58 days to go - it's crafty countdown time

Owww, still feeling a little delicate from yesterdays party and night out.  We had such a good time.  It was great to see some mates from Create and Craft, there's some brilliant people there.  Loen is so funny, and it was great to be part of Andy's surprise party.  After the party myself, Rachel, Alan, Nigel, Joe, Hayley and Shaun carried on with the prosecco - which was great.  So nice to spend time with that lot - they are such good fun.  However, I'm feeling it today!  Still, I did manage to get my crafting done!  Hooray.

So, the challenge was you had to select 3 products for me to use - and the winner was "C".  If you are reading this please email me your address as you are the winner of the finished piece, I hope you like it.

C choose embossing paste, stamp and natural twine.  Funnily enough, I have all these things in my stash.  So, these are the goodies I choose to work with:

The stamps are from Paperartsy, and really cool designs.  I've used a Crafters Workshop stencil (one of my favourite companies), and then embossing paste from Dreamweaver.

I also choose to use paints to create my background.  I'm using Paperartsy chalk paints.  I like their consistency, and also the ability to layer with them.

I created a really loose background.  I popped a block of each colour to form a square, and then layered a little of each colour over the top.  I used a sponge, and didn't worry about attempting to be neat and tidy.  I like doing backgrounds like this, as you always get an interesting finish when you over stamp.

I used the background stamp first, twice, to great a base

I then stamped my first flower.  I made a mask out of scrap paper, and added glue to the back.  I used a quickie glue pen, as when the glue goes clear it remains tacky, but is repositionable.  The mask will allow you to over stamp - which looks like this

You can see I've stamped the next flowers on the white paper, and then when I remove the paper:

You see the flowers just sitting behind the first flower

I added some grasses, all using black momento ink

Then to use the texture paste.  I used my mask, which I stuck down with masking tape.  I didn't have proper low tack tape, so only applied a little dodgy masking tape.  And then I didn't have a spatula - obviously I do have one somewhere - it'll t!  However, I just used a lolly pop stick, which was fine.  I wasn't attempting to get a smooth perfect finish anyway, so it did the job perfectly.  

I blasted the embossing paste dry with my heat gun, you can see the shine from this photo.  It looks lovely.  

I cut my card base down.  I haven't mentioned, but I am using mount board, as I wanted a heavy card to withstand the paint and paste - and just in case I changed my mind and started adding lots more paint!  I then wrapped my string around the edge.

I found some burlap, and frayed the edges, to give it more texture.  I added a little paint onto the edges, and then glued it down under the string.

Next, I used a scrap of the mount board which I painted a background using the same paints.  I dried it with a blast from the heat gun, and then stamped my sentiment onto the card.  I cut it down and matted it onto a piece of black card

Finished.  I added glossy accents to some of the words on the sentiment.  I went over my stamp designs with my drawing pen, to emphasis the images.  I'm really happy with it