Trying to be creative for Darnell's NBUS #9

Tonight is the closing of week two at Darnell's NBUS Challenge #9.

NBUS stands for "never before used schtuff". Darnel is also celebrating 1000 posts, over 1000 followers and has fabulous prizes on offer. You can still join in, as this is part of three weeks of celebrations over at Darnell's blog. Go to  djkardkreations blog to enter or just to check it all out!

My NBUS item on this card is the Inkadinkado Christmas Silhouette stamp. Although I have previously posted a card with this stamp, it was with a borrowed stamp. At one of the garage sales last summer, I managed to snap up this set of stamps, still in the package, for $2.00.  Oh my!

My other NBUS items are the Yupo paper, as well as the Citrus and Mermaid alcohol inks which I used to create my background.

This card is a bit of a twofer in the optional card category. I was trying to CASE Darnells Blog Header, and wanted to add a Bokeh look.  I cased that idea from  Jane at Jane's Journal Blog.
Here is a photo of her background.

 I decided to only ink over 3/4 of my yupo page, thereby leaving enough faded out inking with even a bit of the bare page for my Hidden Word.

I inked my Yupo and did not quite manage to get Darnells Blog Topper look as this is the first time I have ever used Alchohol inks on my own. I did make a card topper in a class a couple of years ago, but it was not on Yupo. It was a lot of fun and I now want to make more backgrounds to have on hand!

I made a stencil from some heavy weight card and die cut a swirl of different sized circles for the Bokeh. I stencilled the circles over the inky Yupo with Prima Ingvild Bolme Pastel Yellow Chalk Ink to create the bokeh look.

After that was dry, I stamped the Angel with Momento Black Ink and Sprayed the whole topper  with Imagine Crafts Sheer Shimmer Spritz.  I was horrified to find the black ink ran over the page. I tried to control it with the edge of a sheet of paper towel and then realized that the ink was just wiping off!

So...I used a Lysol wipe as it was the only thing I had on hand that was damp, and I wiped off the card...oh my! I did take off quite a bit of lovely colour I had created on the yupo... I was left with a sort of shadow of the angel...sort of a light grey. I then very carefully restamped the angel image with Versamark and used Stampendous Marcasite Opaque glitter to add some sparkle.  There is the teensiest hint of a shadow around the halo and the wings...oh well...

I could not get the black embossed powder to dry properly. I did not want to get too close to the Yupo as I had already managed to warp another piece of it earlier. I finally gave up and hairsprayed the whole topper, thereby sealing in the embossing powder...sort of like setting glitter!

I cut the Crafty Cuts NOEL die from the snippet of inky Yupo that was left over, and mounted it on pop dots for some depth to help it stand out from the page.

All in all, this card was a lot of fun to make. Defo a learning curve to the Yupo and now I want to watch some U-Tube tutorials on how to best create with this fun product.

PS  I just set my card up to photograph and I see that hairspray does not hold embossing powder! I managed to touch the snowflakes around the Angel's horn and the black powder came off on my fingers...leaving the greyish smudge where the old image used to be,,,Ugggh... I have stamped
a couple of wee snowflakes to try to cover it up somewhat, but will post this anyways...