Over The Moon Monday - Pick 3 Challenge

Good morning and welcome to another Over The Moon Monday. We had some pretty bad storms during the night, and the electricity went off often. Which means every time it went off, I had to get up and reset the alarm clock. It's funny that I would wake up when it went off, but I guess with all the rain and lightning and thunder I wasn't sleeping the best. Anyway, I did manage to get up on time this morning.

Several years ago I became friends with a salesman that came into the office where I work, and after he retired, he still kept in touch with us. I'm sorry to say that he didn't get to enjoy his retirement very long before he became ill, and I used to send him cards frequently from all of us here at work. His wife told my brother that he enjoyed those cards immensely and always kept them where he could see them. I'm sorry to say that George passed away recently. He was the kind of person who always had a smile and a joke, and he will be greatly missed.

I wanted to make a special card for his wife, so I chose the Fossil Stone technique for the background. I love the way the background always comes out different, but beautiful. I don't think I have ever seen a bad background, even if you use funky colors. For my card I wanted to use muted earthy colors, so I used browns, yellows, tans, and greens.

I squirted small amounts of those colors of reinkers into my "fossil folder" (a page protector that has been cut upon on one side to allow easy access), closed the folder and squished a bit with my fingers just to gently blend the colors. Then I cut my glossy cardstock into 6 pieces. I put the first set of pieces back to back and put into the folder and pressed, making sure I got most of the cardstock covered with color. I did the same thing with the other 2 sets of cardstock. As you can see, each successive time a new set of cardstock went into the folder, the colors became more muted and muddied. After they have dried, you can use them for fabulous backgrounds.

I like the fact that any imperfections (bubbles, lines, etc.), will show up in the colors, hence the name fossil stone. It looks like little fossils in the paper.

I chose to use the last set I made because of the muted colors.

I used a dark brown cardstock as the base of the card. I stamped a large dragonfly onto my fossil stone background. I mounted this onto a dark green carstock. I tore the bottom edge of the green cardstock, and used a black inkpad to go over the torn edge to give it depth. I stamped "With Deepest Sympathy" (from Hero Arts, I believe) with a pigment ink and then heat embossed it with gold embossing powder. I mounted this onto the dark brown cardstock and I was done.

I hope you have a crafty week!