Hello to You and a Question for Tim!

I wasn't able to get down in my craft room yesterday until about 8:30pm but "whipped" out this card in less than an hour.  I had the idea in mind...had seen some similar cards that had inspired me.  For one...I am totally inspired by Darlene of DARLENE DESIGNS.  I believe I read an interview by her once that asked her what her favorite line of paper is and she stated that she likes plain white paper the best because she can make her own printed paper.  She does amazing stuff with inks!  I am addicted to her videos!
Another card I saw had a bicycle and clouds on it...I just decided to do mine slightly different and here it is:

This was done with a Hero Arts/Sizzix set (which comes with the stamp and the coordinating dies).  I am most proud of myself though (patting self on back) because I "drew" the clouds in Silhouette Studio (basically a bunch of circles welded together) and cut them out with my Cameo.  I taped the clouds to my white paper and inked them with Tumbled Glass Distress Ink and then removed the clouds so that it would give me a nice blue sky with nice white clouds.  I loved the way that looked but then I thought...why not ink additional clouds and pop them up/ so that's what I did for a little more dimension and I loved it.  I even took another piece of paper and inked it up the same way...with some Evergreen Bough for the grass and a little Spiced Marmalade where the blue met the green and stamped on it with Memento Tuxedo Black and then die cut the bicycle out so that it would match the paper colors underneath.  I added a piece of black grosgrain ribbon to simulate a path.  I added the sentiment on a well chosen cloud and was done after mounting my design to a piece of kraft cardstock.  Finished...and a nice bright and cheerful card!
Here's another look:

Pretty Easy Peasy...and I love I did it with nothing more than some inks, a piece of white paper and a 6 inch piece of ribbon (well, and $5279 worth of Cuttlebug, Cameo, craft mat, fancy scissors, stamps, inks, ribbon, glue, dimensionals, trimmer, etc. etc. etc.!)  LOL!!!

I'm also entering this in The Go Fish Challenge #15 Anything Goes.  *Thanks for the heads up on it, Amy!

OK...now I have a question for Tim Holtz!  HOW DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT ALL YOUR INKS LOOK LIKE?  Do you just KNOW?  Or do you use a cheat sheet???

It seems like every time I use my inks I pull out the colors that are all similar and do little tests and waste a lot of time finding the right shade.  When I was on Darlene's blog the other day I saw she had made samples of all her distress inks and I thought...well, how smart is that?!

So, I began making my samples...I also have the sponge applicators for each one that I keep in the cutest teensy zip lock bags (with the name of the ink printed on each) so that I don't waste my applicators (trying to save money where I can! LOL!).  I ran our of applicators so I only got so far but here is what I have so far.  These are done on 2x3 inch pieces of paper and I printed the name on each one, as well.

So now I need to go spend more $ buying more sponge applicators!  But at least now I can tell the difference between Faded Jeans, Tumbled Glass and Broken China! 

Another question for Tim...do your hands look like this all the time???

Happy Crafting!