Distress Inks, Tags and What's New in the Garden

This week Linda at Studio L3 has set us a challenge to use Distress Ink. No problem for me then, because if I were cast away on a desert island and was allowed to have only one kind of colouring medium with me, it would be my DIs ! As always, in this challenge we take our inspiration from the one and only Tim Holtz.

When I'm wrapping a gift I usually like to finish it off with a handmade tag, luggage label size, and find that these end up being kept by friends and used as bookmarks. I have a birthday present all wrapped ready to deliver tonight, so have made a tag which also fits in with this week's Simon Says Stamp and Show a Tag challenge.

The tag was cut with the Tim die and coloured both sides with Faded Jeans using a blending tool. I ran it through the Big Shot with damask effect, buttons and zigzag stitching embossing folders and then coloured the raised parts with a Fired Brick pad. The roses are made with papers from Tim's Vintage Shabby pad, some smeared with Fired Brick and others left as is. The dress form and butterfly are covered with UTEE. The white satin ribbon has been coloured with Fired Brick.

In the garden this morning I was delighted to find the first of the lilies in flower, and these are one of my all-time favourites, the Regale, so I'm looking forward to going out there in the cool of the evening when their perfume will fill the air.

Another attraction in the garden these days is mum and one-week-old chicks. So difficult to get a decent photo as, when they're not hiding under mum to keep warm, they're darting about while she fusses, and each photo attempt ends up spoilt with at least one fluffy blur.

Here she has just found a tasty morsel and has excitedly called her little ones, so all we can see is bottoms as they search for those yummy crumbs.