Creative Artiste Mixed Media Challenge Guest Design

There's nothing better than the feeling of scrubbing off inky, messy hands after a good play session in the studio. 

I have the honor of being a guest designer this week over at Creative Artiste Mixed Media Challenge. I happen to love this challenge because it's always anything goes as long as it's a mixed media project. 

One of my friends asked for a special commissioned card for his wife on their anniversary. 

I started with a piece of white background and stamped it with a text background stamp and Walnut Stain Distress Oxide. I spritzed with water and then added two drops of Cosmic Shimmer Watercolour Ink. 

Next, I added another layer of stamping with Visible Images Fibrionaci stamp, embossed in Speckled Egg Distress Glaze. 

I decided on the different elements I wanted to bring into my card - a peach frame that I covered with blue and gold InkaGold to antique it, and a white butterfly that I sprayed with Distress Spray Stain and then added Speckled Egg Distress Glaze before heat setting it (and almost starting it on fire. :o ) 

I started layering my card with Prima flowers, my frame and the butterfly, and then added little bits of ivory frantage around the edges before dusting it with some Speckled Egg Distress Oxide Spray Stain. 

I added some romantic, gushy words to make it appropriately lovey-dovey for an anniversary and - I've got to say it turned out sooooo pretty. 

Thanks for popping by, and I hope you'll go get all inky and play along at Creative Artiste. 

Making a Mess

Over at Shopping Our Stash they have a challenge going entitled “Make a Mess”. Basically I feel like that’s every single card I ever make. All I have to do is look sideways at a white space on a card and boom! an only smudge appears. It’s like being King Midas, but sadly nothing turns to gold- only to smudge. 

But this card upped the mess ante even for me! In my last blog post I shared a card using the dregs of a cleanup from a pretty horrendous spill of a brand spanking new bottle of Crackling Campfire Distress Oxide Spray Stain. I was going a splatter effect on a card so unscrewed the cap. Enter elbow and a giant spill. *facepalm*

What is a girl to do besides frantically mop up the mess? However, even if my card doesn’t win the competition, I’ve already won by creating some gorgeous backgrounds and a well-earned red stain on my craft table. 

But I didn’t want to rest on my accidental mess laurels for this challenge. Au contraire! I decided to pull out my messiest products and up the ante. 

For my  next act, I pulled out some Dreamweaver metallic gold embossing paste and slopped that through the STAMPlorations Dots All Over stencil. 

The texture! In case you’re wondering about the added colors, they are Mermaid Lagoon Distress Oxide and a gold shimmer by Heidi Swapp. 

Next up on the messy agenda, I scribbled some brown gelatos along the edges of the pieces I was going to use and smudged them to soften the lines with my fingers. 

Also, you can see I stamped an image over the background and used Distress Glaze. 

So let me talk about my focal bird. I’m ashamed to say I’ve probably had this Tim Holtz stamp set for close to 10 years and never used it. >insert head hanging here<  I knew I had to get messy with the bird, too, so he wouldn’t take a backseat to my background. We had a little messy experimental play together. 

I sprayed some Oxides and stains and dried them on a paper. Then I stamped a blue layer and brown layer of Distress Inks, and while the ink was still wet from stamping, I applied Distress Glaze over it. It gave it an antique glassy feel. 

I adore the way this card turned out and I think I’ve sufficiently risen to the Make a Mess challenge. To finish off my card, I mounted it to some Hambly patterned acetate. 

I’m also going link this up to the NBUS challenge, as I finally gave this 10-year-old bird some wings AND tried out Distress Glaze for the first time. 

This one is also going over to Creative Artiste’s Anything Mixed Media goes.