...March release Day 2...

ED - For the rock salt tutorial, be sure to use small grain rock salt and not large grains as this may cause damage to your machine. If in doubt, try passing one grain through first, if it does not want to go through easily, Don't do it. You have been warned ;)

It's only day two and I'm in trouble, we had a plan to show samples from a particular set each day and here i am breaking the rules!!! I'm showing more western, instead of Vintage labels 18...oops...

Thing is, I am also trying to move my crafting gear into the new room and it's not what you'd call tidy around here, d'ya think I'll get away with it? lol...

Anyhow I have two techniques for you today, both great fun, both super simple!! But first we'd better go see what the ladies have been up to - apologies for yesterdays fluffed links, I sent folks all over the country to people who weren't 'entertaining with WMS' yesterday...promise I'll do better today!!

Laurie
Lynn
Mona
Jennifer
Anya
Belinda
Bonnie
Julia
Sarah
Carly

Anyhow, today's first card features a sentiment from the new Back in the saddle set - it's a terrific quote attributed to John Wayne. It covers a lot of situations, and I think I'll get a lot of use out of it. I set it in a mixture of Western Style fonts, and I really love how it turned out.

I wanted to make it the feature of the card and so I didn't pair it up with an image, I just went for a little supporting texture. I used a text background from Way out West on the background mat, which i also distressed with rock salt. See how below.

For the sentiment panel I simply stamped the sentiment in a mixture of versacolour bark and versacolur pinecone, applying both directly to the stamp. The I trimmed out the sentiment into a rectangle with added space at the top. Sponged some Ranger denim ink for a night sky, managing to smudge the 'E' on my way past...and hand cut a wee crescent moon. I felt that it was somehow reflective of the sentiment. The very first fear I ever overcame was a fear of the dark.

Little bit of ginger gingham ribbon tied around the mat and a rusty star finished the card.

Here's how to make the background.

I sprinkled lots of Rock salt, the course grainy stuff, onto a piece of white paper - the white paper was sitting on my Grand Calibur base plate. I used the white paper so that my base plate didn't get covered in salt grains and need cleaning. I'm lazy that way.


I laid a sheet of white cardstock directly on top of the rock salt, placed the embossing plate on top (ED- with tan mat!!! oopsie!) and fed it through the GC. This is what it looks like when it comes out, below. The rock salt embeds itself or crumbles into the cardstock. You can give the cardstock a good shake, and leave it like that ( a story for another day) or you can take a few moments to pick the embedded crystals out of the card - I chose to remove the crystals, I used an old stiff toothbrush for this. You will curse my name for dirty low-down varmint as you do this, but I thought it was worth it on this occasion...lol


Then I sponged (is there any other way, seriosly?) some Ranger Denim ink onto the paper - see the fabby distressed surface and how it soaks up the ink, leaving deep pits of white here and there, I love this look. I also love how ranger inks blend and spread, fabby stuff.


Next I added a little orange, I think that is Rusty Hinge Distress ink. Also with sponge. I think these two colours capture a western feel for me, the blue skies and orange sunsets, the red hills, denim jeans, at least that's how I imagine it is. The inks blend well together and I felt this technique produced an aged distressed look almost like a weathered plaster, pitted with dare i say, shotgun pellets, like some western movie set.

Anyhow, I trimmed out a square of this and stamped over it with the text border to get the mat for today's card.


Today's second card is so simple. You'll soon be addicted to this magical wee technique. I wanted to make a little card that looked like it had been branded, you know, like the cowboys do with cattle??

Well I remebered the lemon juice technique. Fold a little piece of kitchen towel/paper in half, you want to make it a little bigger all round than the stamp you want to use. Place it into a flat bottom dish and squirt yourself a little drop of lemon juice onto the paper towel, enough to make it all soggy. You have just made yourself a lemon juice ink pad.

Ink up your clean stamp in lemon juice, stamp onto a piece of white/cream cardstock. You won't see anything just yet.

Get the heat gun and heat up your image, keep the gun moving in a circular motion so that you don't burn the cardstock. The lemon juice image will start to appear very quickly and will look as if it has been sort of 'burnt' onto the card. It's fabby and the way the image appears out of nowhere is most addictive. You can overheat areas of the image that you want to appear darker than the rest but be careful not to burn the card or your image won't stand out from the background.

I looked at this card for days thinking that I might add another detail, but I eventually decided that I liked it just the way it was.



Hope it tickles!!