Hello, it’s the birthday girl Erica on the blog today! Happy birthday to me, I’m 25 today, whoop whoop!! Admittedly, it’s something like the 13th time I’m 25 but honestly, who’s counting? I’m not one of these ‘let’s grow old gracefully’ kind of gals, nope, not me. Kicking and screaming is more my style. And when that fails, denial. Oh, and then drown my sorrows in cake! I have never denied being a bit of a drama queen when it comes to ageing.
The birthday cards and presents have been trickling in for a little while so I thought I’d best make some thank you cards to send out to people for making me feel special. One of my early birthday presents from my sweet husband was the full set of Distress Oxide inks and I decided to try some of these out for today’s cards.
The Distress Oxides are super smooth and so easy to ink blend (which I will most likely be doing on a card in the near future) but I thought I’d try some easy ink smooching on both white and black card stock to see how it came out. I did watch some tutorials by Tim Holt himself before I started because to be honest, I kinda had the ‘need the full set syndrome’ before even having tried a single one and told The Man who prompted me to get them. Which I did right away as the dutiful and obedient wife that I am….*I nearly managed to write that without falling off my chair laughing, lol*
Anyway… *still snickering to myself*… I picked out Fossilized Amber, Spiced Marmalade and Fired Brick as my colour combination. These I rubbed directly onto my craft mat and then spritzed some water on it to ‘activate’ the oxide process. Then it was a simple-ish procedure of putting a piece of card stock down on top, smooch-smooch-smooch and flip over. I used my heat tool to help the drying process along and watched the magic. My first piece was white card stock and it looked amazing!
Moving on to the black card stock, I did the same thing in the same ink puddle. This didn’t work out as great. In hindsight, I should have started from scratch with this one too but, not one to give up, I dried it with the heat tool. Once it was dry, it had a really unique and fun pattern on it so I decided to use it anyway. Next time I will use less water and more ink on dark card stock though.
As these were going to be thank you cards, I grabbed the ‘Mini Thank You’ stamp set which has been a freebie with qualifying orders but will be released on its own in June. On the black card I decided to heat emboss it in white to make it stand out, I thought just stamping it with white ink might make it disappear. Before I stamped it with VersaMark ink, I sprinkled the card base with my anti-static tool to avoid those pesky stray bits of embossing powder sticking where I didn’t want them. On the bright coloured card I decided to go with black ink and not heat emboss it. When I look at it now, I think I should have said yes to heat embossing on this one too but you know, you live and learn.
Even with the fun backgrounds I thought the cards looked a bit plain. What’s that? Me? A sequin addict?? Where is that coming from?! *erm, totally guilty* So, yeah, it should come as about ZERO surprise that I grabbed some sequins to add some pizazz to these cards. One of my favourite fusions is the Crystal Rainbow mix and I got out some yellow, orange and hot pink ones in different sizes. These I added in a ‘meteorite shower’ kind of pattern across the card, yellow sequins on the yellow ink, orange sequins on the orange ink and hot pink ones over the red ink.
 
These cards are actually quite quick to make, especially once you get the hang of the Distress Oxides and how much water to add etc. They are even quicker when you don’t stop and faff as much as I sometimes do whilst making a card!
If you take the plunge and get these inks, take some time to get to grips with them and play around. You never know what might come out of it, and having ready made backgrounds are always a time-saver for those times you need to make a card in record time.
Well, that’s it for me for today, I’m off to celebrate the rest of my birthday with The Man and The Cheeky Chicas. And most likely a big piece of cake or four, since birthday calories don’t count.
Happy crafting from Erica
Happy Birthday to you
and eat some cake for
me! The cards came
out lovely and I do
need some of these
inks.
Carla from Utah
Plenty of cake has been consumed, Carla! I’m pretty sure even my yoga pants are groaning from being stretched out but oh boy, it was worth it!
Thanks for the lovely comment about the cards, I’m so glad you like them! Have fun with the inks if you get them 🙂
Happy birthday!! I hope you enjoyed your thirteenth 25th and took advantage of cake without calorie counting. Your cards are fabulous and I think the black one turned out wonderfully!
Thank you, Kate! I really enjoyed my 13th 25th birthday, it was a lovely day and I’m being spoilt by having extended birthday celebrations too. No calories will count until Monday, surely by then I’ll be super skinny from lack of them. that’s how it works, isn’t it??
I’m glad you like the cards!
Super awesome cards!
Thank you so much, Kirsty! I appreciate hearing that so much!
Happy Birthday! I too had the “need the full set” syndrome and then have been a little unsure of just how to use them. After seeing your cards, now I can’t wait to try this. Thanks so much for the inspiration!
No problems, Darlene! Happy to help 🙂 I hope you are having fun playing with them!
I busted out laughing when you said you were the obedient wife…. LOL I don’t know you, but I could tell you are a cut up!!!! 😉 HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!! Your cards are GREAT!!!! I’ve been “needing” that full set too! LOL I will tell my man! 😉 He’s been SO GOOD lately about letting me get stamping goodies, I don’t want to stress him out too much though! 😉 No, those birthday calories DON’T COUNT! 😉 ENJOY YOUR CAKE!!! 😉
LOL, I’m absolutely an obedient wife, how dare you?? I resemble that remark! 😉 I ate way too much cake if you can believe it, I actually got heart palpitations from over-comsumption of sugar (I’m not a spring chicken anymore)