Antiquing Techniques

Today's focal made use of some antiquing techniques.  The focal bird design was from a Victorian ornament book I purchased a long time ago and the design itself looked like this when I started:

To get the antique look, I inked the edges with brown ink, covered the whole element with embossing ink from a stamp pad, and then with clear UTEE (Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel). I heat embossed it, then quickly dipped it again in the UTEE before it could cool.  After repeating this step a couple of times, after heat embossing it I placed it face down over a bunch of microbeads before it cooled.  Then it was back to the embossing ink and UTEE for several more layers.  After I was happy with the thickness of the UTEE, before it cooled too much I bent it in various places to crack the UTEE.  Finally I rubbed a bunch of brown ink over the cracks.  That gave me an element that looked like this:

What a difference!  I already had the mat die cut - a leftover from a different card.  I added a little tag with a stamped greeting to this.  A bit of ribbon, and some die cuts (from Spellbinders Holly Motifs) for the corners, and my card is finished.