Sushi Grass

What do you do when a friend shares a great idea with you?  Well, if you're a blogger, you post it to share with all your blogging friends!  My crafting friends and I get together once a month and EAT craft together.  This time, it was at my friend Ali's house and boy did she have a great idea to share with us.  She shared a story of watching a co-worker sit down with a lunch of sushi, as she discarded the decorative green plastic strip that surrounded the container, inspiration struck.  Ali said, "can I have that?", to the bewilderment of her co-worker, and the following is what my genious friend Ali did with that strip of plastic:

She made grass!!!!!

And here's how she did it:

She turned the strip upside down on a piece of cardstock (I used some temporary adhesive on mine, so that it would not move while I worked).  Then, she used green ink and a sponge, working from top to bottom, stroke the sponge downward.  In my example, I then used a different shade of green and moved my template slightly to create a shadow effect.  Ali also pointed out that you could make a "forest" effect with this technique as well.

And here's the card I created using this technique:

I used an SU set called Simply Spring (ret), SU markers and spritzed the stamp with water before stamping on watercolor paper.  The bird and bee are also from this set, stamped in StazOn brown, colored with markers and popped up on the card.  I added a stamped SU sentiment, rounding the corners with a punch.  The borders are made with an MS punch on DCWV Spring Pack textured CS.  I punched out some tulips, once in pink and then in white for the corners.  The BG is more DCWV textured CS that I ran through the Cuttlebug with a swirl envelope.  I then sanded the embossed panel.  I had these darling little bunny brads that I added to the corners of the card to finish it off.

Thanks Ali for sharing this fun technique.  I can't wait to experiment more with it.  I'm thinking maybe as a border treatment next.

Have a great Sunday everyone!

Til Next time,