The Craft's Meow September Blog Hop

It's the 7th of the month, and that means our traditional blog hop at The Craft's Meow!  Our theme this month is Anything Goes, using a favorite technique.  You should have arrived from Larissa's blog.  If you just happened across me today and want to start at the beginning, here is a listing of all blogs participating:

Amy Crockett

Angelica Suarez

Clare Buswell
Deborah Nolan

Gayatri Murali

Jennie Harper

Jessica Fick

Jinny Newlin

Karen Baker

Larissa Heskett

Lin Brandyberry (you are here)

Nina Brackett

Sharri Seffens

One of my favorite techniques is called Layered Stamping.  It involves building up various stamps and inks, all on the same level.  Maybe seeing my card will help explain, and then I'll go into detail

To begin, I stamped the Amazing Grace quote from our Beautiful Hymns set, in VersaMark ink 4 times down the center of my watercolor panel, offsetting it to the right slightly each time.  Then I clear embossed those words.  Next, I used an acrylic block and inked it directly with some distress inks: rusty hinge, scattered straw, and peeled paint, splotching on color almost all over the block.  The block was spritzed quite a bit with water to encourage the inks to blend, and then I stamped over my sentiment panel with that acrylic block and allowed the wet inks to soak into the watercolor paper.  After removing my block and blotting up any puddles of excess ink, and using my finger to move some of those puddles into areas that didn't take any ink, I then allowed the panel to dry. The heat embossed words resist the inks and stand out from the background.  I like the uneven edges that this method results in, and you won't ever get the same results twice!

Next I overstamped this beautiful flourish from our Fancy Flourishes set, in opposite corners of my panel, first in rusty hinge and then in peeled paint.  The panel was then added to my rust card base.  To finish I chose 2 Prima resist canvas flowers and colored them with distress inks and water.  I smooshed some of the inks on my kraft sheet, spritzed with water, then used my finger to transfer the ink color to the canvas flowers.  Again, since the canvas has some resist script already on it, the ink settles around the resist.  After allowing them to dry, I added a button and some twine and popped the layered flower above my card as you see it.  Here's a close-up of the finished flowers.

The Layered Stamped Background technique is one I learned from Sharri Carroll, and if you'd like to see a video of it, HERE's one from You Tube.  Like I said, you will never get the exact same results each time when you ink that acrylic block, but that's the beauty of it!

ETA: I'd like to enter this card into the Moxie Fab World's Handmade Cards Week: Color Media Challenge, for the distress inks and techniques I used on it.

Here are the stamp sets I used today:

Beautiful Hymns

Fancy Flourishes

Now it's time to hop on to Nina's blog!  (Coincidentally, Nina is the designer of both of the stamp sets I used today!)  I know that she'll have something extra special to share with you!

Would you like to win a $15.00 gift certificate to The Craft's Meow Store?   Make a card using at least 1 TCM stamp by Sunday, Sept. 15 at 8:00 PM PDT and post it at The Craft's Meow Blog.  The theme is "Anything Goes", so it's wide open!  Can't wait to see what you make for us!