Two for One

I was playing around with different colors and different techniques that I had seen recently so today's post gives you two cards and two techniques in one post.

Card 1

Card 2

Materials needed:
Raining Flowers stamp set (#122767)
Aqua Painter (#103954)
Dazzles from Hot Off the Press and Paper Wishes
Heat tool
Watercolor paper
Table salt
Paper towels
Tweezers
Card 1
Marina Mist reinker
Melon Mambo marker
Rose Red marker
Always Artichoke marker
1/2" Melon Mambo Polka Dot grograin ribbon (#115611)
Card 2 
Melon Mambo reinker
Marina Mist ink
Pacific Point ink
3/8" Marina Mist Striped Organdy ribbon (#129292)
Stampin' Dimenionals (#104430)

The first technique is doing background color with texture using table salt. Actually, I think you can use any kind of salt that you have available. I had the old fashioned table salt.
1. Cut your watercolor paper to the size card you want. Mine is 4 1/4 x 5 1/2".

Pour 3-4 drops of ink from your reinker directly onto the watercolor paper. The more ink you drop on the paper, the darker your final color will be.
2.

Squeeze the barrel of the Aqua Painter to get lots of water in the brush. Swish the brush through the ink to cover the paper. I left a little white on one end of each but that's just whatever your preference is.
3. Sprinkle the salt all over the wet ink. Allow a minute or two for the ink to dry.

I sprinkled the salt fairly thick.
4.Using a paper towel, rub all of the salt off of the paper.

5. You should be able to see the texture the salt made while it reacted with the ink on the paper. The next picture shows you the salted ink background. The second picture shows just the ink spread across the paper without the salt.

I hope you can see the difference in these pictures.
Lay these aside for a while as you curl your ribbon. Which is the next technique, I'll show you.
You can curl any kind of synthetic ribbon. Organdy curls very quickly so be careful. Grosgrain takes longer but you want to be careful not to burn the ribbon.
1. Cut your ribbon longer than you would need if you just lay it flat on the project. The ribbon will shrink some. Use a tweezer to hold your ribbon or tape it down so that the heat tool doesn't blow it away.

2. Hold the heat tool close but not touching the ribbon. Watch it carefully as you heat it. Like I said, some ribbons curl faster than others. Also be careful not to burn your fingers. Move the heat tool along the ribbon to curl the length that you want.

Decorating the card

1. Peel the Dazzles that you choose for your card off the Dazzle paper. I have some Mrs. Grossman tweezers that I love.  I've had them for about 12 years. I don't know if they still make them or not.

Use tweezers to get the Dazzle started and then it will peel right off with little problem.
2.  Place the Dazzle onto the dried watercolor paper background.
3. Stamp the flower images that you want from the Raining Flowers two step stamping set. For card 1, I used the markers to get 2 colors on the stamp. For card 2 I used the ink pads. Cut out the images with scissors. Adhere them to the card. I found it was easy to lift the Dazzle from card 1 to place the stem under a portion of it. After that, I pressed the Dazzle down harder so it would stay.
4. Place adhesive on the back of the curled ribbon. Press it to the bottom of the card, about 1/2" from the bottom.
5. On card 2, I placed the flower image on a Stampin' Dimensional. Then I placed it on the background.
6. Adhere the card front to a card base and you are ready to make someone happy with a bright, colorful card.

I hope that I didn't confuse anyone with showing 2 techniques on the same card. If you think it would be easier to have each technique on separate posts, leave me a message & I'll do that for you.