Tone It Down

It's no secret that I'm a total freak for color. I love playing with color and combinations of color the same way I love playing with spices when I cook. But, sometimes the best thing you can do, especially to a good steak, is keep it simple and just add salt and pepper.

I thought about that when I was pondering what to do for this week's post. It lead me to thinking about a tone-on-tone challenge that I participated in years ago. So, I re-challenged myself. This will also show you (I hope) that you don't need every color of ink that the crafting gods ever put out there. That's right. I've gotten smart in my crafting old age and realized that it's quality over quantity. Same goes for cardstock.

I digress. Tone-on-tone. It's pretty simple, really, so I won't bore you with a lot of explanation.

For the card above, I used Brilliance Pearlescent Poppy ink just to give the card a little extra shimmery interest. The stamps I used are from Blockheads sets: Painted Butterfly, Backgrounds for All Occasions, and 123 Backgrounds.

To make the banner, I embossed part of the background script and cut out only the part that read, "Le papillon" (French for butterfly) - I used the same ink, but coated it with clear embossing powder to give it a little more pop. Then I took a strip of my red paper and covered it completely with the same ink. I glued the cut out script to that, gave the edges a little roughing with my old scissors, and that was all there was to it.

For this card, I used Blockheads stamp sets Backgrounds for All Occasions, Grunge It Up, and Verses - Feel Better. And here's a handy little trick! I didn't have the color of ribbon I wanted to match the card, so I took some plain old ivory ribbon and dragged it through my ink pad to get an exact match.  It's simple, start with one end of the ribbon and press it against your ink pad, holding it down firmly with your thumb. Then, simply pull the ribbon all the way through. See? You don't need ribbons in every color of the rainbow!

Also, this brings me to another point. The other day some crafty friends and I were commiserating about the number of gadgets we've bought over the years and never used. Personally, I haven't fallen into that trap for a long time. I'm much more cynical now and art suppliers have to prove their worth to me. Even then, I often wait to hear from my friends as to whether it's a worthy product or not.

Anyway! I've seen lots of over-prices products out there that will rough up the edges of paper (as seen in my two examples above). Don't fall for that! Get a very cheap pair of scissors, even little kid scissors will do, and use the scissor blade to scrape and rough the edges of the paper. Just make sure you don't ever use your good scissors because it's a process that will dull them for cutting.

Lastly, I wanted to show you how beautifully clear embossing works for tone-on-tone. For this example, I used Blockheads stamp set Winter Wonderland. I first stamped the snowflake with clear embossing ink, sprinkled it with holographic embossing powder, and then, of course, heat set it. I took a separate sheet of the same color cardstock and cut out a circle. Using a sponge, I inked around the circle and edges. Then I stamped the sentiment at the bottom, and tied a matching ribbon around it. Then, using spacers, I glued the snowflake image to the underside of the cut out piece. This gives it a little more depth than simply stamping the image on the same piece of cardstock, although, you could do that and the result would be just fine.

Try doing some tone-on-tone work. Let me know how it goes!