The Birds

Evening all, guess who was so tired yesterday she totally forgot to schedule her post for the new challenge over at the That's Crafty Challenge Blog - oops!
The theme for this fortnight is The Birds so you can make anything you like as long as there's some stamping and a bird somewhere.
Here's my inspiration using a favourite IndigoBlu bird stamp along with the details on how I made the background.

I wanted a fairly vintage style creation so I made a fairly shabby style background using an ink applicator to apply a patchwork effect of subtle shades of Distress inks in a repeating fashion. I used Wild Honey, Shabby Shutters, Crushed Olive and Tattered Rose starting with the lightest shade and building up.
I then used second generation stamping with the IndigoBlu Dinkie Vintage Flourish and Forest Moss Distress ink to make a frame around the edge of the inked paper. It's very forgiving as you can just carry on overstamping until you create an effect you like. If you do as I did, you'll end up with 2 decorated papers for the price of one as if you look below you'll see my stamp off paper and I know I'll be using it soon as I think it turned out looking rather good.

I stamped the IndigoBlu bird image on smooth stamping card with Archival Coffee ink and added colour with pencils (Spectrum Noir pencils are rather good). I then stamped around the edges of the panel with the flourish stamp and Squeezed Lemonade Distress ink for a subtle textured effect.
I distressed the edges of the panel with scissors and glued it to a piece of corrugated packaging (liberated from the office recycling) left au naturel as it goes so well with my kraft card blank.
I then distressed the edges of the background paper and added it to the card, gluing the bird panel on the left side.
I stamped the text from the Artistic Outpost Typography set with Archival Olive ink on a scrap of card, stamped on the flourish with the lemon ink, distressed the edges and added to a distressed mat of recycled brown paper before gluing to the card.

I hope you can join in with the challenge if you live in the UK as the prize is a £20 voucher for the online shop which has tons of fabulous crafty goodies to see.

Have a great weekend.
Fliss xx