I decided it was time to show you what I've been up to! Yes, as many of you know from being at my parties this month, I HAVE been stamping & communicating with you via email, but just not posting here! I'm sorry, and I promise to try to do better!

This is a cool card I woke up one morning thinking about -have had some pretty good "mojo" going on lately! It really didn't turn out the way I thought it would when I started, but it's better!

This is a technique that has been popular on several blogs this spring and early summer, but I haven't seen anyone do it quite like this. Instead of the usual Shimmery White cardstock for this technique, I used Kraft! It worked just as well as when I've done the same technique on Shimmery White, and I love it!

What's this technique called? "Floating Reinkers"!

Here's how:

First I stamped the main flower from Fifth Avenue Floral on the Kraft with Whisper White Craft Ink and embossed it with White e.p. Then I created a mask for the flower with a Post-It note and masked it. I then stamped the smaller flowers around the big one with white craft ink, removed the Post-It and embossed the smaller flowers with white e.p.

Next I took my Aquapainter and made the areas inside the embossed big flower really wet. Puddly wet with water. It has to be very wet for this technique to work. Then I put a drop of reinker in a clean empty stamp box (I used a small one from a personalized stamp). I used Crushed Curry and Melon Mambo. I picked up some of the reinker with the tip of my Aquapainter and touched it to the puddled water on the flower. The reinker will "float" on the puddled water and will spread around. I put the Crushed Curry reinker on the areas of the flower I wanted to be yellow, then cleaned my Aquapainter tip and went back with the Melon Mambo reinker to fill in the remaining embossed flower areas. You need to emboss your flower so the floating reinker doesn't escape onto the other flowers. (Unless you want it to!) After I had the colors the way I wanted them I cleaned my Aquapainter tip again, dried the brush on a papertowel, and went back and "sucked up" as much extra water & ink as I could to help speed up the drying time. Now, you can just leave your flower to air dry for a few hours, but I'm not patient enough for that so I dried it the rest of the way with my heat tool. Some sponging around the edges with first Close to Cocoa and then Chocolate Chip give it an "aura of light"!

Well, that's it for today! Hope I've made up for my absence a little by showing off this gorgeous card! I hope to get some of these made for convention swaps, but we'll see how it goes!

Now I'm off to finish prep for "Red Hot Summer Stamping" at the Sam Mitchell Community Building in West Frankfort from 4-8 p.m. tonight and tomorrow at the Granada Theatre in Mt Vernon from 10-2 p.m. There will be 7 demos showing lots of new product and techniques, Make-n-Takes, food, and best of all it's FREE!

Ta!

Carol