Perfectly Distressed

This week's Grungy Monday challenge takes us to a cool video Tim did some time ago on what he calls perfect distress......the wonderful pairing of distress inks and perfect pearls.....click HERE to check it out; it's an oldie but goodie, and well worth re-visiting.  I think this technique will add great sparkle to your holiday projects.  Speaking of which, I'm still meeting my own personal challenge, and my entry for GM is also a Christmas card.

I originally thought I'd just use the technique as an accent, but got totally carried away, and used it EVERYWHERE.  I know that the sparkle of mica powders does not show up well in (my) photographs, so I also took some angle shots.

You can see the effect of the perfect pearls a little better there.  And here's a closeup of Santa.

I stamped Santa (from Tim's Letter to Santa set) on white cardstock with black soot distress ink, and then used several perfect pearls on him:  green patina on the holly, perfect pearl on the hair, biscotti on the face, and raspberry sparkle on the hat and coat.

The Happy Holidays stamp is from Tim's Holiday Wishes set, and I used pine needles distress ink and green patina perfect pearls.  

The last thing I did with this technique was to add both peeled paint and forest moss distress inks all around the card, using a blending tool.  This too, got the perfect pearls treatment; this time I used heirloom gold.

The piece was mounted on a red card base, and at the last minute I decided to add a bit more bling, covering the holly with forest moss distress stickles and adding some barn door distress stickles berries.

So, here it is, still October, and I've already gotten three holiday cards under my belt.  Bring on the next challenge!