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I used my FAVORITE Cricut cartridge and cut out "Once Upon a
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Knowing that I was going to be wanting a "crinkled", aged effect, I picked a paper that was slightly thinner than regular cardstock because I'm going to get it wet and the thinner stuff will dry with a nice "crinkle" much easier. I actually grabbed a patterned paper that I got on sale for like 5 cents/sheet. It was super thin and perfect and I didn't care about the pattern on the back. I then stamped the back/white side of the paper with Stampin Up's French Script stamp. Now for the fun! I covered my work surface with a plastic table cover so that I could easily make the mess and then clean it quickly without causing too much damage. I grabbed my Adirondack pearl acrylic paints by Ranger in wild plum, stream, espresso and terra cotta (which, by the way are a perfect match to Tim Holtz's alcohol inks with the same color names), some paper towel, a sponge brush and the lid to a take-out container with about a tablespoon of water in it. I saturated the brush with water, applied a pea size amount of the wild plum paint and just covered the stamped area. I then quickly toweled the paper to sop excess moisture and repeated the process with espresso and terra cotta. Amazingly, every time I wiped the paper with the paper towel, it would soak up the moisture but left the pearlescent sheen. It was a pretty great effect! But knowing that stream is a dominantly bright color in contrast to the other colors I was using, I skipped soaking the sponge and only added a dab of the paint that I then stippled in a random pattern on the page and used the paper towel to blend. I ended up with the most amazingly beautiful paper!!!!! It was actually the paper that dictated what this project was going to be. This paper was SCREAMING for the Storybook cartridge!!! :)
Here's a closer pic of the paints... a great shot I might add because I never took the price tag off a
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One last note, the butterfly came from a CTMH Butterflies set that I stamped in Stampin Up's Night of Navy ink on the treated paper to be a shadow under the bug's wings. I then stamped the butterfly again with a versa mark pad on the purple paper I used to cut out the "Once Upon a Time" and heat embossed it with my shimmer embossing powder. I then cut the butterfly out and glued just the body to the page leaving the wings to flutter off the page. I applied some Stickles (of course) and a quick bling to the page and I was done. Click this link HERE for a great tutorial for the butterfly done by The Pink Stamper (note to self: "You REALLY need that Hannah Montana cartridge!!!")
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