Encore Post - Irresistible Fossils

Encore Posts

Projects which made their first appearances elsewhere for Design Team duties or Guest Designer opportunities, but which only had a sneak peek here, are being gathered together in the pages of my virtual scrapbook while I'm away.
As always, the Encore Posts are formatted differently from the regular ones, so that you can easily spot them.
Please don't feel that you have to comment all over again!

This is a post which appeared over on the PaperArtsy blog back in April 2016.  I'm reviving it now as it's a perfect fit for this month's How Can You Resist? challenge at A Vintage Journey, so I thought this could offer an extra bit of inspiration.  Inspiration from the past for a current challenge - not bad, eh?!   You can check out my actual inspiration for this month's challenge if you missed it... this time they were Irresistible Insects rather than fossils.  Here's what I wrote back then....

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Hello all, it's Alison here from Words and Pictures.  I've not been around much lately but I couldn't resist joining in with the Resists theme, and it gave me the excuse to get two of the PaperArtsy Minis I've coveted for ages - finally giving in to temptation (like Oscar Wilde, I can resist everything but temptation!).  Regular followers of mine will know that clear embossing is a favourite thing of mine - I love its glossy dimensionality - and it works brilliantly as a resist for the inkiness to follow.

I ended up creating a quartet of ATCs with these fabulously detailed stamps... one pair with the fossils lying in state in a fusty wooden drawer in some zoologist's collection...

... and one pair where they are in a kind of dream of the world they used to inhabit...

I started by cutting ATCs from some off-white card and stamping the fish fossils - PaperArtsy Ink & The Dog Minis 100 and 101 - in Versamark before embossing with clear embossing powder.

  (You'll see I created a spare pair in case of problems or other ideas!)

For the zoologist's pair, I applied Distress Inks to the ATCs with a blending tool - Antique Linen followed by Vintage Photo - keeping some damp paper towel nearby so that I could buff away any excess ink from the bones as I went.

Then I did some spritzing and flicking, and also sprayed some Distress Marker splatter to add to the aged look.

I added some vintage script - the zoologist's notes, taken from the Ink and the Dog Words Plate 4 - stamped in Distress Ink so that it could also easily be wiped away from the bones.

And finally I added the rub-ons to label the collected specimens, as well as the word stickers which I shaded around with more ink.

For the underwater pair, I applied my ink differently - pressing the chosen colours onto the craft mat, spritzing with some water...

... and then dipping and smooshing my ATCs until I liked the look of them.

I used the branches from Hot Picks 1008 as seaweed, again stamped in Distress Ink so that the paper towel could spring into action to remove any excess from the embossed fossil.

And I painted some Snowflake Fresco paint on to my craft mat and then used the top of a paintbrush cover and the other end of the paintbrush...

... to "stamp" my columns of bubbles.

I always enjoy the gleam of the clear embossing in sunlight, and it gave me great pleasure to fit in just a little bit of Resistance in my brief few days at home recently.

I hope you'll be inspired to play with some Resists too.

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And that hope is still true today in 2018, only this time the invitation is to share your resists at A Vintage Journey rather than at PaperArtsy!  

If we were fossils of two snails 
caught in a rock for millions of years.
Would we know we were together?
Natasha Tsakos