I had a fun time with this card

When I saw yesterday's challenge on Sugar creek 'let's save some trees' I thought  'NO WAY!' - they were asking us to re-purpose paper towels, toilet paper or coffee filters! Well, I don't have coffee filters, so I was left with the choice of kitchen paper towel or toilet paper. I remembered that mum had some fancy Christmas toilet paper given to her, so I thought perhaps I could get some from her, but she might well have used it up by now.

Anyway, I put the challenge to the back of my mind, thinking it was one I wouldn't be taking part in. However, I'm still quite unwell with this chest infection (a bit better, thank goodness), so I was unable to go out to church this morning. I was miffed about that, but the bonus was that I was here to watch Barbara Gray of Clarity stamps on Create & Craft. One of the things she did today was to scrunch up tissue, distress it and sandwich it between acetate with a coloured-in stamped image. This gave me the idea of use some already-embossed kitchen towel paper, which I swiped with victorian velvet and then dusty concord and chipped sapphire DIs:

Having done this I found a piece of acetate that I've had for ages and ages - it already had silver foiled flowers on it, so I just coloured them with copic V09. I then stamped the Clarity stamp lady with Stazon ultramarine (having had a try first with some versafine that didn't stay put) and very lightly coloured with copic V04 - this was done on the 'wrong side' so there could be no smearing. I then ran this through my Xyron (I'm so glad I have this for tasks like this) and matted on to an offcut piece of lilac paper which has a slightly distressed look to it. This was then mounted on to a piece of 'oil on water' card that looks pink in some light and more purple in another. A couple of brads were added at two corners - so this is also for Paper pretties 187: use brads or eyelets, and Mark's finest papers speedy fox and friends 89: use brads of eyelets.

Then came the learning curve! I didn't want to just put the kitchen paper straight on to card because I'm sure it would have become tatty very quickly so I ran a piece of acetate through the Xyron and stuck the kitchen paper to it. Meanwhile, I backed an 8 x 8 card with some of the 'oil on water' card (I had gutted the inside of this because I only had one piece).

Then on to the final step - ah! this is where the learning curve really kicked in! I ran the acetate through the Xyron so that the kitchen paper towel side got sticky - laid it on the card only to find that, because the kitchen towel is 2-play, the bottom part stuck the card but started to come away from the top piece - I managed to rescue this by gently using my trusty ATG glue tape gun.

So, here it is - a large 8 x 8 card:

As well as the challenge on Sugar Creek, I'm linking this for these challenges that ask for something old and/or something new - the old being the supplies I used and the new being the new technique of using kitchen paper towel:

Crafts by Carolyn forum TTC12-01: something old, something new
Corrosive 140: ring in the new year
Order of the opus gluei 121: out with the old and in with the new (house button is very old, stamp is new)
Stamps R us: anything goes
Digistamps4joy 34: anything (something old, something new) goes
Freshly brewed January: use something new (technique)
My mum's craft shop 38: something new (technique)
Simon says: new something
Cute card Thursday 198: what's new (technique)
Fairytale 32: something new (technique)
Crazy4challenges 118: new year - new technique
Di's digis: it's all new (technique)
Our daily bread 91: in with the new, out with the old
Crafty calendar January: new news (technique)
St Luke's January: new year, new start - give new lease of life to something (piece of kitchen paper towel)

Also for:

Sparkles forum 27: anything but a Christmas card
Getting cricky simply Sunday challenge: it's a celebration
Alota 74: A, B or C - B birthday, C celebration
Kaboodle 100: let's celebrate
Critter 96: celebrations
Tuesday throwdown 79: shiny new year - something shiny
Craft your passion 91: anything goes + distressing
Let's craft and create 35: anything goes
House of gilli 23: anything goes
Heart song 29: anything goes
The pink elephant 129: anything goes
Cupcake craftroom January: anything goes
Papertake: anything goes
Blog a doodle: anything goes
The paper shelter 45: anything goes
Bizzy Becs January: anything goes
Art impressions 46: anything goes
CES 67: anything goes
Dream valley 23: anything goes
Gingerloft 31: anything goes
Inspire me Fridays 40
Make my Monday 71