Hi readers! Happy Tuesday! If you’re like me, you may have been curious how the fabulous Wanda Guess would POP a grey ink color, but as  you may have guessed (as I did), she did it in am AMAZING way! Read on and enjoy!

It’s Wanda, and I’m here today with the latest installment in our Color Pop series – featuring the newest Distress Ink Color! I’m excited to share a project using the color for June – Hickory Smoke. This is a soft, medium, shade of cool grey. Like the color of steel or the grey part of the ocean. I had a lot of ideas start to flow with this color and ended up going with one of my favorite classic color combinations – grey, pink and yellow. It’s a retro 50’s vibe when you use these colors together. Think – a pretty 50’s roses table cloth. Are you feeling it? And, instead of making a card this month, I made a gift box – perfect for a wedding gift card!

One of the nice things about this grey is that it’s not too dark. And, it isn’t too warm. Yeah, the perfect grey! I started by using the Gothic Stencil on repeat (8 times) to make a sheet of my own patterned paper! I used a nice thick, smooth white paper. The stencil matches up on a repeat and this was easy to do. I used a small sponge dauber and the Hickory Smoke ink pad and went to town. I made my paper into a 9×9 inch square and then used the We R Memory Keepers Gift Box Punch Board to make the pretty box. Then the fun part — decorating it!

I cut out several Tattered Florals die pieces and colored them using Spun Sugar Distress Ink and Squeezed Lemonade Distress Ink. I curled all the edges of my pink flower inward and nested them together with a pink brad in the center. It sort of looks like a cross between a cabbage rose and a peony! For the Lemonade colored flowers I added a bit of Hickory Smoke ink to the edges. You can see that I also added touches of Ranger Silver Paint to both my leaves and my yellow flowers. I wanted a bit of shine for this…but not glitter. For the leaves, I cut out the Garden Greens and colored them with Hickory Smoke. Something a bit unexpected and different… I dyed my own ribbon with Spun Sugar Inks and crinkled it up nice and pretty.

I made a charm dangle off the edge of the box with a Shield charm and a pearl bauble. More is more, right? Yes!

I’ve made another color swatch reference chart for you to see where the new color fits in with your existing Distress Ink colors. I’m showing you some different shades that will help you see the true color of Hickory Smoke.

Next up is the gorgeous Blueprint Sketch. YEAH! I love the TH Blueprints stamps so I am already thinking along those lines for next month’s project. What a pretty blue!! Yowza! See you next month! Have a great day and happy crafting!

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