In the mood for...

A bit of Botanical...! This week at Simon Says Stamp & Show we are playing around with our favourite words so I chose Botanical as my word of the moment along with Paper Artsy Hot Pick Stamps as it gives me the chance to dabble with lovely Mother Nature and her flowers and butterflies!

Seeing as we've had a wet week and I've been unwell, I thought some inky sunshine would brighten up the day...

I used a Mr. Tim faux batik technique and crackle stamp to create the backgrounds. I cut two large tags from Ranger Manila cardstock and randomly stamped and clear embossed the whole tag. No need to worry about an overlap with such a stamp. Simples!
I then applied a mix of Wild Honey Distress Stain and Scattered Straw Distress Ink with a few touches of Fired Brick. Don't get your tag too wet when using Distress Stains as they can seep under the embossing.

Then I covered the surface with plain paper and did the ironing bit to melt the embossing and create a smooth stamping surface which was enough domestic duty for one day. I added a gessoed page scrap for contrast, machine stitched around the edges and stamped the flowers in good old Ranger Coffee Archival ink.

A previous tag went a bit wrong so I used it to stamp my butterfly and got that nice wing edge! The sentiment is stamped onto Mica in Black Stazon and I added some copper thread, a button, eyelets and a few Botanical words. A little Walnut Stain Distress Ink and distressing on the edges finished it off.

I always like to play around with a stamp set and see which variations are possible to create new designs and images.

On my second tag I used the same flower stamp as before but I only inked up parts of the larger flowers, stamping each one separately so as to alter the angle and to get them to 'fit' in the bottle.

I had worked out where I wanted the bottle to go by using a roughly stamped cut out. I drew a faint pencil line where the bottle top ended and masked off the rest with so as to avoid random ink!  Once the flowers were stamped I could stamp the bottle in exactly the right place.
This time I used Ranger Sepia Archival ink, added a darker butterfly and similar finishing touches as before.

I like using Mica for stamping sentiments as you can place it wherever you want whilst still retaining that transparent quality and see the detail underneath. If you stamp something badly a little wipe with blending solution of cleaner whisks it away and you can try again! So that's the inky gossip on my sibling tags. What would be your favourite word of the moment??? Family, holiday, adventure, love or even cake...

Oooooooodles of possibilities for this week's challenge theme because you get to choose! Hop over to the Design Team Blog and see what lovelieness my team mates have thunk up! And check out all the new goodies at Simon Says Stamp, because you may well be the winner of this generous $50 prize!
Have a good Monday and enjoy your week. Thanks for dropping by... Sarah.