Life's a Journey - Enjoy the Ride!

Hi there stampers!

I'm back today with another card featuring a fun inking technique! This one is a little crazy but oh, so fun!  The idea was to create a brick wall as a backdrop for a great motorcycle image. Here's my card:

The stamp set is featured in the annual catalog and is sure to attract lots of love from fans of motorcycles.  I want to focus on the brick wall!  The background brick wall is a piece of watercolor paper that I got fairly wet with my Aqua Painter; just water, no color at first. When the paper was pretty wet, I applied 4-5 drops of Cajun Craze reinker to the paper. As you can imagine, the ink exploded into starbursts and ran all over because of the water that was already on the paper. I used my aqua painter to spread it around a little bit. Quickly, I then ground coarse Sea Salt over the whole surface. The Sea Salt did really fun things to the ink from crystalizing it a bit to making it darker. It have the paper some texture. I used my heat tool to dry the paper and then rubbed off the bigger flecks of Sea Salt. I then embossed the paper in my Big Shot with the Brick Wall embossing folder. There it was ... a perfect, aged brick wall. This technique is easy to adapt for any color or design, just water, reinkers and sea salt.  This was one of the most popular techniques I demonstrated at my recent "All About Ink" class. I'll be doing another one at the end of the month and due to popularity, will do many more!

Rubber stamping as a craft and industry has exploded in the last 5-10 years!  It's a hobby and art that can take many forms, be tailored to any budget and provide hours of entertainment, relaxation, creativity and therapy. Contact me if you are interested in learning more!

Happy Stampin'!
Sarah