More Distress Oxide fun with Erica

Hello! Erica back on the blog with more Distress Oxide ink techniques for today’s card! Told ya it wouldn’t be long before I did one.

This card was nearly turned into a shaker but I had a change of heart almost at the last minute but more about later. I have a friend who’s birthday is tomorrow so I made this card with her in mind and as she loves blue the main colour was easy to pick but as the Oxide inks only come in 12 colours (so far anyway, hopefully they will release more!) I went with the blues they have: Broken China and Faded Jeans. To round out the colours I also decided to add some Iced Spruce.

I cut out a 5.5″x4.25″ piece of Strathmore Bristol Vellum coated water colour card stock and taped this down on an old cutting plate with masking tape I bought at the hardware store. See how thrifty I am?? Using the small round ink blending tools, I prefer these to the rectangular ones, I blended the background with my three inks. If ink blending is something you struggle with, I can recommend these inks as they glide on like butter on hot toast! It also makes it easier if you have good quality, smooth water colour card stock.

When I was finished with the ink blending I grabbed some Gansai Tambi Starry Colors water colour palette and was going to splatter some gold on the background but decided against this too. Instead I smooched some Iced Spruce direct onto my craft mat, activated it with some water and splattered that on it. I liked where this was going and added some yellow splatters too, doing the same thing but with Fossilized Amber. I dried the panel with my heat tool as I didn’t really have the patience to wait for it to dry naturally, plus I sometimes find that the inks need a little helping hand drying completely. If they aren’t 100% dry, you run the risk of smudging them later. I have a card with a finger print in the ink as I touched it before it was dry. Not this one but another one.

My first idea for this was was to cut out a ballon in the panel using the biggest die in the Dotted Balloons set, then stamp the Mandala Flower and heat emboss it in gold and make the balloon part of the card a shaker compartment. After so many changes of heart for just one card so far, I’m guessing nobody will be surprised that I changed my mind yet again? No, I didn’t think so… Honestly, my crafting sessions can be such a roller-coaster! Well, anyway, I decided to do the Mandala in silver embossing powder and pop the balloon part up from the card using fun foam. I quickly did just that before any more changes of heart occurred.

I adhered the background and the foam covered balloon part to a card base. I also tied a bow around the bottom of the balloon in a blue-silver thread. Stepping back and looking at it, I decided it needed a little something else as it looked a bit flat-ish. Nobody panic now but I didn’t go to my beloved sequins. I know, I know… it’s such a curve-ball, I hope you are sitting down already so you don’t fall over from shock, lol!

I got my white Enamel Accents out and dotted some around the Mandala to give it a little bit more interest. What I adore about the Enamel Accents is that you can have tiny dots, medium dots or big huge dots and you won’t end up with those awkward sizes left like you do with the normal dots you buy ready made. Sure, these might not be as perfect as those but I really like doing this.

As one last little addition, I stamped ‘Happy Birthday’ from the Birthday Lions set in black in the left hand bottom corner. And with that, the card was done! This was a fun card to make and it’s easy to personalise this by changing the colour scheme or even adding the name of the recipient on the balloon. That would look cute!

Right, that’s it from me for today but I will be back next week with sneak peeks for the May release! Who else is excited?? Release week kicks off on the 22nd of May and you are going to love this one, it’s got lots of coordinating dies and fun stamp sets, I really can’t wait!

Happy crafting from Erica

PS you can find me on Instagram here  and on Facebook here

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