Funky Monkey

Today's post is a result of me playing around with backgrounds and heat embossing. The backgrounds that I have used for all these cards, are made with various ways of using distress oxide inks. 

On the first card, "Funky Monkey", I have done ink blending. I did this one a while back, so I don't really remember which colors I used, but I remember that I was after a fall-leaves colored look. When I was happy with it, I spritzed it with some water mixed with Perfect Pearls, Perfect Pearl Mist, which I have mixed myself, adding water to the shimmery Perfect Pearl powder. 

I have a collection of these really beautiful animal stamps, and I have used three of these animals in these cards. I stamped all three on the backgrounds with Versamark Ink, and then I heat embossed them. The monkey and the lion are heat embossed with Copper Penny heat embossing powder from Martha Stewart, and on the whale I have used Vintage Royal Blue embossing tinsel from Stampendous!.

On the other two cards, the whale and the lion, I have done distress oxide "smushing". Smushing is when you rub your ink pad onto a surface like for instant a glass media mat, or something that the ink doesn't attach to, so that it will transfer easily onto your card stock. Then you can either spray the ink with water, or just smush/rub your card stock into the ink on your work surface. That is what I did, I first smushed my paper in the ink with no water added, and then afterwards I diluted the ink with water and went back and smushed again. It is important to remember to dry the paper in between each "smushing", otherwise you will most likely end up with a big muddy mess. To finish these two backgrounds up, I dipped a painting brush in some water-diluted ink and tapped it to get a drop effect on the surface. Last, but not least, I used some matching Nuvo Drops to add a little extra to the cards.😂

I just love the effect of the copper penny embossing powder on the monkey and the lion card, and so far heat embossing is the method of using these stamps that is my favorite! I have tried to color them as well, however, as they have no clear defined borders, it is hard to know how to color them.