A Little Bit of Distress

Over at The Card Concept this week, they have a beautiful inspiration image with some Lilacs sitting in a container.  Since purple is a favorite color for me, I had to sit down and see what I could come up with.

There's a similar Challenge over at Muse Challenges #164 with the inspiration image in the upper right side of this post.

The first thing I did was to look through my stamps to see what I had that could look a little like Lilacs and this was the best I could come up. We can be inspired by what the item is, the colors or any number of things. It's actually not too bad. These flowering branches are from the Altenew Beautiful Day Stamp Set.  I cut the branches out with the Beautiful Day Coordinating Dies after water coloring the images.  

I started with a 4.25 x 5.5 inch piece of watercolor paper and stamped my images in Versamark then heat embossed using Simon Says Stamp Antique Gold Embossing Powder. I love the little bit warmer tone of this powder.  It is identical in final appearance to WOW!'s Gold Rich Pale Embossing Powder.  To watercolor the branches I used Wilted Violet Distress Marker for the taller skinny ones and Seedless Preserves Distress Marker for the shorter, squattier branches then finished them off using Pine Needles Distress Marker for the leaves.

I also dry embossed a piece of white cardstock using the Birds and Swirls Embossing folder from Cuttlebug. I opted to ink this up using the DTP methods with Perfect Match Lavender Moon Ink by Papertrey Ink. The raised areas catch significantly more ink although some does get down in the lower areas as well. If you choose a design that is closer together more of the ink stays on just the raised portions better leaving more white space in the design. After that I misted it with Iridescent Gold Glimmer Mist and set it aside to dry. The kind I have is Tattered Angels but you could use the Tsukineko Gold Shimmer Spritz to get a simlar effect. Once it was dry I cut it with a Simon Says Stamp Stitched Rectangle Die in the largest size to be my background panel.

I cut a piece of SU! Rich Razzleberry paper from a scrap out of my folder for the smaller oval and a larger one from gold poster board.  I cut the center out of the larger oval since I was going to cover it up and used it to cut my "smile" word die. This word was a set of three made by Little Yellow Bicycle and I got it about a year ago at Hobby Lobby along with another set of three words. The ovals were adhered to the background panel with Tombow Mono Adhesive.  Then I arranged the floral branches how I wanted them and adhered with Ranger Multi Medium Matte and added the greeting.  Everything was attached to a top folding A2 card base made from Stamper's Select White by Papertrey Ink.  

I have to say, as much as I like the occasional soft pink color, it does not photograph very well. You really can't see the shimmer and shine I added but if I try to take the card apart and put it on a different color card base, it will tear. So, for today, I can live with it. Be sure to stop by The Card Concept and Muse to check out all the gorgeous creations there.  Thank you for taking time to stop and read my blog today.  I really enjoy reading all of the comments if you'd like to leave one for me. I'll be back soon with a new project.  Have a great weekend, everyone! *Ü*