This and That

I am not trying to sell anyone a die cut machine, but I use mine all the time and have been learning to work with software to take my projects a little farther.  I welded a couple circles together to cut my picture to appear like looking through binoculars.  To get the machine to cut exactly where I wanted, I first cut a template out of scrap paper, then placed the photo under the template and stuck it to the mat.  I could see exactly where the cut would be made.  The pattern was removed before cutting.  Measuring never works for me, at least not with the precision I was looking for this time.  The brown shadow piece used the same template with a couple rectangles added.

The tree and the branch were machine cut then put through a crimper.  I did the title backwards from what I usually do.  I welded the shadow (brown) and cut it in one piece.  The standard letters were cut individually then adhered to the shadow.  For a little more texture, I stamped the blue letters with white ink using an acrylic feather stamp.

To get the mottled look of the background paper, I lightly applied swirls of blue distress ink in a vertical motion.  To tone that down, the paper was sprayed with water  so the color spreads out and blends.  The paper was  allowed to dry and  an iron pressed the paper to uncurl it.

I really love to combine techniques to build a page.  It makes me happy to work on a page like this one and I easily lose track of time.