Birds and Nature

Good morning folks, I'm slightly late here with my post for the first challenge of 2012 over at Make My Monday as I had a struggle to get up again (it seems that the older I get, the longer it takes to recover from a late night - groan!)
It's my turn to choose the theme for this month and I decided on a favourite of mine, NATURE, with the challenge for this week being to include BIRDS on your creation. A nice easy one to start off the year and hopefully welcome after all those Christmas themes.

I've chosen to use my brand new Hero Arts bird collage stamp which I stamped on Judikins matte chrome coat card with Memento Rich Cocoa ink. I then coloured the panel by sponging with various shades of Distress ink. I find that if you sponge a light colour all over first (I used Scattered Straw), the rest of the colours blend in really well. I then trimmed the panel using a corner rounding punch and cut out round the left edge. I added the panel to a mat of deep green card also trimmed with the corner punch and embossed in one corner.
I then made an embossed panel using my new Papermania tri boss leaf folder and didn't realise until I used it what the tri boss bit means. If you look at the panel which I inked with Shabby Shutters, Crushed Olive and Forest Moss Distress inks, the embossed leaves are actually double embossed so that the leaf veins stand out really well. A very clever touch Docrafts! I added the panel to a deep green mat.
I made a panel using my favourite Distress Ink Grunge Background Technique (this was inspired by watching Tim demo a few years back - he's in fact so inspirational that just watching him sparked off a load of new ideas). I used Shabby Shutters, Bundled Sage and Crushed Olive and stamped on a leaf sprig from the Hero Arts real flowers set ( a real favourite from my collection) with Bundled Sage. I then assembled the card as you see.

I've also donated the prize for this month and the winner will also be a future Guest Designer so hop on over for all the details plus lots of fabulous inspiration from the Design Team. Hope to see you there!

Challenges for my card:
Paper Sundaes - Something Old (leaf stamp & technique), Something New (bird stamp & embossing folder)
Secret Crafter - Anything Goes
Card Crafters Circle - Anything Goes
Paper Creations Ink - Die Cuts And/Or Punches
Simon Says Stamp & Show - Something Old, Something New (see above)

Thanks for looking and have a lovely day with hopefully the sunshine we have here today.
Hugs, Fliss xx