Silhouette Grasses Best Wishes Card

Angela and Janet are coming to my home today for a card making afternoon.  Janet is making the Minion card I blogged earlier HERE and this inked and spritzed grasses card is the one Angela will be making.  We both picked up this lovely Hobby Art Silhouette Grasses stamp at the Glitter Pot.  Jenny Mayes was demoing there and she used the stamp with distress inks and heat embossing.  Jenny had used Victorian Velvet ink which I have but Angela hasn't and she wasn't 100% sure she liked it.  So I've made a point of using Victorian Velvet ink so she can try it out for herself - and I've combined it with two of her fave colours - Dusty Concord and Seedless Preserves.

I applied the inks to a piece of Ranger Manila CS using sponge applicator tools.  I gave the inked piece a blast with my heat gun to dry the inks before stamping the image and heat embossing - didn't want any annoying stray embossing powder flecks!  Jane Gill was also demoing at the shop that day and she was colouring in stamped images using Derwent Inktense pencils.  Jane stamped the images with Onyx Black VersaFine ink, sprinkled on clear embossing powder and then heat embossed.  Hmmm, if I wanted a heat embossed black outline image I'd always stamped with VersaMark and sprinkled on black powder.  I'm always happy to try a new way though so I gave Jane's method a go - and I'm completely sold, that's the way I'll be doing it from now on!

I trimmed the grasses panel to size, inked the edges with Seedless Preserves ink and spritzed the panel with gold Perfect Pearls mist.  I knew I wanted an Elegant Eggplant mat layer but I wanted another colour between the stamped panel and the Eggplant one.  I tried a few different colours and wasn't happy with any until I tried matching the portion of the panel which had more Victorian Velvet ink on it and I was surprised to find Crisp Cantaloupe was a good match.  I never thought I'd be putting Eggplant and Cantaloupe together on a card but I've used just a very narrow Cantaloupe border and I think it works - I was happy with the finished result anyway! 

Here's the inside and envelope.  I stamped the grasses image in Elegant Eggplant ink as a border.  I got inky smudges on the border inside the card - grrrr - but I stamped the grasses again on a piece of Very Vanilla CS, cut it out and glued it to the bottom of the card and added a narrow strip of Rich Razzleberry CS. 

Supplies:
Stamps: 'Silhouette Grasses' stamp, 'Best Wishes' stamp & 'Sentiments' set all from Hobby Art,
CS: PaperMania square cream card blank, SU! Elegant Eggplant, Crisp Cantaloupe, Rich Razzleberry & Very Vanilla, Ranger Manila CS
Ink: VersaFine Onyx Black, SU! Elegant Eggplant & Rich Razzleberry, Ranger Tim Holtz Victorian Velvet, Dusty Concord & Seedless Preserves Distress Inks
Tools: heat tool, Ranger ink applicator tools & sponges, Stamp-a-ma-jig
Embellishments & accessories: clear embossing powder, Ranger Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls mist