Back to High School

Hello there, welcome.

Today I exhausted myself trying to get these cards done. It isn't the cards that made me so tired,

it is the thought that my grandson will be a senior and his sister a freshman. Both will be starting the year at a new school. Where does the time go!!

I decided to use some of the Tim Holtz products that have been calling my name while doing some DE construction on the house to prepare for construction. Talk about distress and grunge. All that manual labor got me in the mood 😅.

This card is for the senior as indicated by the number circled on the ruler at the bottom of the card. 

I pulled some older backgrounds from my stash and started adding colors and stencils. All the stamps with the exception of the sentiment came from The Professor. I will list all the supplies for both cards below. 

the light bulb was fun! I think I'll do that again but use a lighter embossing powder.  This was detail powder but it still was a little heavy. I lifted the background ink behind it and put on a layer of Picket Fence Distress paint. Dried it and painted on some Flickering Candle Mica Stain. I made the bulb out of Mica and metallic silver paper. I added a bit of the colored mica stain to the mica bulb as well.  I added a very thin coil of copper wire to the bulb adhered with the Glossy Accents.  (The copper came from some of the house demo. Waste not, want not!) The Professor himself was stamped in black Archival ink and watercolored with Distress Inks. His glasses have a touch of metallic gel pen on the frames and the lenses have a covering of Glossy Accents.

The second card is for my granddaughter, the freshman, thus the 9 marked on the ruler. The colors used were very similar to the first card with the exception of the blue. This one uses Uncharted Mariner. I stamped the butterfly in black Archival ink, then embossed it twice with Uncharted Mariner glaze. Then I mixed Mica stain colors and some water until I achieved the right colors then painted the open areas of the wings. the butterfly body is attached to the card front with Collage Medium so the wings are loose. 

The books are stamped directly onto the background and embossed in black. I lifted the background colors a little in order to paint the books. It worked fairly well. I didn't like any of the paper colors I had to frame the panel so I used some ink and mica stain together with some water and brushed it on the card base around the edges. I really wish sparkle showed in photography a little better as the butterfly is quite pretty.

Materials:

Distress Ink -Antique Linen, Tea Dye, Scattered Straw, Barn Door, Prize Ribbon, Aged Mahogany, Fossilized Amber, Uncharted Mariner

Oxide Ink- Speckled Ink, Faded Jeans

Mica Stains - Flickering Candle, Winterberry, Jack o Lantern, Frosted Juniper

Stamps -  All Stampers Anonymous: CMS373, THMM115, THMM118, THMM119, THMB024

Stencil - THMST52

Embossing Glaze- Uncharted Mariner

Collage Medium, Black Archival ink, Mica, Glossy accents, Metallic sticker book, Picket fence Distress Paint,