He loves fishing so I pulled out my Tim Holtz Stampers Anonymous Sea Life stamps. Using a piece of white cardstock, I stamped on two fishes to the front of the card along with some seaweed. Next, I used a brown and a few shades of blue Distress Ink to create the background. I used my Distress Ink Blending Brushes and my Glass Media Mat to create the smooth and seamless blend from one blue to the next and into the brown. I skipped coloring inside the fishes as much as possible. Once I was satisfied with the blend, I spritzed on some water and set it aside to dry.

I wanted a white card base so I could easily handwrite a sentiment inside and I also cut out a black mat that I though would accentuate the design. I glued the black mat onto the front of the card and then set about picking out some colors of Distress Crayons to the color the fish with.

I colored a little bit of some of the Distress Crayons onto the non-stick mat of my Glass Media Mat and used a water brush pen to pick up the crayon and color in the fish and seaweed. I love these crayons because like all of Tim's Distress colors, they can be as vibrant or faded as you want and they blend well. 

While that dried, I created the sentiment for the front of the card, cutting out a white banner and a black banner to mat it with. Using some Lawn Fawn stamps and my Zing gold embossing powder, I created the sentiment, then used some of the blue Distress Ink to give it a blue tint. 

Before glueing the sentiment on, I used the script stamp from Tim's Entomology stamp set to create a bit of distressy grunge (yup, I just made up the word distressy). I used Tim's embossing ink dauber and just dabbed on some of the ink to a small section of the stamp and then used my hand to press down the stamp--no stamping block, to create a distressed looking image. I did this a few times in several different places on the front of the card and then used the new Distress Embossing Glaze in weathered wood. I love how weathered wood changes depending on the color you put it over. 

Finally, I glued the decorated part on to the front of the card base and then I used some double-sided foam mounting squares to pop the sentiment up off the card. 

I hope you enjoyed this short tutorial!

Adrienne