All Rise for Ella Bella The Grunge Princess.

Happy New Year Blogg Land. I hope you all had a good Christmas New Year.I don't usually make resolutions, because I always break them in the first few day. But this year I have made three and I will keep to them, because they all revolve round my passion, Craft. They are to try a different style of craft, design my own range of Digi Stamps and blogg more. So tick, tick, tick. So far, so good. This card is the different style of crafting. I have always loved Hels Sheridan's style of crafting, and I wanted to give it a go, which I did, but with no success. Well that was before I got some expert advice and things started to fall into place. So I decided to make a background for a card using the new technique, Grunge!

I had an idea for a card using two of my favourite IndigoBlu stamps, Ella Bella and Floral Swirl. You can find these stamps and all of the amazing IndigoBlu range here. I wanted to incorporate my new love of Grunge, but it had to be pretty, because the stamp warranted it. I tried the wrinkle free technique, all full tutorial to come this week so watch this space, but all the results were too grungy. so I decided to do the direct ink technique, again tutorial to come. I laid four colours of Tim Holtz Distress Inks on white card a little at a time. the colours I used were Worn lipstick, Seedless Preserves, Mustard Seed and Barn Door. The good thing about this technique is that id I has done another background it would be completely different. I used cut and dry foam to lay the ink down, until I was happy with it. I then stamped the Floral Swirl stamp with Seedless Preserves, in the top left and bottom right corners to leave a very subtle faint impression. I them stamp Ella Bella as the focal image in Walnut Stain, directly onto the background. I then went round the edges with Walnut Stain to age it. I didn't have any brown card to mount lay it on so I used a piece of white card and inked the edges with Walnut Stain. I used the Walnut stain edged card to mat onto gold mirror card and laid the grunge topper onto both and them glued it onto a 5.5 by 5.5 inch card blank.

I looked at the card and wondered what I could embellish it with, after a lot of humming and arring I decided that all it need was some small Aurora Borealis gems. I placed three of the gems at the top left and bottom right of the card. There we have it my take on pretty grunge. I hope you like it.

Ian xx

I have entered my card into the IndigoBlu Challenge Blogg. You can find the challenge here