stickers + spray ink = JOY!

this fun christmas card is made with stickers and papers from the november pixie dust paperie kit, SNOW SHOE! for more details, hop on over to the pixie dust blog! but before you go, here is a little step-by-step mini tutorial of how i made the christmas-themed text paper which i used as the background of my card.

using the yellow cardstock and fab prima alphabet stickers from the kit, i filled my paper with christmas sayings. (for the demo i made a much smaller, non-holiday version!)

when i was happy with the layout, i took the paper to my dedicated spray ink area. (ok, yeah, it's an old baking tin covered in papertowels, set down in my kitchen sink!)

i sprayed the cardstock pretty heavily with ink (in this case, black cherry glimmer mist) and let it set for a minute so the ink could really get into the paper.

i always have a couple of pieces of scrap paper handy for blotting up excess ink. you can use paper towels or sponges, but it seems a shame to waste it; especially when...

...sometimes the "blotter" comes out looking sort of cool!!! :) (when they're not cool, you can always toss them!)

sometimes i need two rounds of spray before i get the color/intensity that i want, in which case i repeat a couple of steps until i am happy. when i'm finished spraying and blotting, i set the results aside to dry thoroughly. (a brayer and papertowels speed the process a bit; a heat gun even more so!)

et voila! the end of another successful inky experiment!

...well, almost...

at this point i should probably mention that i originally planned to use the stickers only as a mask. i *thought* that after i sprayed the cardstock, i'd peel the letters away and have a lovely one-layer, two-toned effect. in fact, i didn't think i'd even HAVE TO peel the letters away...i figured once they were wet, they'd pretty much FALL OFF my cardstock! what i didn't expect was that the ink actually FUSED the stickers permanently onto the base so that trying to remove them was nearly impossible. as it turns out, the stickers and the cardstock background were dyed slightly different shades, and looked really good, so i just left them on there and kept going with my card!

et voila, the end of another SURPRISING (but cool!) inky experiment!!! ♥