Framed Flowers and Homemade Ink Blending Tools

Hello there :0)

It's colour challenge week over at Less is More and I guess you're inevitably going to come up against a colour choice or palette that's not comfortable for you to work with along the way and this week is my 'ooo I'm not sure about these colours' week but a challenge is what it's called so here's my attempt to play with the soft pastel shades for this week....

I'm more than happy with how it turned out but ....hmmm, not sure how close I am to the mark now, my apricot is definitely more terracotta and yes I slipped in a bit of green for the leaves..... you can't have a pot plant without leaves!!!

I used dienamics dies to make the flower pot and inked it with Tea Dye Distress Ink for dimension, the flowers and leaves are memory box dies finished off with a dot of liquid pearls.

I'm happy to say that I'm guest designing with this card over at the Catered Crop where this weeks recipe swap is 'Framed'. Pop over and check out the challenge, winners have a chance to guest design on the next recipe swap and you have until March 16th to join in :0)

Now I promised you last week that I'd show you my homespun Ink Blenders for my Distress Inks.
I got fed up with the one and only Ranger Ink Blending tool I do have, falling apart and covering me with ink everytime I changed the foam pad but I didn't want to buy a tool for each colour so I searched on Google and found this tutorial on You Tube that seemed simple enough and here is the result....

the dimensions of my wooden blocks are 1.5 x 1.5 x 1.75 inches, the foam layer is made from strips of doublesided foam tape from Poundland and the velcro is found cheaply on eBay...and you can just buy the hook side too, so no wastage there! :0)

The length of wood was £2 which made 25 blocks, the foam tape £1 for a big roll, the velcro was £3 for 2metres... in fact the most expensive part was the foam pads but I could justify that with the savings made :0)

I used regular office stickers to label them, an extra bit of sticky tape behind them helps to make them stay put, and oh boy does it make using Distress inks easier and much more clean too... I would never say smudgy fingerprints have been totally eradicated *sigh, tut tut*
The plastic fishing tackle storage box keeps them separate, tidy and easy to view when selecting colours, but any plastic container would do the same job :0)

Apologies for the long blog post but hope you found the blending tool idea useful??
Thanks for stopping by today :0)
Jenny x