Inking Backgrounds

I am always looking around for different techniques

and I found one about inking backgrounds. So I

embossed a piece of vellum and then inked with

round foam 'fingers' - (for want of another word)

- the back part of the embossing (first photo). Then

I cut a piece of stripped paper  to add to the

vellum at the bottom edge. I then went around the

whole piece with ink to make a thin border. I added

the ribbon before I stuck the piece to the card. Once

the vellum was stuck onto the card (with a special

glue for vellum) I added glitter to the middle of

the snowflakes of the pattern (second photo).Next

I stamped a pattern and sentiment onto paper and

then used a scalloped circle Nestability around the

image.Once cut out I embossed around the edge and

went around the scalloped edge with ink. I also

made a hole with a piercing tool in the middle

of each scallop and a little glitter in the middle of the

image (third photo).  The final part was to add a bow.  

I didn't use the bow that you can see in the photos,

made by using a fork, because I decided it was too

small.  After I had finished the card, I started

trying to dry the inky 'fingers' on a piece of

paper and saw that they made a pretty pattern

too – so that's another idea for backgrounds (photo 4).

Paper Flowers

I really like paper flowers and there are many different
ways of making them.  On 'Crafter's Digital Art Center'
there is a great tutorial on making paper flowers using all
different shapes, and they are very easy to do.  Here
are some photos of the way I made a flower and I like
the way it came out. Of course it can be made to look
much different in many ways. I could add glitter, I could
use a punch around the edges, I could paint each piece
and give it an 'old' look, I could just ink around the
edges- there is no end of ways a paper flower can be
made to look.  I used 5 scalloped circles and put them
together with a brad before I squished them one by one
whilst on the brad. The second photo shows a squished
piece which I didn't use and did it separately to show you.
The third photo shows the pieces all together and I undid
the squish to show what they looked like together.
Imagine how these flowers would look using all types
of paper, tissue for instance.