Leafy Flourish

I had so many ideas for Leafy Flourish, a new rubber stamp set from Sparkle N Sprinkle, but I finally settled on a color blocking scheme.

One of my other ideas is to create coasters out of plain tiles from the local big box home improvement center - but that will be for another day :-).

The way the background turned out really reminds me of a ceramic tile that you would see bordering a kitchen backsplash (or something like that).    I started out by coloring the stamp itself with Distress Markers (Squeezed Lemonade, Ripe Persimmon, Festive Berries, Faded jeans) and then stamping the colored image onto my cardstock.  Next it was heat embossed with Clear embossing powder.

Then I brought out my sponge daubers and vigorously applied Distress Ink (Tea Dye) to the entire background.  This rubbed off small areas of the heat embossed image, exposing the white cardstock in the background.  Love the variegated look this achieved for the background.  

Once that was completed, I covered the entire square with VersaMark and heat embossed Clear embossing powder a couple different times.  Doing it more than once gives it that textured look and feel.

To bring out the blue in the center of the image, I adhered 1/8" Tear-ific tape around the edges and burnished Blue Jewel glitter into the exposed adhesive.  1/8" Tear-ific Tape was also applied to the edges of the card base and covered with Orange Marmalade embossing powder. 

The sentiment, which is part of the set, was heat embossed onto Clear Embossable Acetate (using Black Soot Distress Ink and Clear embossing powder) and was die cut using the Banners Stacklet from Taylored Expressions.  The frame around the sentiment is also die cut from the same set and heat embossed with a couple layers of Clear embossing powder.  For this one, I made sure to throughly heat the powder each time, creating a perfectly smooth and shiny frame for the sentiment.