Mojo Monday #453 & MFT Color Challenge 48 | SSS Dream Distress Ink Card

There were A LOT of challenges this week that I was interested in doing from sketch challenges to color challenges. I decided to pick both a sketch and color challenge as the base for my card idea. You'll see that I tweaked some things for each challenge to make my own individual card and design.

I began my card by referring to MFT Color Challenge #48. The combination of colors was really pretty, and I was in the mood for making a distress ink background so I pulled distress inks that closely matched the MFT colors: Crushed Olive, Evergreen Bough, and Shaded Lilac. I was unable to find a similar color to "Lavender Fields" from my distress ink collection, so I left that color out. For my background, I cut down some Ranger Watercolor Cardstock and used blue painters tape to adhere it temporarily to my craft mat. Whenever ink blending, there's a lot of handwork put into it to get the color onto the paper without splotches and to blend the colors together, so having the paper adhered down makes it easier for me to work with it. I began with Crushed Olive, then added Evergreen Bough in the middle and blended some with the Crushed Olive. Lastly, I added Shaded Lilac and blended some with the Evergreen Bough. In the end, it looked like there were 5 different colors because of the blending into one another. I could have kept each color separate, but what I love most about distress inks is the blending of one color INTO another and seeing what new colors result from that.

I finished off the background by spritzing it with some water, dabbing off the water with a paper towel, spritzing with some Sparkle Shimmer Spritz, and then dabbing the excess with a paper towel. Lastly, I heat set it with my heat tool to ensure all the colors and shimmer stayed put on the background while I removed it from the craft mat and cut it down for my card.

As for Mojo Monday 453, I decided to not include the square in the middle or the flag to the side. With using the distress ink background that I created, I did not want to cover it up with some plain cardstock. I kept the concept of cutting my background piece at a diagonal and adhering it to my card. To cover up some of the white space on the top and bottom of the card, I cut down some SU Bermuda Bay paper to fill in those spaces.

I felt the SU paper looked a bit plain next to my distress ink background. I had already thought about using the dream die from the SSS June 2016 Look for the Miracles card kit. I have it stored with the stamp set from the kit, so when I pulled the stamp set, I decided to use some of the leaf stamps to do some tone-on-tone stamping on the SU paper to fill in the emptiness. To create the tone-on-tone look, I just used versa mark ink. I thought about heat embossing it with clear embossing powder, but I felt that might lighten the color, so I just heat set the ink without embossing powder.

I then took the Dream die cut and cut it out 5x from white cardstock. Only 3 of the die cuts went through the paper -- I think it's time to switch out my Big Shot plates for new ones -- so I just used the 3 instead of cutting out some more. I then used Ranger Multi Matte Medium to adhere the die cuts one on top of the other to make a 3D sentiment. I learned from making my Prayers cards that this adhesive does better when adhering intricate die cuts because the adhesive dries matte instead of glossy. I adhered the Dream sentiment on top of my distress background. I finished off the card using Clear Wink of Stella on the Dream sentiment and to outline the leaf stamped images and some PPP Sparkling Clear Sequins.

Because of all the shimmer included on this card, I decided it would only be appropriate to also enter it into the Simon Says Add Shimmer Wednesday Challenge. And... although my card doesn't include Lawn Fawn stamps, I am going to enter it into Lawnscaping Challenge: Distress Maniacs as well.