Altered Playing Card Challenge Week 13

I hope that all those in the US had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that you enjoyed your week. I also hope that you all had a chance to get caught up with all the previous weeks.

We are up to week 13 of the playing card challenge.

If you have missed any of the previous week's here are the links

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6 
Week 7
Week 8

Week 9
Week 10
Week 11
Week 12

and our Facebook page

Facebook Group

and the Pinterest Board link

Pinterest Board

We usually work each week with a theme, I haven't made a theme for some weeks but most of them have had a theme. This week's theme is going to be Bees! Who doesn't love bees? They spread love wherever they go and I happen to love them!

For my First card I used two colors of acrylic paint, a weird orange color and a light brown. I say weird orange because it's not true orange but it's not light orange either, it's just the orange I happen to have haha!!

I used a little piece of sponge to dab on the orange first, let that layer dry and then dab on some brown here and there over the orange. It gives it a kind of texture feel

It doesn't look like much yet but it will once we are all done.
Next I used a few honeycomb stamps along with Versafine ink to stamp here and there on my background. I like using versa fine for the clear stamps because it gives me a nice crisp image.
The first stamp I used a stamping block to stamp my image 

The second stamp I used without a stamp block because I wanted it to look splotchy and only wanted to stamp a partial image here and there. Using the stamp without a block allows me to do that

Next I ran my Tim Holtz frameworks honeycomb die and some misc printed paper, cork paper and black card stock through the big shot. I will use these for both of my altered playing cards this week so I just cut out a bunch

I added a honeycomb piece and some of the cork paper and printed papers to the bottom portion of my card
( I cannot recall where I got my cork paper but it's pretty thin and I know it comes in adhesive backed and just regular, mine is regular, EK Success makes a cork paper too.. here is a link Cork Paper)

Next, since this week is all about Bees, I used a bee stamp and heat embossed my bee onto some pretty printed paper
(I like to use my scratch paper this way) 

I then used a 1" circle punch to cut out my bee, here I did two bees but ended up only using one of them

I used a marker to add some yellow to my bee

I also stamped my sentiment and used a torn piece of paper, I edged all of these with the Adirondack Espresso color

Lastly I just put my card together

At this point I wasn't quite satisfied so I added a little crackle paint in three places, if you look closely you can see the paint, it's shiny in three places

Lastly I wanted my bee circle to have depth so I added some Glossy Accents, it kind of gives it a "button" feel

It takes awhile for glossy accents to dry if it's used like this so I put a Stampin Up box over my card to prevent dust from falling in my glossy accents

Here is my finished card

Whew... that seemed like a lot of steps for the first card... I think the second card is easier..

First I inked my entire background with Archival yellow Saffron ink

Next I used a brown ink and Tim Holtz Honeycomb stencil

I wanted to cover up the XOX that was on the right side of my card so I used torn paper and edged that with the same brown ink

For the Bee, I took the same steps as the 1st card and heat embossed it. Rather than do a circle though, I simply cut it out
This Bee comes from one of Tim Holtz stamps sets

Again I used my honeycomb pieces of paper for this card, this time I just used the centers instead of the black outline

I also used a brown marker to draw around each of my brown honeycombs, I also stamped my sentiment on the same paper as the bee and edged that with the brown adirondack ink.
I added a black piece of torn printed paper as well. (I have so much card stock that has only partially been used so it's nice to use it for these smaller projects)

Here is my finished 2nd card

And here are my two finished cards for week 13

My glossy accents wasn't quite dry in the first card when the photo was taken but here is a close up of the crackle paint
You can see it in the upper left, middle right and lower left of the card.

We are having a give-a-way this week.

In order to win you must be following along with the Altered Playing Card Challenge and creating your own. 

Just leave a comment to be entered to win and I will randomly draw a winner. I will announce the winner in next week's post.

Here is what you could win this week!!

Have a great week all and have fun with these!!
CHEERS!

Tim's Tags of 2014 - April Postcard

Hello all and thank you for stopping by and checking out my creation for Tim's Tags of 2014 APRIL

I just love Tim's tag this month as he has embraced his softer side. Tim's creations are always so wonderful and this tag did not disappoint 

Once again I am making postcards with the tags and I am making two each month. One for me and one for a friend of mine

For my postcards I used some different colors of Distress paints and inks than Tim but kept the same steps and concept

 I do not have the framework die that Tim used so I used the Honeycomb framework die for my project

I also used some of Tim's Eclectic Elements fabric and simply glued it onto grungeboard and ran it through the Big Shot.  I can use the parts for my honeycomb

This is what my backgrounds looked like before I added my other elements

Once everything was put together I had two finished postcards. I used Tim's Idea-ology tag labels for my word "Beauty"

I stamped the Bee onto Wendy Vecchi Clearly For Art with Staz-on ink and colored it with copic markers, cut it out, heated and shaped them

Thanks so much for stopping by and make sure to check out Tim's Tag for April, it's amazing as always!!

Cheers!