Bird in a Flowery Tree

Today's card uses a background stamp that I fell in love with.  It is from JustRite.  I've not used background stamps before and decided to experiment.  As you'll see as you read what I did, sometimes even "failures" can turn out nicely if you keep at it!

Materials:

• Glossy White Card Stock
• Peach Card Stock
• Song Bird Background Stamp (JustRite)
• VersaMark Ink
• Black Embossing Powder
• "Stream" Alcohol Ink (Ranger)
• Gel Pens
• Dove Blender
• Black Enamel Accents (Ranger)

Method:

1. First I stamped the background stamp using VersaMark and heat embossed it with black embossing powder.  I actually did this twice, because after heat embossing the first one I realized it had a glaring bit near the center that hadn't stamped!  I made good use of this mistake though, as you will see!
2. I decided to use alcohol ink to add color to the "good" stamped background.  It went on darker than I had hoped and I wanted to get it off the embossed black, so decided to try the Alcohol Blending Solution.  Bad idea!  It started removing some of the black embossing, so it was much duller in color than I wanted - and the alcohol ink was still pretty dark - and some of the black from the embossing was smeared on it - and a little of the black embossing was even missing leaving a visible white mark! Now I had TWO stamped images that didn't look very good! 
3. I sat back and looked at the two images wondering how I could make them work - I HATE throwing away stuff I've spent good supplies on! :)  
4. I suddenly got an idea.  If some of the black could come off and leave white behind, perhaps all of it could!  I continued working, adding blending solution to paper towels and "scrubbing" the area until the black embossing was all gone and the white was left as you see it. It took several paper towels and more blending solution than I would have liked, but it worked! (See Note below for how to achieve this look in an easier manner!)
5. Now that I had the black all removed, it looked much better, but it was a bit too much of a good thing.  I wanted the bird and flowers to stand out better than they did.  I found my eyes returning to the other stamped/embossed image with the "missing bits".  I realized much of the bird and flower section was intact.  So, I colored it with gel pens (blending with my Dove blender), fussy cut it out, and mounted it with foam tape for dimension.  
6. It worked!  I matted it with cardstock in a similar color to that used for the flowers, and added a dot of black Enamel Accents for the bird's eye, and I was done.  

Note: You can get the white resist look much easier if you simply emboss it with clear or white powder and use distress inks rather than alcohol inks.  Distress inks allow you to simply wipe with paper towel to remove the ink from the embossed area.