Birthday Cards with the new Rose Embossing Template

I needed some Birthday cards - and I was excited to try out the new CTMH embossing folder of roses.  I also just got a handful of Distress Oxide inks and wanted to figure out what makes them so special.

The first card I actually inked the folder and with Worn Lipstick and ran it through the Cuttlebug.  I cut the Celebrate with a steel die three times out of Hollyhock cardstock scraps. (well, 6 times actually - you'll see soon).  Once the Distress Ink was dry, I spritzed it with water.  I didn't see much of a change but maybe that is because I had a very fine spritzer.  I tried it on some scraps and found that the water-mark effects were more pronounced with bigger drops of water rather than a fine mist.  

The hand-dyed seam binding is something I recently got on Etsy. Just getting the package with all the creative ways the ribbons were packaged made me want to buy more, more, more!!    

The difference in this one was that I just embossed the new color-of-the-year cardstock Bashful in a dry template.  Then I rubbed a bit of the ink (Worn Lipstick and Peeled Paint) onto an acrylic block.  From there, I picked up a bit with my watercolor pen and added color to the embossed paper.  These D.Oxide inks are different from the regular Distress Inks in that they behave more like pigment ink.  They are more opaque.  So the Peeled Paint looks great painted over the pink paper.  If you look closely you can see larger water spots, but I've still got to practice to get the hang of that part.  I stacked another set of 3 sentiments, and tied a piece of lettuce green hand-dyed seam binding with one of the little flowers that Michele included with my ribbon.  

Inside both cards is a piece of Bashful with one of the Birthday Sparkle sentiments.