Of Rusted Grunge and New Stamps

The holidays are over, and we're back to weekly challenges.  The latest Compendium of Curiosities challenge (week 26 already), can be found by clicking HERE, and it's called rusted grunge.

Over at Simon Says Stamp and Show, we're to do a project that includes our newest stamp, or even an older one, but one that we've never used before.

The rusted grunge technique was done on the bird (from the Nature grungeboard pack....which I heard was no longer available, but which I found....yippee!).  Tim specifies the color to use for this one, which I did, but then I did the same technique on the weeds, or are they flowers?  What I don't know about plants could fill a book. (They are also from the Nature pack....isn't it wonderful?!) but with different colors.  Guess it can't be called rusted grunge since it doesn't look like rust, but hey, I like it anyway.

As for the newest stamp.  I was fortunate enough to win three sets of Tim's clear stamps on the cruise, and they have never been used.  The little flowers (or are they also weeds???) in the background are from the Flights of Fancy set.  First I sprayed the tag with lettuce color wash and heirloom gold perfect pearls mist, and blotted it with a paper towel.  After it dried totally, I stamped that flower/weed randomly on the tag with embossing ink, covered it with clear embossing powder and heat set it.  I then inked over the whole thing with dried marigold distress ink, which really made the embossed flowers/weeds pop.  I thought it needed a little brown, so I then used the same stamp, but this time inked with coffee archival ink.