Wow, can you believe that it's already week 9 of this challenge? Amazing how time flies! It seems like I just began the altered playing card challenge and here we are on another challenge into week 9 already. Here are the links to the previous posts for this challenge Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7 Week 8 Our Facebook group is here: Facebook Group At any rate, Sunday was Father's Day but it was also mine and my husband's 18th anniversary! Time really does fly!! This week I started with the two pieces and used distress stain in two different colors directly onto the background Next I applied a darker color of ink around the edges of each piece I then applied an even darker color again around the edges I love how the colors graduate from darker to lighter towards the middle Next I decided to use a stencil and two different crackle pastes, one is a white paste from Wendy Vecchi and the other is a clear crackle paint This is the stencil I am using for both of these I simply used a pallet knife to apply the crackle mediums through the stencil This is what they looked like after application Set both aside to dry thoroughly, I left mine for a few hours while I ran an errand When I got back home they both looked like this... look at that crackle! So cool... I love the way the distress stain color bleeds through the crackle mediums. Working with the brown piece I stamped this weed stamp onto my background. This is from an older Tim Holtz set, I also used this set for my images Once again, I forgot to take photos of the next steps BUT, all I did was stamp butterflies onto white card stock and colored and cut them out and applied them to the top, I also just stamped my sentiment (Dylusions) and cut it out and added it Here is my finished first piece (I love this one!) For my blue piece, I only added a sentiment, I wasn't sure if I wanted to add anything else I might add something later but for now I like it as-is Here are the two pieces together and the full puzzle so far, what do you think? Again, sorry this post is late, I hope you enjoy making this week's pieces.... Have a great week!!!