More Birthdays & New Techniques

This past week I had two more birthdays that I needed cards for, as well as a challenge on my Yahoo group that was to show my idea of a favourite vacation.  So with this card I was able to satisfy all my needs.

The technique that I used to create the background for this card and the next one I'm going to show you is one I learned in a demo at a local scrapping store last Tuesday.  Many of my card making buddies have been using distress inks for quite awhile now but I have resisted as it is so far out of my comfort zone of my clean and simple cards.  However, to my surprise and with the encouragement of having M-J at my side I really did enjoy experimenting a bit. And if I do say so myself the end product isn't half bad either.
The stamp I used is one of M-J's Stampin Up stamps that really does epitomize my idea of a perfect relaxing vacation of sitting at the beach, watching the waves, reading a book and spending time with good friends.
One this first example I used more muted tones and stamped the image with sepia versafine. Then I matted it with brown C/S before putting on the card base.

The second card is brighter tones and it is stamp with my favourite go to ink black onyx versafine. It is matted with black before been attatched to its card base.

Because I wanted to enter these cards in a Cuttlebug challenge I added the swirling frame, sorry I can't remember the name of the embossing folder (I will add it later to this posting when I remember).

I must say that distress inks, spritzing and blending just may be in my future. It certainly was fun to see what can be done with it!

Thanks for dropping by,

Sandy