Dia De Los Muertos - Day of the Dead ATC

I'm hosting a swap for one of my yahoo groups called ATC_Fun. It's a lovely and talented group of ladies and I enjoy the group a lot. 
This swap is to celebrate the upcoming Mexican Holiday "Dia' De Los Muertos or Day of the Dead. 
Typically sugar skulls are used as a symbol for day of the dead so I went with a free printable sugar skull from about.com it's a really cool one and I added a few elements to it as well. 
To start this project I used black cardstock and ran it through a cuttlebug embossing folder with a design that I thought would look nice for the background. Prior to running the cardstock through, I painted the inside of the folder with Tim's Metallic Stains in the color Pewter . It gave the background a nice shimmery look. 

 Once that was done I sanded to top of the cardstock and ran over it with Black Soot Distress Ink to make the design pop a little more. 

The Piece on the top of this picture is the one that is sanded. It's not much different but it did add a bit more black and made it look more metallic. 

After that I took my printed out skulls and colored them with Distress Markers and since I don't have all the colors of Distress Markers I also used a few Bic Markers. You have to be careful with Bic though because they tend to run, that's why I love the Distress. 

I then wanted the sugar skulls to have a sort of sugary look so I used some embossing ink and Ranger's Clear Embossing powder over them AND while the embossing powder was heated and still wet I poured the new Dry Rock Candy Glitter over the top. Not all of the glitter sticks but it leaves just enough for it to look like sugar. It's the coolest stuff, I just love it. Not to mention the clear embossing powder really makes the Distress Ink Colors pop. Look how nice the skull turned out......

I also used the distress markers to color a stamp that says Dia De Los Muertos and stamped that onto white cardstock.

I love how you can just color a stamp with the markers and stamp with them and get a wonderful colorful image. 

Once that was done I cut out the words and added them to the ATC. 

Lastly I added a flower from the company Recollections  I thought it looked cool with this set. They are really cool and metal-ish looking.