Think Spring Card With Distress Paints

For my project today I have decided to make a greeting card and when I think of Spring Or Easter, I think warm weather, flowers, green grass and Eggs!!!

I am really loving the Tim Holtz distress paints and have recently been able to buy some more of those yummy colors. I just love the brights so I decided to whip out my distress paints and play with those. I grabbed a piece of blue craft core paper and embossed it with an embossing folder for the base of my card.

I used Tim Holtz blueprint Easter egg stamp, I colored it with distress paint and a paintbrush and cut it out so that it would look like eggs sitting in the grass. I also cut the top off of one egg. I used Tim's metal foliage for the flowers and also painted those with the distress paints. I went over them twice so that they would be a bit brighter.

For the next photo I used Tim's alpha parts to spell the words "Think Spring" and I painted those blue with distress paint. I used the Tim Holtz picture wheel die (love, love this die) along with distress paint. For the water-ish effect of the paint I put some paint on my craft sheet and spritzed it with a little water, I then ran the picture wheel through the paint and the outcome is this beautiful watercolor effect. The paint runs together beautifully. Again, I added some more of the metal foliage and a metal game spinner and painted those.  

I cut my own grass by staining a white strip of paper with green distress stain and then just cut it up and curled it a bit.

Here is my final project, it's so bright and cheery, I love it!

I am entering this card into two challenges today. 

Simon Says Challenge Blog - Their challenge this week is Spring/Easter and I think this card fits in rather nicely with the theme. They are giving away a 50.00 Voucher to one lucky winner, YAY!
Hobby Cutz Challenge - Their challenge is Easter. They have two sponsors this week, themselves (giving away a 5.00 voucher to thier store) and also Fairy Dust Crafts who are giving 5 Digi stamps to one lucky winner. Double YAY!

Thanks for stopping by!! Have a Springy Day!!

Blue Print Bunny Card

I am inspired this time by Tim's Twelve Tags of 2013 for this project. It's not my final project for the challenge but it is one of them. (I will be making my usual ATC sized card for the Graphic 45 display) but for now I decided to make a card and I had many challenges in mind when I started this project. Here is a list of the challenges I'm entering this card into:
Simon Says Challenge Blog - Their challenge this week is "A Bit O' Green" and they are giving away their usual 50.00 gift card to Simon Says StoreYAY!!!
IBS Inspiration Challenge - This week's challenge is "White, Sage and Light Pink.. This is a new site for me, just found it the other day and she gives away a 25.00 Gift card to the Store Here

Frilly and Funky - Always love the challenges over there, this week it's "William Morris" Style, so muted colors, natural elements and an animal must be included. Linda over at Frilly and Funkie Botique usually gives the winner some sort of gift card or discount at the store. She's great!!
Hobby Cutz Challenge - This is a new Challenge site and a goodie too! There are lots of giveaways this time and loads of fun and a blog hop with prizes as well. The theme for this weeks challenge is "Anything Goes".

So now onto my card..... I took loads of pics and there is explanations of each step so grab a cup of coffee and have a squat for awhile :) OR
scroll to the bottom to see the finished card. :) That's ok too! 

To start this card I picked out the paper I wanted to use and I found some really cool papers in the colors that I wanted to showcase. White - a shade of pink and sage green.
I then cut that for my card and also cut out some Tattered flowers (using Tim's Die) and also Stampin Up's Lattice and Top Note Dies. I wasn't sure exactly waht I was going to use here but I wanted to have enough. 

I used Distress Inks in Peeled Paint and Vintage Photo to distress the edges of all the cut outs.

I also used Tim Holtz's distress tool to distress the edges of my butterfly paper (Creative Imaginations Paper) and then used the peeled paint and vintage photo around the edges.

I really wanted to use Tim's Bunny mover and shaper die but alas, I don't have it so I had to improvise on this part. So I decided to stamp the bunny  from the Blue Print Easter set on a scrap piece of card stock  and just simply cut it out. 

After that was cut out I set it aside because I wanted to think about what to do with him before I moved on with it.

Here again I do not have Tim's newest Tapered Fringe Die and I really wanted a grass look so i decided to make my own.

I used a piece of manilla card stock and wiped it through distress stains in three colors... Forest Moss, Crushed Olive and Cut Grass. I just spread them on my craft sheet, spritzed my paper with water and ran it through all the colors. 

I then cut little strips into the paper being careful not to cut all the way down to the bottom. I then cut some pieces shorter, leaving some taller. 

I love the way the grass is different shades of green.

Once that was done I wanted the grass to bend like real grass so I took the end of a small paintbrush and curled up some of the ends, this gave the grass a little depth and movement.

