Following Trends

I'm not the most trendy of gals usually, but I do have the chevron and honeycomb embossing folders, some die cuts from the Spring catalog and I just picked up some of the Natural Trim ribbon which is similar to burlap. So when today's color challenge asked us to use trendy items I was good to go! 

I used a couple of fun techniques here that I thought I'd share with you:  Stamp Kissing and Wrinkle Free Distress (modified to use shimmer spray).

I directly swiped my Calypso Coral onto an acetate sheet

Next step is to spritz with a homemade shimmer spray-rubbing alcohol with glimmer paint added in. You want it to really bead up on the acetate.

I then laid my glossy card stock over the ink and picked up the ink. Here's what it looks like after one dip in the ink pool!

I didn't add any more ink, but simply spritzed again.

Here's the final product. You get nice color variation and can even do more than one color either overlaid, or in separate areas on the acetate. You want to dry your card stock between layers to keep the colors more distinct. I cheated and used my heat gun because I'm not so good at waiting. ;)

I die cut the flowers then cut layers out. I took my piercing tool to curl up the edges a bit for some more dimension.

Here's how I did my leaves. I inked the solid image with Stazon black then stamped the Canvas bg over the ink to remove some. (With traditional kissing you actually stamp/kiss a second, darker color onto your solid image, but because I was using black, I decided to see if I could get the look be removing some of the black.)Then I was looking at the inky leaves right there on my Canvas stamp so I laid my paper over the top and rubbed to pick up the "leftovers" and got the cool image you see on the left. I wish I'd been a little more careful to leave room between the two as when I die cut them, I ended up with a little missing bit on one leaf....ooops! In order to die cut the 2nd set of leaves I had to put the die on the back side as the image is reversed. I held the paper up to a light and positioned the die on the back side and used a piece of tape to hold it in place.

 All Stampin' Up products today!

Stamps: Secret Garden, Itty Bitty Banners, Canvas

Paper: Basic Black, Baja Breeze, Glossy White

Ink: Stazon Black, Calypso Coral

Accessories: Chevron and Honeycomb embossing folders, Bitty Banners and Secret Garden framelits, Natural Trim ribbon, Mini glue dots, markers

Techniques: Stamp Kissing, Dry Embossing, Omitting With Markers, Wrinkle Free Distress with shimmer mist