Pinks and Pearls

Hello everyone!  I hope you are enjoying the beginning of a wonderful summer (at least in the northern hemisphere) weekend.  I'm back with a project that was a bit of a stretch for my creative muscles.  It was so much outside my wheelhouse that I might as well have started practicing Zero-Gravity maneuvers.  I really felt like I was in outer space at times.  I think I stressed more over the details on this card than I ever have on any other project.

The inspiration for this card started with some sales purchases that I made at Michaels craft store.  I found the Recollections diecut butterfly/flower tag, Heidi Swapp pink plaid tape, and Wish wood embellishment and thought they would look great on a birthday card.  Also during this time, I was playing with Distress Crackle Paint and Perfect Pearls for Tim Holtz's Summer of Creative Chemistry and here is the result of that  perfect storm :)

 

I began by giving the non-diecut part of the tag and Wish wood cutout a good coat of Picket Fence Distress Crackle Paint.  It pained me to let it dry naturally, but the crackle finish that you get when you don't use the heat tool is wonderful.  While that dried, I worked on the background for my card.  I gave the whole background a coat of Old Paper Distress Ink.  Then I added the Heidi Swapp pink plaid tape at the top.  I stamped the Recollections doily with Weathered Wood, Bundled Sage and Antique Linen Distress Paint.  Once that dried, I used a Wild Honey and Walnut Stain Distress Ink over the entire background.  It was a bit too dark for I wanted.  So I ended up giving the entire background a wash of watered down Antique Linen Paint.   I brought out some of the details of the doilies with a Frayed Burlap Distress Marker.  The edges of the background were distressed and inked with Walnut Stain Distress Ink.

Next I grabbed my tag and began to give it some color.  I used Scattered Straw and Walnut Stain Distress Ink.  Then I used a Waterbrush to mix Gumball Perfect Pearls and Spun Sugar Distress Ink and washed pearly mixture over some areas of my crackled paint.  You can't really see it on the tag in the picture above, but you can see the pearly wash a little better on the Wish wood piece below.  I used a thicker version of this mixture on the butterfly die cut.  I gave it two coats and then went over  the entire butterfly with Glossy Accents.   The butterfly got it's very own flower that I found in my stash.  I mixed Broken China with with a blue Perfect Pearl and applied it to the petals with the waterbrush.  When that dried, I added some Walnut Stain Distress Ink with water brush over the top of all the petals.  The diecut flowers on the tag were treated similarly (see below) with a mixture of Perfect Gold Perfect Pearls and Wild Honey Distress Ink.  Gorgeous sheen!!  Again I used Glossy Accents to cover the diecut flowers and adhere the pearl flower centers.  The entire tag was grunged with some Walnut Stain Distress Paint and Distress Marker.  The tag was finally topped with a sage green velvet ribbon.

I love how the grunged Wish turned out.  The juxtaposition of the pearled pink with with grungy Walnut Stain and white crackle paint is seriously one of my favorite finishes.  The tiny metal butterfly was another stash find.  It was given a layered Distress Paint treatment in Weathered Wood, Bundled Sage and Walnut Stain.  He has a beautiful pearl and rhinestone sticker flight path to follow when he decides to jump off of the "h".

 I found several ribbons an trimmings in my stash (including some pink pearls) to go with my Pinks and Pearls theme.  It really took me forever to figure out where to place things on this piece to keep a balance of texture, color and shape.  Whew!!  Finally ... it's finished!

Thanks for walking along this journey with me.  It was definitely a learning process.  I envy those of you who can create amazingly romantic, layered cards in your sleep.  You guys are rock stars!!!

I'm going to enter this in the following challenges:
Frilly and Funkie's Pastels and Pearls Challenge
Tuesday Throwdown's Tuesday Throwdown 299 Distressing Challenge

Well, back to work.  Have a great weekend!  -- Mary Elizabeth