After the grass was done I had a "lightbulb" moment and decided exactly what I wanted to do with my bunny. I had this really cool Flower Soft that was exactly the colors I needed so I used that. I used the glossy accents to adhere the Flower Soft to my cardstock bunny.

 The base of my card was white and I didn't want pure white so I stamped the word stamp from Tim Holtz set called "Papillon" with Archival Ink in Sepia. 

It didn't matter much what most of it looked like, you would only be able to see the edges once it was finished. I also used Vintage Photo Distress ink to go around the edge.

At this point I thought that putting my card together would be simple but I wasn't sure I liked it once I layed it all out. I really wanted to use the entire Blue Print Bunny stamp for the background but I wasn't too sure how it would look. So using an idea I got from the wonderful Marjie Kemper I decided to stamp the entire stamp onto cellophane and try it out before I committed to it. I used Archival Black to stamp it, pictured below...

I layed it all out here, with all the elements and the bunny and I decided I liked it so I went with it. Instead of stamping it in Archival Black I used Sepia for the finished product. 

Lastly I decided to make the word "Bunny" pop more and used a piece of the white card stock to stamp it again and cut it out.

And.. Here is my finished product with everything glued and adhered.

 I also decided to stamp the flourish with the word stamp used above.

If you've made it this far you've MADE IT to the end of the post.!! HAHA! Thanks for sticking with me and I hope you got a little inspiration from my tutorial. 

Cheers!!

Blue Print Butterfly Shadow Box

I have to admit I have been in sort of a slump for a short bit and haven't been partaking in my usual challenges last week or the week prior so I decided I better get into my craft room and just do what I love.
WARNING: Lots of Pictures and long post. :) Grab some coffee!!

When I saw that Tim Holtz challenged us over at his blog Here to use our Sizzix tattered floral die, I knew I had to do this. I also wanted to join in on Simon Says Stamp and Show this week. Their challenge is to use a stamp that we love but never use. 
I have had this Easter Blueprints Tim Holtz stamp set for a bit and I bought it because I just love the butterfly (you know me and butterflies, I have a soft spot for them) so I decided that this was the stamp I was going to use for this challenge. I haven't used it yet and I always eye it when I go into my stash.
I wanted to make another shadow box (I had made a smaller one here ) for this project and I got this really ugly 8x10 one that someone had painted orangish/red at the thrift store. Since I'm covering it anyway I didn't need to re-paint it. I used Tim Holtz tissue tape in several different designs to cover the outside. 

I then used the gold distress stain to add a bit of gold shimmer to it. (please excuse my messy craft area)

I then went through my paper stash and I have this wonderful Graphic 45 paper so I used that for my background. I grunged some of the edges on the smaller pieces and added Distress Ink in Gathered Twigs. I also used some tissue tape and gold distress stain on the smaller papers. I also stamped my butterfly onto the the brown colored sheet for my background. (didn't picture that sorry)

Once that was done, I set them aside to dry. I then stamped my butterfly on a sheet of blank white paper and embossed it with Ranger black embossing powder. I then colored and highlighted with distress markers in various colors.

I then created my set of wings with Wendy Vecchi's Clearly for Art. If you haven't use this stuff, it's fantastic. I can't say enough about it. I colored my clearly for art wings with Alcohol inks in various colors. 

I used the same technique with the clearly for art with my flowers. Layering the colors as I went, once that was done you can heat it up and shape it however you want to. If you don't like it, heat it up again and re-shape. The stuff is soooo cool.!!

I also used a background stamp to stamp an image onto one of the larger flowers (clearly for art piece) so that it would match the paper I used. I used Archival Ink in Sepia for this so it would be permanent.

Once that was done I heated these up and shaped them the way I wanted them to look. I'm sorry I forgot to take a picture of that process.

I also created some flowers with the same paper that I used for the background and inked up the edges with Gathered Twigs distress ink.

For one of my other large flowers I used perfect medium to go around the petals edges and then used this really cool Stampendous embossing tinsel. It's shimmery and has a glitter tinge.

I went over this petal with gathered twigs as well. 

This is what the flowers looked like once they were put together. I added a brad to each one.

I love the way they came out, so rusty and grungy looking. The Clearly For Art really gave me the effect that I wanted. So cool!!

Here is my project once I put it all together.

Before I put it in the shadow box. I also added some flourishes from one of Tim's movers and shapers dies. 

I made the little bead pins here as well. I just put together some beads that matched onto a head pin.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed the  shadow box I made. :)

I need to find some more of shadow boxes at the thrift store, I enjoy making these.