Now I know I am mad!!!

At Christmas I received a parcel in a Pass The Parcel swap on Crafts By Carolyn. The parcel was tied with the most gorgeous length of fibre in orange, lime, purple and red which I carefully saved to do something with. Well that length of fibre along with a Color Box ink pad which I found lurking at the back of the drawer have been the total inspiration for this card.

So much inspiration in fact that I sat up until 6am to finish it.......totally barking!!!

The background then has been stamped using a Magenta stamp......I don't know it's name, I just called it my Florentine stamp. The ink colours are from an eight colour Colour Box Fluid Chalk inkpad-Primary Pastels and I used Lime Pastel, Tangerine, Lipstick Red and Wisteria to stamp the Florentine stamp and create a border. I then took a soft brush and applied soft brown dry chalk to tone down the ink colour slightly and then added a gold edging to the stamped images with a gold gel pen.

The jigsaw piece and the small square background were from my experiments drawer and I couldn't believe how well they went with this project. The technique I used to colour them was very simple.

Take a plastic file pocket and dab over it with some dye ink pads in various colours. Spritz with water and then drag and dab your piece of card of jigsaw piece into the ink until the whole piece is coloured. While still wet spray with a metallic spray such as a Moonglow Spray or one of the Sticky Fingers sprays. Doing this helps the metallic spray to blend rather than settle in harsh spots and gives the most glorious depth of colour. When doing this technique I will keep spritzing the ink with water and dragging and dipping until all the ink is used and as you do this the pieces will get lighter and lighter until you get a piece like the square background piece which is dipped into the same inks as the jigsaw piece. Allow these pieces to dry thoroughly before stamping onto them. I used the face from TandaStamps Retro Women Set 2 and stamped in black Versafine. The gold edging is Krylon pen.

To finish the card I layered the square background onto a piece of dark brown card and edged that with gold Krylon leaving a little of the brown card showing. The fibre was then wrapped around the card and the lock and key were added. The lock is from a Wizard die and the key is a Quickutz die.

The small metal letters are from Making Memories and were attached using Glossy Accents by Ranger. The jigsaw piece was attached with double side tape.