Compendium of Curiosities 1st challenge - waterstamping

My ATT friend Linda, of StudioL3, is hosting a weekly challenge using the techniques from Tim Holtz's Compendium of Curiosities book.  You can check out her blog for all the details.  Prizes will be awarded throughout the challenge - all chosen by a random number generator.  A new challenge will be posted each Monday.  Sounds like fun?  You can join in any time - please do!

After using the darkest red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet distress inks all over my tag I then blended them with one of the browns.  I think the colors look better...imo.  I chose the dots background stamp from Psychedelic Grunge for my waterstamp.  I overstamped the foliage from Nature's Moments in olive Archival ink and the sentiment in black Archival ink.  The bird was stamped with distress embossing ink, then heated up Tea Dye distress powder.  Cool, rub off a bit, then cut out before inking up with black distress ink.  I darkened the eye with a black Sakura Glaze pen.  I added some grungeboard behind him to lift him off the page and added a piece of twine so he wasn't floating in mid-air.  I know, birds do that but artistically I think you know what I mean.  'Hope' was stamped on a scrap of paper, inked orange-brown then put behind a distressed label holder.  Using Tim's Scallop edge die I whacked off the end and backed it with black cardstock.  Added a few dots of black, again with the glaze pen.  I would have used my new Ranger enamel inks but they haven't arrived yet.