Dirty, Messy Fun

We've had plenty of dirt and mess around here the past couple weeks. Two trees (neither one ours) fell and left a swath of destruction in our backyard. Mud, leaves, water, sticks, sawdust...all have been found in abundance in and around my house. This has inspired me to share with you another (much more fun!) muddy mess.

I've had this picture around for ages just waiting to find something dirty and messy to experiment with - and I finally found it! Even better...I found two!

The first is a new (to me at least) product called Mudd Puddles that I recently found at a weekend crop. It's basically like sand with glue in it and it comes in a bunch of colors. I chose the color I wanted for my dirt and it was called 'Brownie Bites' - it even smells a bit like chocolate. Fun!

I don't have a macro lens (yet!) so this is the best I got:

I also really wanted the look of splashy, muddy puddles, so for that I turned to Tim Holtz distressing powder. I've had this in my stash for awhile but hadn't pulled it out until now. Since I wanted a spray/splash look I combined some embossing fluid with a teensy bit of water in a spray pen and sprayed my paper with the mixture. I put the embossing powder on top of it, used a heating tool on it, and it came out just as I'd hoped!

More tidbits...

This was fun - and now layout 18 is done!!

(In truth, there are more than that done, just not blogged yet...) Come back soon for more installments!

Oh, and I almost forgot - stop by this Saturday, April 30 for our Lighten-Up blog hop. Six of us will have yummy, healthy recipes to share with you so come back and check it out!