Feathers for Twofers

In case you haven't heard, in which case you must have spent the last few weeks hiding under a mountain of mince pies (have you finished them all yet?) there's a brand new challenge in the blogosphere - Twofers, the brainchild of the lovely and talented Darnell.

The idea is to make two different cards, for different occasions, using the same stamp or die, and the theme for the very first challenge is FEATHERS.

Here is my pair of cards, using a beautifully opulent feather stamp which was designed some years ago by Linda Luckin - I'm afraid it is no longer available. I've used it to make two very, very different cards,  but as you can see I chose to emphasise the twoferliciousness by using the same layout for both.

So, I'm linking this first image up to Twofers - now for a closer look at the individual cards and the challenges I am linking them to.

First of all, the left hand, inky card.

This started off as something of an experiment -  I sometimes stamp an image in Versamark ink and then brush mica powders over it. I wondered if I could get a more two tone effect by substituting the Versamark for a coloured Versafine ink, so that's what I tried. I used a blue ink and a green powder - the result was very much NOT what I'd expected or hoped for but I rather liked it, so hastily planned a completely different card from the one that I'd had in mind.

Going back to the Versamark ink, I stamped the feather randomly over white card for the background, embossing with clear powder, then sponged purple, blue and olive green inks all over the card and buffed with a tissue to give a resist effect. The sentiment (a magazine freebie) is stamped in olive green although it looks black on the photo, and all the elements edged with purple.

I chose the "Congratulations" sentiment because I was thinking of the phrase "That's a feather in your cap!". In fact if I can find a suitable font I might print out an insert saying exactly that.

I am sharing this with
Rubber Dance - Purple, Blue and Olive green
Allsorts - No Patterned Paper

Now onto the second card

I always think feathers look lovely on sympathy cards, as do CAS styles and shades of purple, and today I decided to use the words "Thinking of you" rather than "With deepest sympathy" simply because I only have one deepest sympathy card and I wanted a change. The stamp is a very old HOTP one and I stamped it directly onto the card. I'm so much braver about doing that now I have a Misti!

I stamped the feather in deep purple and coloured it with pencils (all the bits of this card that look black are actually deep purple)  then layered it on to two shades of purple from my snippets box and added it to the card.

I am sharing this one with
Addicted to stamps and more - Clean and simple
Pixie's Snippets Playground weeks 315/316
Less is More - Purples
Watercooler Wednesday - All About Occasions