My new Australian stamps

I have a bit of a story about today's cards, feel free to jump ahead and just look at the cards if you'd like :-)

Once in a while, I get a bit burnt out from colouring.  After months and months of doing lots of cards using lots of colouring, I finally reached that point where I needed a bit of a break.  I noticed a card on SCS that I loved, and followed the link to Valita's blog to find out what the name of the stamp was.  She didn't have it listed, so I emailed her, and she gave me some information about the stamp, but she had gotten it at a local craft store to where she lives, and she is way off in Australia--a whole different continent than I!  This started a long internet hunt until finally I found that it seemed the item came from Grant Studios.  Browsing through their website, though, I couldn't find it, and realized it may have been discontinued.  Having spent all this time searching I was not ready to give up, so emailed them to inquire.  I was lucky they got back to me and told me that yes, it had been discontinued, but they'd look about and check their cupboards for me to see if they could find one (I guess I sounded kind of desperate LOL!).  They did have one and agreed to mail it all the way over to me in Canada.  I thought I was in for a long wait, but it got here within a week!  Amazing!  Anyway, here are some of the first cards I have made with it:

On this one (above) I stamped the image, cut it out with a nestie, added some colour direct to paper with a topic marker using upward brushstrokes and feathering at the end.  I bent up the edges and added metallic rub on paste, layered that over a doily, then layered the doily over a piece die cut with the Heartfelt Creations Decorative Lace Border Die.

On this one, I simply stamped the background using one of the stamps that came in the set with the silhouette, and added shading on the edges using versamagic black chalk ink.  To the main image, I used the Copic Airbrush to add a shading to the bottom left corner.

For this one, I added dots around the edge of the image using Gold Liquid Pearls, added shading with the Copic Airbrush, and layered over a frame made using the Heartfelt Creations Decorative Window Scene Die.