Guest Designer - Marty Fishman

It is time to introduce our Guest Designer for the 'August' challenge. Please say hello and give a warm welcome to Marty Fishman of Merry Marty Cards. Marty was the Top Pick from the 'By Airmail' challenge.

Hi, I'm Marty and I'm thrilled and honored to be here as the Guest Designer for this challenge!

I've been interested in some type of craft most of my life, starting out with knitting at a young age. I continued with that hobby off and on throughout my life, up until a few years ago. Cross stitching was also something I enjoyed for many years. I resisted the urge to do scrapbook layouts until the early 2000's, when I also became interested in gardening and wanted to document the annual progress in mini albums. From there I began making cards, and became interested in mixed media products while taking a class and playing with products I didn't even know existed. What fun that was!

My design was made using various products I had on hand and I decided to try a marbling technique. I played around with different color combinations and had decent results, but decided I wanted more of a tone-on-tone look. My results were not as good, just okay. My background was made with Hickory Smoke and Pumice Stone distress inks on glossy cardstock.

My marbled background needed some sprucing up. To achieve this, I used a gorgeous Flourish stencil (6x6) from Prima Marketing with Shadow Grey Archival Ink, intentionally having dark and light areas. When that was dry, I placed the background and stencil in a box and added Distress Resist spray. Don't forget to place your stencil in water right away after using this. I sprinkled on Ranger Silver embossing powder here and there and heated. I love the results and added texture of combining these products.

Since my marbled background was not really prominent, I decided to add a few "arches" using the Tim Holtz Stacked Archway dies. The hairbow is colored with Spun Sugar and Tattered Rose distress inks (used for ribbon). The lace underneath was white, but I colored it with Vintage Photo DOX and rinsed out.

The little girl in the photo looks afraid, maybe from the situation or a change in her life. I chose the Typed Token "Hope" and Quote Chip "Be Brave" for those reasons. The token and chip were colored with Vintage Photo Distress crayon and I dabbed Mushroom alcohol ink on it as well.

My finishing touches were the 3-D Impresslit Scallops. I used a scrap of copper Kraft-Core (Tim Holtz Metallic Collection) cardstock and colored with Prima Metallique waxes, Brushed Iron and then White Gold. Next I added Distress crayons - Vintage Photo, Picket Fence, and Black Soot, and dabbed on Mushroom alcohol ink. I played around with all of these until I achieved the look I wanted.

I enjoyed playing around with different products to create this card. Please visit my blog for additional photos and details.

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Once you have checked out the details of Marty's lovely vintage project, come on back and share your project with marbling, arches and/or columns for the 'August' challenge.

The challenge can be found HERE and is open through 11:55pm EST on August 14th.

We also invite you to check in on Saturday for another wonderful Saturday Showcase from one of our designers and then next Wednesday the gals on the Funkie side of the Design Team will be back with their inspiration for you.