Dance for yourself

I'm back! Sorry about the blog-post drought. I was on a business trip and in the week or so leading up to it, I had meant to do up a bunch of stamping and blog posts, but my family kept wanting to eat and wear clean clothes, and I had to shop (dearth of summer wardrobe) and pack for my trip. And DD2 also wanted a birthday party. Now I have semi-presentable summer clothes, I'm back from my trip, have six blisters from new shoes (and walking approx 5000 km with insane bionic android-type travelling companions), and the birthday party was a huge hit (won't dwell on fact that small children are very easy to please and they probably liked the cheesies the best out of all the entertainments and diversions I offered).

There's a fun contest over on Tim Holtz' blog where he's giving away some Distress Ink holders.
He's asked people to make a project with Distress Inks, and here's what I've done with my evening! {ooooh! Just got confirmation from Tim Holtz himself! I'm sure it's a generic one but still. His name is in my Inbox. ooooh!}

I've used a number of techniques, including Versamark resist (you can sort of see the music background - it's a subtle effect, but I like the fact that there's a bit of music "playing" in the background). I experimented a bit with "motion stamping" the people, but it wound up looking like they were some sort of crazy time travelling dancers trapped at a rave party so I had to settle for ordinary stamping instead. (I should mention these stamps are all from one Stampers' Anonymous set, Purely Random, which is one of my favourite sets. It has so many fabulous and useful elements in it, as well as these four dancing-related stamps. Actually, come to think of it, the music stamp is from one of the Christmas sets, but really every stamper should have at least one sheet music stamp, right? Right. A sheet music stamp was one of the stamps I got on my first trip to Western Educational (RIP, o stamping Mecca). Happy sigh of recalling love affair with stamps in first flush....)

Anyway, back to the card. After stamping the dancers (Pine Needles) and the footsteps (Stormy Sky), I made the tag. There was a nice scrap of soft yellow paper just sitting near my left hand, so I added some distress ink and turned it into a tag. I just blended on some shades of yellow to bring it into matching tones with the background and to stop it looking so flat. I also stamped the same sentiment on it in Scattered Straw. A handy tip: heat set with your iron so you can emboss right away. Another handy tip: don't forget to turn off the steam or the words will disappear in a puff of vapour and you will have to restamp them. Or at least I presume this is what would happen .... I also used my edge distresser (finally found it! yay! it was in my basket of stamping tools... grrr...who put it there???) I added an eyelet and some cord and presto, tag! I also used my tag corner punch for the corners since I am too impatient to measure, mark and cut corners like that. I'd rather cut corners with a punch! (Ha! Did you miss my bad puns?) I also spritzed the background with a bit of gold Smooch. (I'm liking this more and more. The first time I tried it, I used way too much. Now I give it two squirts and it's done. It is lasting a lot longer this way. It also fits in my little mini-mister stadium stand. Yay!) On the green panel is some Gala Glitz glitter in green, stuck to some Sook Wang tape (I hope, anyway - I had previously stuck down some microbeads but they looked terrible so I took them off but didn't change the tape). I don't think I'll be sending this off to anyone. I think I might give it to myself to remind me not to worry about conforming to the crazy world around me and if I feel like dancing, I should just go right ahead and do it.

I'm looking at this card and I feel like it needs something else. The layout isn't quite right. I think I need to get over my problem of covering up a background I just spent an hour making (longer if you count the one I had to throw out due to rave-dancing lunatics). Any tips on the layout problem? I have my visual triangle, I have my three yellow things, three green things, something stringy/ribbony, something sparkly, something metal. Maybe I should go read Tim's message again for inspiration....

Thanks for stopping by! It's great to be back, happily ensconced amongst my teetery piles and friendly stamps, listening to Vinney White and Studio 93, getting my fingers into the most dreadful inky mess. I had brought my Copics with me and some stamped images and logged in lots of happy colouring hours, but it's not the same as making a project from start to finish. That being said, I've made great strides with my Copics and am getting very comfortable with them, other than with blending very light colours into white. That still defeats me. Still, one needs a challenge and a reason to get out of bed in the morning!
Happy stamping :-)