All Cracked Up

You are the best!! I have gotten such joy from reading your comments on how to deal with the blues. I even did several of them yesterday:retail therapy, chocolate, ice cream, hugging my boys, alone time, stamping, prayer...I wasn't completely cured but I certainly felt better by bedtime. Today is another day! If you haven't left a comment yet, please do so you can get in on the Inky Treasures.
Today's card is one I did a few days ago and is the result of lots of trial and error. I got my new pad of Palette 'O Prints designer paper this week and wanted to use it. (this cool double sided paper sampler will be available in May as a purchase with purchase deal, see your Demo for more details) I also tried to sew again. Boy do I need help with straight stitches! I am preferring to call them handmade touches! The stitches were so bad I almost threw out the card but I couldn't bring myself to do it so I covered most of it instead. Like I tell my stampers, there are few mistakes in stamping, just lots of opportunities to layer and embellish! I stamped the main panel with Cheesecloth, Both Way Blossoms and Petal Prints. The colors are so saffron, more mustard, bravo burgundy, always artichoke, and brown, some markers some aquapainter coloring. I embossed the whole thing 2x's with UTEE with the idea of doing cracked glass but it still looked like it needed something. It was too late to sponge the edges so I wiped my Versamark pad along the sides and added gold EP. As I heated it to melt the EP, it all ran together with the previous layers of embossing. If you look at it straight on the gold doesn't really show well, but when you tilt it, it shines! It actually looks like a gilded frame with the gold rubbed off with age, very antiquey. I stuck it in the freezer and after a few minutes took it out and cracked it. There is brown ink rubbed into the cracks to make them appear aged. I layered onto chocolate chip and burgundy card stock and mounted it onto the card with dimensionals. I had to add the ribbon to cover up more of my bad stitching. Sometimes the long and windy road of creating dead ends at the dump and other times it leads you someplace wonderful!
Thanks for visiting!