Heather got her shipment of new Tim Holtz stamps by Stampers Anonymous! Needless to say, I left her haven slightly poorer in wallet, but much richer in spirit. After the kiddies were tucked in and DH installed with the opening ceremonies, I cracked open my goodies and had a great time playing. I'd pop up every so often to see what was going on in Vancouver, but I also had time to make this card.
I started with a 2 1/2" x 5 1/2" piece of 130 lb white cardstock and stamped it with the sentiment in black pigment and embossed it in black. Next, I stamped the flourish in versamark to give a subtle resist effect. Then I added a gradient of colour with distress ink and my blending tool. I believe the colours I used (from bottom to top) were: tea dye, spiced marmalade, mustard seed, scattered straw, broken china, faded jeans, pine needles. Then I stamped the flourish on again with broken china and added the botanical silhouette in walnut stain. Lastly, I stamped the two butterflies in Encore gold, flying their way up from bottom to top, left to right. For an accent, I stamped the same butterflies on some shrink plastic that I had tinted with Stream alcohol ink. I stamped in black archivers ink (Ranger) since I had used alcohol ink and then I shrank it with my heat tool. (I keep an old aluminum pie plate around for this use - the high sides keep little shrinky-dinks from flying out.) One jump ring and one untangled hank of jute later, the butterfly was attached to the bottom of the focal panel.
The tricky thing is always finding the right paper - you want to complement the nice colours, not drown them or fight them. This jewelly muted turquoise was just the thing and the mustard tsumugi paper always provides interest and it's so richly pigmented that it holds its own against any homemade colour panel. I stamped the card blank with versamark dazzle (champagne) using the same flourish stamp, and added the tsumugi strips to accent. They needed a little something so a few strategic dots of dimensional pearls in Stream finished it off. I really love this card. I think I'll drop it by Heather's this morning to see if she wants it for a sample for her delicious new stamps.
Note: all stamps used here are from the Shabby French set.
Thanks for stopping by!
NSR: So what did you think of the opening ceremonies. I thought they were good, but I took exception to the mangling of our national anthem. It should be sung as it was written, there's no need to torture it to death as though it were the final round of American Idol. I really enjoyed the fiddling and DH liked the special effects. I found the torches a bit unusual, reminiscent of an alleged pastime of British Columbians. I'm not sure if this was intentional or not.
My favourite part, without question, was the opening with the First Nations dancers. That was a monumental moment in Canadian history and really brought the whole affair a level of class and import. So I will focus my memories on that rather than Nelly's choice of wardrobe and the 8th-grade-dance-a-thon wannabes lining the athletes' procession. All in all, I found it very Canadian - quite pleasant, slightly goofy, earnest, unthreatening and with one or two moments of pure magic.
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