Less is More 42

This week the ladies at Less is More have challenged us to make a clean and simple card featuring a silhouette.  I recently bought this stamp of the three wise men on coupon at Michaels, so I had something new to play with.  Otherwise it would have been a much loved tree stamp, my only other silhouette.  

I first made a one-layer card using masking and sponging. It took some fiddling to get it right.  I started by masking the top and bottom of the inked area, but found I didn't like the defined edge along the top.  I then masked only the bottom and liked that much better.  I masked a moon for the initial sponging, and then removed it and sponged just a bit of color across it.  When I stamped the image, I was concerned about the stars across the face of the moon.  I could have done some fancy masking to leave the palm leaves but remove the stars on the moon, but instead I am choosing to not let it bother me. :)

 

 For my second card, I simply cut out the sponged and inked panel, matted it on navy cardstock, and mounted it on a white card base. I added a Hero Arts sentiment in black.

Now for a question.  I've noticed that many people who ink backgrounds do so using distress inks.  I use an old Colorbox multi-color pad of pigment inks, as that is what I have that works best.  However, I've been so impressed with the cards I've seen using distress inks that I'm thinking of asking Santa for some.  Are people using the ink pads or the bottles of liquid ink, and are people using sponge daubers or brayers?  Are there any tricks I need to know for blending them?   If you have any opinions about distress inks, I'd love to hear them!  Thanks so much.

Supplies:
Paper: PTI white, navy from scrap box
Stamps:  Stampendous traveling far, Hero Arts sentiments
Ink: Color Box pigment inks, Memories black