never stop exploring…

hello all! I hope that you are doing well. I am back today with a card that I created to help introduce the new distress color, Crackling Campfire. I was so excited to play with it and have some secret inking fun, thank you, Tim!

Of course, I’m in love already…but if you haven’t seen the new color in action, you should definitely take a peek at the Facebook Live that Tim hosted today, sharing this new illuminating color! See what I did there?

It is gorgeous and is surprisingly versatile for many different seasons…so it’s not only a BEAUTIFUL fall addition to the line. To check out the facebook live you can click here.

I chose to highlight the color today with a beachy kind of card! Crackling Campfire was the perfect color for my little seahorse. It also was used to create the beachy tropical background paper…but we’ll get to that in a little bit!

Hey, we all could use a little escape to the beach, right??

Let’s play around and make a few backgrounds with it…

This is the paper that I made first and happens to be the paper that the little seahorse was cut from…isn’t it yummy?

I simply spritzed the paper with water, spritzed it with Crackling Campfire Spray Stain, then dried it with my heat tool. I spritzed a little bit of the spray onto my craft mat, then spritzed it with water and dipped the paper into the drips, then I dried the paper again.

I spritzed the paper with a little water, let the drips sit for a tiny bit, then sopped them up with a towel. Easy Peasy!

Next, I played around and combined the oxide version of Campfire with a few tropical colors which included Cracked Pistachio, Peacock Feathers and a little Vintage Photo Distress Ink…because a tropical theme needs a bit of a sandy beach.

I smooshed the inks onto my craft mat, spritzed the inks with water and then dipped my paper into the ink, then dried it with my heat tool. The background on the right is the one that I chose to use on this card.

The seahorse and coral…

I used the first paper I created and cut out the seahorse from the Sizzix Bigz Sand & Sea, this is a discontinued die, but it may be able to be found on eBay or Etsy. Sorry about that, you can’t help when inspiration takes you down a discontinued path. LOL!

Then, with a palette knife, I spread on a tiny bit of Distress Crackle Texture Paste and sprinkled the pasted areas with some Crackling Campfire Embossing Glaze. He was then set aside to dry and crackle.

After I had him set aside, I thought hmmmm, wouldn’t it be cool to create some coral and add the crackle paste and glaze to them, it might make them look and feel like coral, and it totally worked!

Plus, to give a little extra something to them, I sprinkled the pieces with Clear Rock Candy Glitter, this was all done while the texture paste was still wet. After they were all dry and crackled, I embossed the glaze with my embossing gun.

p.s.-I always have a small container of the glitter that’s been tinted with Mushroom Alcohol Ink, turns out, it works perfect to add a little glisten to coral and as you’ll soon see, works for sand as well!

The seaweed…

The seaweed was created using some papers that were made using the same techniques that I previously shared, except that I made some with greens and blues and some with greens, blues, and flecks of the crackling campfire. I used the Funky Floral #1, Garden Greens and Wildflowers 2.

To add a little more depth to the background of the card, I smooshed Peacock Feathers and Cracked Pistachio onto the Rings Background Stamp (halftone & rings CMS260), spritzed the ink and stamp with water, then randomly stamped onto the background, and dried with a heat tool.

I blended the background with a little Antique Linen Distress Ink, stamped some random background text (newsprint CMS266) and trimmed it down. I drug the Paper Distresser along the edge to give it a well worn look.

I found a piece of string in my stash and wound it along the edge of the background, then using my sewing machine, ran a couple zig-zag stitches over top of the string.

A small vintage bead became the eye of the little seahorse and was added with collage medium.

The phrase (tiny text CMS394) was stamped onto a scrap of paper, trimmed and another piece of string wound around the end.

A short piece of mummy cloth was dyed using some drips of Antique Linen Distress Ink and water, dried and then added to the bottom of the arrangement.

I created another background using the mini Bubbles Layering Stencil (mini stencil set #46) and Distress Crackle Texture Paste. I smooshed some ink onto my craft mat then, using my finger, dabbed the ink into the crackled bubbles.

I found by using my finger to add the ink into the cracks, it left a softer watercolored look to the background. I dabbed the ink in, then dried it with my heat tool and added more until it was the look I was going for.

Using my sewing machine and white thread, I messy stitched loops and random swirls onto the paper. Some tiny flecks of campfire was added onto the background.

I added some more of that “sandy” glitter to the seahorse and onto a few areas of the distressed edge of the paper, using distress collage medium.

Some floral moss was added into the mix and all the elements adhered to the card.

With that, my card was complete…thanks so much for stopping by today!

Creatively yours,

Stacy

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