Toy's Haven

Happy Memorial Day, Friends!

It’s been a busy day here already and we haven’t even fired up the grill yet.   I started my day making a big batch of pasta salad (a personal favorite) and getting chicken ready to be grilled.   I have already cleaned my kitchen twice and if you saw it right now, you wouldn’t believe me.

I did make the time to play in this week’s There She Goes Monday Challenge (TSG158-Cork It).   I actually DO have cork, but I wanted to go over this technique I developed a while back that gives you a faux cork look.

Here’s my card:

Ok, now for how I did the faux cork.

First, I took a piece of white cardstock.   Using a sponge, I smeared (yes, smeared) Tim Holtz tea bag distressing ink in an area large enough for what I needed.  Get a good coverage.

Then I took a porous sponge (actually that dense styrofoam type packing material works too) and I dabbed that in versamark.   I tapped the sponge on my distressed area randomly and then covered it in clear embossing powder.  When you tap off the excess embossing powder, look at your piece to see if there are gaps.  If you have too much coverage, take a small paint brush and tap it randomly on the piece to remove some.  Heat set the embossing powder.

Next, I took Tim Holtz antique photo distressing ink and dabbed it generously onto the piece, then rubbed it in a bit with my sponge so that some comes off the embossed area.   I then repeated that step with both close to cocoa and chocolate chip ink.

Here is a close up of the faux cork piece:

I have used this technique using blue inks, too and it looked awesome.

Here are my details:

Stamps:  There She Goes’ Hibiscus

Papers: GP White, Mellow Moss, Really Rust, Cosmo Cricket Wanted dp

Ink: Versafine Black Onyx, Versamark, Tim Holtz Tea bag and Antique Photo distressing Inks, Close to Cocoa, Chocolate Chip

Accessories: 1/2″ rust twill, jute, liquid pearls, photo corner punch, Musical flourish embossing folder, oval nesties, sponges, clear embossing powder, word window punch, hole punch, dimensionals, sticky tape.

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Thanks for stopping by!  I hope you’ll pop over to the There She Goes’ team blog and play along!

Hugs!