Cute little cow poke!

I know, you will get tired of hearing this, but more firsts, first accordion/stair step card and first Technique Challenge TLC190. I had a lot of fun with this card. I tried stamping 'Howdy' right on the base card in white craft ink but it was kind of lost so I tried embossing it. Not enough powder stuck because the pad was a bit dry, so I tried going over with white gel pen. Disaster! The pen kept jumping off the line because of the few embossing powder bumps. So I had to cover it all up and I like the effect of the red panel better anyhow. I do wish I had used ruby red instead of real red, oh well.

The cacti are stamped on Old Olive with the same ink, the tag is the small tag punch stamped on Pumpkin Pie and stamped with the paisleys from Fresh Fillers. 'Love ya' is stamped with the Rough Edges mini alphabet. The stair step background is stamped with the paisleys from the cowboy set with Buckaroo Blue ink on the same colour cardstock.  The cowboy is stamped on whisper white and coloured with Copic markers. In case you can't tell, the cowboy hat and boots are  supposed to be uneven and dirty looking. His legs and arms are replaced with wire held on with glue dots.

To prevent the glue dots from sticking while in an envelope or collecting hairs (ever present in the air in a home with a cat!), yuck :( I used a new tool from EK Success, a powder dispenser. It looks like a stipple brush with a fat handle; inside is baby powder, it even smells good, and you pounce it on to coat the adhesive. It was intended for use with stickers or other embellishments that already have adhesive on them, if you want to pop them up with dimensional adhesive like pop dots. After the powder coats the back,  when you close the envelope or your scrapbook, the foam of the adhesive doesn't compress and cause the bellie to stick to your background. How clever is that!