Fun with distress stains

I really enjoyed crafting with Deedee while we visited New Mexico.  Her craft space is amazing and has pretty much anything you might ever think you could need (probably in duplicate).   She showed me some techniques with distress stains.  Here are some of the cards I made:

Notice the bling, the ribbons, the shimmery papers, the shimmer spray, the bling.  So much glitz!  I think my cards have been taken to the next level.  ;-)

bicycle

This is a carving I did for a letterpress coaster swap.  I haven't gotten the coasters yet, but I'll try to post a photo when I do.  I like the vintage bicycle-- although my husband pointed out that the spokes are missing near the bike chain.  sigh.  Put this card together while visiting my friend, Deedee Stroud, in Albuquerque.  She thought of using the gear stickers (made using one of her punches and the xyron sticker maker).  I used a couple different color cardstocks in yellow and orange tones.  I think I like orange better.  I distressed the tags lightly by brushing with an antique linen distress inkpad.  The strip of green was embossed with  the Cuttlebug gear embossing folder.

zebra

I carved this zebra on Mar 29 from a photo taken at the Rio Grande Zoo while we were in Albuquerque a few weeks ago.  I used distress stains for the background.  I spritzed the blue with water to make the mottled effect.  Pretty pleased with how this card (and the stamp) turned out!

Stamping Mojo

You know, it's been a while since I've made cards.  And when I was working on cards the other night, I definitely felt as though I'd lost whatever stamping mojo I may have once had.  Things were just not turning out quite as I'd hoped.

I did appreciate how quickly one can make cards with the Cuttlebug, however. 

 
Still, that seemed a little like cheating.  And so I kept at it.  And things started gradually getting a tiny bit better. Still feeling a little rusty on the card making though.

handprint skulls

My son and I came up with this cute and easy Halloween decoration yesterday.  He decided to paint his hands white and rather than just wipe it off, we made handprints on black paper.  At first we thought we'd make ghosts, but they seemed to look more like skulls.  A little help from a black sharpie and we were done!

Measurement Swap

Crafting again!  I joined the Carving Consortium again and have signed up for a couple of swaps.  Here is my contribution for the measurement swap.
Of course I am late getting it into the mail.  I thought it had to be postmarked by today, but it was really supposed to be received by today!  I normally don't like background marks and usually try really hard to clean them all out.  I'm trying to be less anal about that.  Sometimes the background marks add a nice effect.

Sun Flares

Remember Tracy's Trinkets and Treasures? She had a sunset, sunrise, and sun flaire photo party that ended last week. Since I took my photos yesterday, I didn't participate but it was cool to learn a new technique. I really like the photos I took. There was an amazing ring around the sun for most of yesterday morning:


Of course I got a couple shots with interference:

The clouds were amazing too!