GHOSTING

I know for awhile after my husband's heart attack about a month ago, I was muse-less, not feeling at all like creating. Last week, however, my muse returned for a brief visit and I was able to get a few cards made using cool techniques. This is one of them.

I must admit that it is difficult for me to even care enough to do this post. You see, Pat (husband) went in on Thursday for his second cardiac procedure. During that, he experienced another (minor) heart attack. For awhile, I thought I was going to lose him. It was a horrendous nail-biting time while they decided what to do. He was not doing well at all. They finally took him back to the Cath Lab and did a second procedure. They discovered that one of the stents they'd put in had immediately occluded. So they did their stuff, and he's still with me. 

Thus, the difficulty for this post. I feel somewhat drained.

On to more cheerful topics. This card features a cool technique simply called Ghosting. I do have bad arthritis in my hands, so must admit that this was difficult for me to accomplish to my satisfaction. So, beware if you do this and suffer from hand arthritis.

To get the soft ferny look for my background, I stamped the ferns randomly across a 

3 3/4" x 5" piece of Whisper White cardstock in white PIGMENT ink. I used my heat tool to dry the ferns, which obviously at this point, were white on white, and difficult to see. Once I didn't see any wet looks, I went to work with a sponge and Call Me Clover ink. This is what was hard on my arthritic hands. It took many layers of sponged on ink to get to where I was satisfied with how the ferns showed up.

I should mention that the ferns came from one of the Sale-A-Bration sets, Painted Seasons, part of the second release of SAB goodies.

Because the background was so pretty, I really wanted to make it quite prominent in the card. To preserve that, I opted for a narrow strip to do the rest of the work on the card.

Using two more stamps from that set, I added flowers and smaller ferns to a 1 1/4" strip of Whisper White cardstock, stamping each image off on scratch paper first. 

For the sentiment strip, I cut a thin rectangle using one of the dies from the Rectangle Stitched Framelits on page 28 of the Occasions Catalog. Can you notice the line of "stitching" around the edges? 

Last week, I'd gotten together with a couple friends to do some stamping, and I put together the cards from the Notes of Kindness Card kit on page 7 of the Annual Catalog. If you look on the bottom of that page, do you notice the thin unobtrusive strip of a stamp? I stamped that in Flirty Flamingo, after stamping off first onto the rectangle. I then stamped "Birthday Wishes", taken from the Varied Vases set (page 45 in the Annual Catalog) in Call Me Clover.

The fluffy gorgeous flower on this strip is the same stamp that I stamped lightly randomly onto the narrow strip. This time, however, I stamped it full force, then fussy cut it. 

I popped up both the sentiment strip, as well as the fussy cut flower with Stampin' Dimensionals.

The finishing touch for the card were the three pearls I scattered around the sentiment. Even though the pearls (page 197) are humble and inexpensive, they always add a little bit of beauty and soft bling to a creation. Don't you agree?

Even though this color scheme is quite random for me, I think it works well in its softness.

If your hands are up for it, give Ghosting a try! It gives a beautiful effect for an elegant background.

Ghostly

Smiles.