Altered Puzzle Challenge Week 9

Wow, can you believe that it's already week 9 of this challenge? Amazing how time flies! It seems like I just began the altered playing card challenge and here we are on another challenge into week 9 already. 

Here are the links to the previous posts for this challenge

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

Week 6

Week 7

Week 8

Our Facebook group is here:

Facebook Group

At any rate, Sunday was Father's Day but it was also mine and my husband's 18th anniversary! Time really does fly!!

This week I started with the two pieces and used distress stain in two different colors directly onto the background

Next I applied a darker color of ink around the edges of each piece

I then applied an even darker color again around the edges

I love how the colors graduate from darker to lighter towards the middle

Next I decided to use a stencil and two different crackle pastes, one is a white paste from Wendy Vecchi and the other is a clear crackle paint

This is the stencil I am using for both of these

I simply used a pallet knife to apply the crackle mediums through the stencil

This is what they looked like after application

Set both aside to dry thoroughly, I left mine for a few hours while I ran an errand

When I got back home they both looked like this... look at that crackle! So cool... I love the way the distress stain color bleeds through the crackle mediums.

Working with the brown piece I stamped this weed stamp onto my background. This is from an older Tim Holtz set, I also used this set for my images

Once again, I forgot to take photos of the next steps BUT, all I did was stamp butterflies onto white card stock and colored and cut them out and applied them to the top, I also just stamped my sentiment (Dylusions) and cut it out and added it

Here is my finished first piece (I love this one!)

For my blue piece, I only added a sentiment, I wasn't sure if I wanted to add anything else

I might add something later but for now I like it as-is

Here are the two pieces together

and the full puzzle so far, what do you think?

Again, sorry this post is late, I hope you enjoy making this week's pieces....

Have a great week!!!