Cupcake Challenge

I've had another chance to participate in Taylor's Cupcake Challenge this weekend. The sketch was kind of fun, and I had an idea of what I was going to do right away, but the project ran away with me, and while the idea is the same, the look of it is completely different from how I pictured it. I'm not usually a "dirty" stamper. I don't particularly like distressing paper or inking edges, but that's exactly the direction this challenge took itself.

It started because my friend Pat taught me that if you run a piece of double sided cardstock through the Cuttlebug with an embossing plate, you can sand the raised area and the color from the back will (eventually) show through. Now Pat showed me this technique on the Swiss Dots pattern, which is much smaller and apparently embossed more deeply than the Allegro pattern that I used, because when Pat sanded the paper, the color showed through in a matter of seconds. When I did it, it took much longer to see the pattern. But after sanding until my arm muscles fatigued, I wasn't about to let the two pieces I made go to waste (even though they weren't my style). So I used the embossed and sanded papers as my background and used remaining scraps to make my circles. I anchored the circles with some music note eyelets that I just had to have, but then never used. (I know some of you are with me on that.) Then I used my Rockabella stamp that I colored with watercolor pencils and accented with Christmas Red Stickles. I put her on a panel of the double sided paper again and used my Scor-Pal to emboss a line an 1/8 of an inch from each edge, and sanded those raised lines until the red came through again. (I've found that the best way to do this is to place my piece of paper on the divider of the sink and sand there where I can use the pull-out hose to wash away all the dust when I'm finished, rather than getting it all over my table). When I put Rockabella on, she looked much to crisp and clean, so I inked the edges of that panel with L'Amore Red Palette ink and distressed them. And now I have a card with a completely distressed look that I think fits it, but was quite a stretch for me. I hope you like it.