Paperamblings

This Says It All!
I just had to get this card done and posted...to commemorate this crazy past few days: My poor son has been home from school (yes, we're still in school around here, thanks to a teachers' strike earlier in the school year), sick for over a week. First it was a strep diagnosis (a whole TWO DAYS after being tested for it), and then just yesterday: PNEUMONIA! Who'd have thunk it, at this time of year and it's been 80 degrees or higher for the past 2 weeks. NO idea where THAT came from! Luckily, my daughter seems in the clear and hopefully, those antibiotics will stop the bug in its germy little tracks!

Now on to the card details: Used the Monkey Business set from Clear Dollar (soooooo excited to be asked to stay on the DT for another quarter!). In addition to my usual Bazzill cardstock, I pulled out something new that I discovered a month or so ago and LOVE: Core'dinations Cardstock: I just can't get enough of that canvas texture (you can spot the texture in the photo here...it's the teal panel) and it comes in oodles of colors. To me, it's kind of a cross between traditional cardstock and patterned paper and adds just the right amount of visual interest without any "busy-ness"! I puchased my lifetime supply (!) at All That Scraps, one of my favorite on-line stores for all things papercrafting, but you can get the story behind the paper at the Core'dinations website.

So after I trimmed the edges of the teal panel with some oooooold Fiskars paper edgers, I wrapped the card in some equally old burlap-like netting. I store it with my Magic Mesh, but its texture is softer and it's great for enhancing your jungles, oceans and farms! The other trims are from Scrapworks. After stamping my jungle scene, I colored it with some of my deeper shades of Copics. A few of the elements were actually stamped on scrap cardstock, then cut out and attached at strategic locations for more dimension (i.e. the monkey hiding in the tree, several of the tree leaves and the pieces on the sentiment). And as you can tell, I did TONS of distressing with my sponge and Ranger Antique Linen ink, along with my tired, overworked paper distresser tool; my intent was to create the look of a vintage child's picture book (in fact, to further the childlike feel, I glittered up portions of the trees). And for the sentiment, I used my oval Nestabilities and inked up the stamp in black. And that's all she wrote...er, STAMPED!

Thanks for takin' a look! And stay tuned for some Clear Dollar sneak peeks, featuring July's stamp releases, late next week!