Happy Grunge-y Valentine's day to Grandma

I know I said earlier that my "It moose be love" card would be my only Valentine's day card. But then I realised I had forgotten that I also need one for my Grandma. In Finland Valentine's day is called Friend's day and doesn't quite have the uber-romantic connotations it has in the UK and I guess to some extent also in the US. I hope she likes it, it's a bit different from the cards I usually send her, a bit more grunge-y.

I was inspired by the colours over at The Card Concept as well as the rustic woodgrain and neutral inspiration image over at  Fusion Card Challenges. My style of card for The Card Concept is Clean But Grunge-y (yes, I made it up, but it says you can make up your own style. I have another CBG card here). I guess it's a mix between Clean and Simple and Shabby Chic maybe? In addition to the above, I was also inspired by the sketch over at CAS(E) This Sketch. 

I started by creating some paint smooshing on watercolour paper. I used Tim Holtz Distress paints in Vintage Photo, Hickory Smoke, Brushed Pewter and Tarnished Brass on my craft mat, added some water droplets and smooshed my paper around. Then I dried the paper with my heat tool, and gave it a second round of lighter smooshing, picking up more colour. Then I stamped the feathers from Stampin' Up Four Feathers in Versamark and heat embossed with gold and silver powder. You can see from the image below how the feathers have both gold and silver embossing on them. Then I cut the feathers using matching dies.  For the background, I inked up the Hardwood stamp using Ground Espresso and lightly misted it with water before stamping onto linen textured card through a rectangular mask slightly smaller than the stitched die cut. The sentiment says Happy Valentine's day in Finnish. I die cut the "Happy" using Lawn Fawn Cole's ABC from leftover scraps of the card I used for the feathers and used the Stampin' Up Rotary Alphabet stamp for the second line of the sentiment which I then lined with stitching using the Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle die.

Card: 300 gsm white linen textured card, 190 gsm watercolour card

Ink: Tsukineko Versamark, Tim Holtz Distress Ink Ground Espresso

Stamps: Stampin' Up Hardwood, Four Feathers, Rotary Alphabet stamp

Dies: Stampin' Up Four Feathers matching dies, Lawn Fawn Cole's ABC and Stitched Rectangle dies
Other: Silver and gold embossing powder from my stash