Distress Ink with Versamark Stamping

I've enjoyed playing with my distress inks.  For these cards, I played with stamping glossy cardstock with Versamark Ink and letting it dry thoroughly before making a background with it by adding distress ink with a brayer. This results in what looks like a white imprint on the colored background.  For this first card I cut strips that I added to a lacey card from Hot Off The Press. I cut another section for a focal and matted it.  The next card started with using this cardstock background for the card base, then stamping a tag onto a plain background and adding it for a focal.

The "THANKS" stamp is from K&Company's QueSeraSera Clear Stamps.  The birdcage is part of the "Sweet Tweets" acrylic stamp set from Hot Off the Press.  The stamp used on the ribbon is from Hot Off the Press's "Matching Borders and Focals" set.

Distress Inks

I finally got the distress inks I've been wanting as a Christmas gift, so had to start playing with them!  This focal stamped in black StazOn onto a background made from glossy cardstock that has distress ink applied with a brayer.  I had so much fun playing with these.  These cards all show focals made this way where the backgrounds have a single color of ink on each -- though equally nice effects can be achieved by using two or more colors of the distress ink on the same piece of glossy cardstock.  Here are a few more examples of quick cards made with Distress Ink backgrounds:

The bird stamps are "Sweet Treats" Acrylic Stamps from Hot Off the Press.  The butterfly and flower are from K&Company's QueSeraSera Stamps.

The card backgrounds (as opposed to the backgrounds for the stamped images) are either Paper Wishes cards or papers.

Stuff I WANT to organize

Today's post is about cardstock -- not how to organize it, but how to get more of it TO organize!  Core'dinations is having a drawing where they will be giving away new as-yet-unreleased packs of sandable embossed color-core!  They look really cool.  If you live in the United States or Canada you can enter their contest using this link.  If you win a pack I will win one as well!  How cool is that? If you're like me, you can never have enough cardstock, and this stuff looks GREAT for cards and scrapbooks alike.  But hurry, the deadline for entry is Friday the 21st.  (No, they haven't paid me anything to advertise this for them and I have nothing whatever to do with the contest -- except that I'd love to win it!)

Stamped Focals for Cards

I'm fairly new to stamping, but I LOVE the variety of acrylic stamps and the ease of seeing where I am placing the stamp.  (These are Inkadinkado stamps I bought at Joannes) I have to share a stamping aid with those of you that might not know about it.  Use your MOUSE PAD!  I have had a terrible time with stamps in the past - always ended up with areas that didn't stamp cleanly (presumably because the table or stamp or both weren't absolutely flat).  This of course, didn't make for very good focals!  After some frustration, I remembered that I had read somewhere about stamping on a mousepad.  I realized this would help to make up for any uneven surface, so I tried it. EUREKA! Focals with ALL parts stamped cleanly!  For both of these, I first stamped with black StazOn and then colored in with markers.