Waiting to Retire

I had a lot of fun making this 4 1/4 by 7 inch card.  I started with one of the ink smooshed backgrounds that I made on watercolor paper using various Tim Holtz Distress Oxide Inks.

I cut the birds from an abstract piece of black cardstock that I had done the "pounce" technique for embossing powder that can be found here.  I used Ranger Princess Gold and Seth Apter Chunky Rust from Emerald Creek. Did the pounce method then used my heat embossing tool to melt it into these amazing little tendrils and blobs.  I then took a piece of black cardstock and smooshed some Versamark ink on it and coated with gold  Ranger Perfect Pearls then glued the blob of melted embossing powder right on top. I was able to get 6 birds out of the 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 piece of cardstock.

Next, I went to work on my "wire."  I made a little straw channel then poured in some Distress Foundry Wax in the color Mined. I noticed that because the string was wet it left a lot of little lines of Foundry wax on my mat and I got to thinking. What if I went ahead and heat set those as well?  Would I get a strand of the wax? So I melted it.  When it cooled I was able to scrape some up from the mat using a shopping card.  More about that in a minute. 

I stamped the little letters with Black Soot Distress Archival ink.  I wrapped my "wire" across the front and secured it at the back with some tape.  

Next, I went to work on the ground portion. I laid down a pretty heft line of Glossy Accents and started filling it in with the flaky bits leftover from the string gilding, some Distress Mica in Midnight, and some Distress Glitter in Garland. I let that dry then went to work on composing my card.

I popped the birds up on varied heights of foam tape and stacked paper then secured them down.  

Next, I added some more of that blob I mentioned earlier in random spots and chose a sentiment from the Tim Holtz Metallic Stickers, secured it down and added a bit more to the bottom of that.

I added some black gems from my stash for the eyes and secured it down to the card base which was cut 5x7 and I trimmed to fit the piece.

Thanks for looking!

Tee

 Here's the video for gilding string.

Ranger Ink: https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=1152523&u=2847800&m=78320&urllink=&afftrack=