Perfect Distress and Favorite Stamps

Simon Says Stamp and Show asked a difficult question for this week's challenge.....what is your favorite Tim stamp?  No way to answer that with any accuracy, but I do have a current favorite set, one I know I'll be using a lot this month.
And as it just so happens to also work well with the new Compendium of Curiosities challenge, it's a no-brainer for me.
Add to that, it results in a completed holiday card, and I'm totally happy.
So,  CCC#21 is (as the title of this post cleverly reveals),  perfect distress, which is one of those great techniques I learned early on, but seldom remember to use. 

Here is the card I made for both challenges:

The background is very simple.  I stamped the christmas carol stamp from the holiday wishes set in olive archival ink on white cardstock.  Then I inked over the whole thing with peeled paint, then toned it all down with a whitewash of snowcap paint dabber.

The stamp set is grunge flakes, and I used the various snowflake stamps while doing the perfect distress technique.  Here's a little tip for you:  don't go overboard when you get to step 5 of the technique.  I'm just sayin'......

Distress inks used:  broken china, stormy sky, faded jeans, tumbled glass, and weathered wood.

Perfect pearls used:  turquoise, true blue sparkle, blue smoke, blue patina, and perfect pearl.

The snowman, tall trees and sentiment are all from the mini holiday set.

The trees were stamped right over the background with both pine needles and black soot.

The snowman was stamped with broken china and then embossed with  Zing embossing powder (in wave), cut out, edged with chipped sapphire, and attached to the card with pop dots.

At the last minute I decided that the fairly monochromatic card needed a pop of a different color, so I added the red ribbon scarf and put the sentiment on a red mat.   I'm not 100% on that, but think it turned out OK.

Oh, and while I was working on this card, I heard something that sounded harder than rain on my windows.  Hope I didn't bring it on, but there's a whole sleet and wet snow thing going on outside.  In November!  And wasn't it just last week that the temps hit 70???