As if that wasn't enough, I had a hair brained idea to try out my Heidi Swapp flower masks (I know...a bit out of order, but whatever...lol) Here's a tip, after the ink dries you can just buff it off of the embossed areas like it never happened!

Then things got weird...I had a chipboard bookplate that I wanted to use, so I embossed it silver, then stamped swirls on it and embossed those in clear...can you see it? Underneath the bookplate I used a K-Ology word sticker I've had for a bagillion years. (bagillion years...technical phrase that loosely translates to "i dont know when I bought it") So anyway, so as not pretend I was finished yet it was at this point the stitching happened...it was difficult to get around that chipboard once it was glued down, so I think it's best if you try to organize your a-ha ideas into a logical sequence. Unlike me....

So after more distressing, a few swirl stamps and a hand glued bling heart...I decided it was done. What do you think? It's so different than what I usually do, but it was such a stretching project for me in so many ways.

Thanks for hanging in there through to the end of this post! You rock!!

If you want to come hang out with me on AMR, the door is open!!