Happy Anniversary

My sweetie and I are celebrating our anniversary this month, so I've been attempting to come up with a card for him.  Sometimes the hardest cards to make are for the ones you love the most--very strange.

Anyway, if you've been following my blog for long, you know I love to play with distress inks.  I'm especially fond of the impressionistic look you can get with a dab of distress ink and a few squirts of water. That's how I created the back ground on this card. I used water color paper so it would stand up to the moisture, and simply dripped various distress reinkers on, then misted with water.  To get the little splatters, I tapped a distress ink pad on my splat mat, dipped a wet paint brush in, then tapped the brush to make the splatters.

When it was dry, I stamped the swirls in VersaFine Onyx Black.  Never able to leave well enough alone, I decided to outline the swirls with a gold Krylon pen. I think it added a touch of sparkle without resorting to glitter. A girl's got to have her sparkle, don't ya know. The Krylon pens are so beautiful. If you like the metallic look, and haven't tried them, I encourage you to get one and play. They're not like any other metallic pen out there. Oh, and by the way, the tips are replaceable if need be (um, don't ask, just trust me).

Okay, back to the card.  The sentiment was stamped on white card, and cut with a Half and Half die from, guess who?--Papertrey.  To mat it I decided to cut another Half and Half out of black, trimmed the white one down slightly, adhered the two together, then popped them up with dimensionals.  A few blue/green dew drops and a bit of black matting finished up the focal, which was adhered to a white card base.

I'm not sure if this is the one I'll give him. But I did feel like an artiste' making it.

Do you find yourself returning to the same technique(s) over and over? Or am I just stuck in a rut--on second thought, don't answer that one! Ha.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by today. Now, go do something artsy--it's good for the soul.