New Year's Day Cards

My first cards of the new year

Here are two cards I made on New Year's Eve. I finished them up just past midnight! 

I had purchased a couple of these kids necklaces about a month ago at our local Dollar Tree store. I wanted to see if I could change their look,they were a bit shiny for my style. I usually try and pick up a couple of things not on my needs list,when I visit these stores,to do something different with. I often put them aside and forget about them,at least for awhile! This time though I had New Year's in mind when I purchased them and I actually remembered to pull them back out. So now the transformation begins...

The first thing that I did was pull out my alcohol inks. My color choices were pitch black,slate,and espresso. I covered a large portion of them both. I used the same colors on both,even though they look a bit different due to the base color of each clock.

This next picture actually shows two steps,sorry I forgot to snap a quick shot in between. The first one I took some emboss gloss and dabbed it randomly around. Next I sprinkled walnut stain distress embossing powder over these areas,and then I melted with the heat gun. Since these are made of plastic I had to be careful not to heat them for too long,but enough that some of the metal coating bubbled up. It is hard to see in the pix,but this gives it even more of a grungy look. After it cooled down I took black soot distress paint and dabbed some on the numbers to bring them out more. I also put some on the hands and then added the same embossing powder to it,heat it briefly.

Now to finish off the card I die cut some gears and attached them with brads. I added some tarnished brass distress stickles to some vintage seam binding and adhered it to the side of the card.

The second card was done similarly. I did not list all the brands of dies,but I can let you know if interested. Thanks for joining me on my first tutorial. I hope to take more and better pictures next time. I hope my instructions are easy to follow, I am used to teaching classes in person. I have a lot to learn about blogging,so please bear with me as I am still learning. Thanks for visiting and please come again!