Creative Chemistry Tags (Day 2-6)



Day 2 (l-r): Blended Distress/Spritz & Flick,
Brushless Watercolour,
Wrinkle-Free Distress



Day 3 (l-r):  Alcohol Ink Agates,
Archival Resist,
Stamping on Embossing Folder

 Hello!  Here's what I've been doing this afternoon.  I've been taking Tim Holtz' Creative Chemistry on-line card class (link here).  It's been wonderful and I have really learned a lot. He goes into a lot of detail and the techniques are a lot of fun.  Here are my efforts so far - definitely still in the learning phase.  I did go so far as to clear off a big space on my stamping desk so I could get all Tim Holtzy and lay out my craft sheet and have my heat tool right to hand.  I don't think I need it there all the time, but it was handy for drying between applications, etc.  I won't go into detail about the techniques, but I sure did have fun! 

Day 4 (l-r):  Watercolourng with Re-inkers;
Layered Misting,
Custom Stamp Pad

Day 5 (l-r): Stained Kraft Resist,
Stamping with Stains,
Marbled Stains

Day 6 (l-r): Watercolour with Markers,
Blending with Markers,
Stamping with Markers

Quick card

Hello! I made this quickie this week, mostly because that little scrap of alcohol ink background was too pretty to throw out and too small to put away. I recently came home with this pear stamp by The Artful Stamper (my treat for last week, never could resist a pear stamp), and it seemed like the perfect thing to go on this little scrap. I had made up a bunch of this paper for an ATC swap and this was what was left over. I think the colours were lettuce, butterscotch and espresso (and maybe pesto). The pears were stamped in India Ink and left to dry overnight. (So while this was a quick card in real time, it did take three evenings to put together.) The pears are mounted on a black mat, then on a gold mat, then another black mat for good measure. I'm not normally so zealous when it comes to matting, but I liked it here. It was a fairly small piece and it really bulked it up. (Mats are the new protein shake!) The card base is black, with a panel of music collage from a Tim Holtz patterned paper block, with some tissue tape stuck down in a willy-nilly "L" to cradle the focal image. I also gave the card a spritz with some gold smooch before adding the pear panel. Oh yeah, and my favourite thing about the pears was highlighting them with some Twinkling H20s. I've never used those on glossy before, but it really seemed to work here - just defined the pears that little bit against the background. And I drew in a shadow with a dark grey copic marker. So there you have it: a 15 minute card that took 3 weeks.

Thanks for stopping by!

Christmas Rocker

My apologies if my blog post led you to believe this would be a card depicting a kitten snoozing in a rocking chair in front of a fireplace bedecked with fir and holly. Instead, we have extreme guitarist (Stampin' Up), rocking to some psychedelic red and green. I think I can actually hear the electric guitar on this card! I didn't think I could get that effect with paper, but it turns out you can. I used glossy paper, with alcohol inks (watermelon, cranberry, citrus, sunshine yellow, willow) and a spray can of air. Tim Holtz does an awesome video on this - it's an easy technique and way more fun than cleaning your keyboard, which is the only other thing I know of to do with a can of spray air. I also embossed the rocker in black, and the grunge flourish is by Stamp-It in Australia. You can tell he's rockin' for Christmas by his hat, which is by yours truly, freehand (only four tries to get the right size!), with some liquid applique for trim. It sort of disappeared against the red (my planning skills, or lack thereof, let me down here) so I covered it with glossy accents to make it stand out. The message panel is sort of a terra cotta, but might be the new cajun craze by SU, I don't remember. It was just a scrap near my hand that really just begged to be included on this card. The "Merry Christmas" is from a wonderful Cornish Heritage Farms collection of Christmas greetings. I'm so glad I snapped that set up before they closed (a moment of silence in their memory....). The scratchy background is a Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous stamp, in crushed olive. The card base is Kiwi Kiss from my treasured stash. I love this green. It's the perfect shade of citrusy yellowy green, and I would go through my hoard in a flash. But I am trying to strike the right balance between using and enjoying it and tearing through my stash and not being able to get more. Right now I am erring on the side of never using, which is a pity. I'm glad I used it here - it's just right. This card is for a friend of mine from high school, and we used to go to rock concerts together and he is still a big fan of hard rock music. Because of this, I just had to make a non-traditional card for him and his family and I think this fits the bill. You won't find something like this at the mall! Nope. This is a one-of-a-kind!

Thanks for stopping by!

Arch #17 - Metals

Now this is metal, baby! I started with a piece of copper coloured foil (Spellbinders, I think), coloured it with alcohol inks (Terra Cotta, Denim, Espresso, Copper) and ran it through the Big Shot with a Tim Holtz folder (Retro Circles). Then I had it on my desk for two days while I fiddled and snipped and tried to find things that would look good with it. Not sure I succeeded there, but I will say that this was the best of a bad lot. This guitar dude (Stampin' Up!) seemed to trigger the music kind of metal for me (though his hair is too short and styled and pants a bit too stylish to be a real metal dude). Still, it's evokes the idea if not actually slaving to reality. I stamped him and embossed him with Lapis Lazuli on a piece of colourwashed paper I had on hand. That got scuffled on the edges, stamped with a word stamp (Tim Holtz, Stampers Anonymous) and mounted over some navy mulberry paper with stars. The "heavy metal" is from my label maker and at this point I called it quits. In real life the metal is very shiny and I spent the whole time making this freaking myself out seeing my reflection moving in all those retro circles. You know how movement can catch the corner of your eye, well this foil is extremely reflective. Add numerous ridges = more reflective surfaces, plus one over caffeinated stamper and you have one jumpy situation. And here I thought stamping was supposed to be relaxing!

Thanks for stopping by.

Scrap Stash Sunday 1

Hello!

[warning - lengthy computer rant follows. If you want just the stampy bits, scroll down to the picture. If you want to read modern-day David and Goliath story sprinkled with techy-sounding words, read on.] I said I'd be back with something stampy, and I really did try. I tried to scan in a lovely card I made yesterday using only scraps, but my scanner refused to cooperate. Allegedly some other program was using it and I was to wait and try again later. Now I know this to be untrue, as I am the only one using it and there are no other scanny programs running. I am certain that it is a diabolical plot on the part of Paint Shop Pro to come up with new and different ways to torment me each time I try to scan and save a card. I don't want to do anything fancy like do digital collage or photoshop a politician's face on a pumpkin. No, I merely want to scan and add my 'watermark' and possibly enhance the colour, if I can bear the tortuous procedure to do so. Despite my troubles learning to use this sophisticated, and undoubtedly marvellous in the hands of the competent, software, I do harbour suspicions that the real villain might be our operating system. It's a very common OS, and I suspect that this OS or its evil overlord and parent company has cunningly and knowingly designed their software to thwart the use of competitors' product with its operating system. This is possibly groundless paranoia. However, we have been having trouble with our video camera and uploading movies. DH has been unable to upload videos off it with our new system. The operating system people claim that it's not their responsibility, that it's to do with the computer settings so they don't provide a patch. However, we had been able to upload our home movies with earlier versions of this company's operating systems on other machines, including our very elderly and unreliable computer. Arrgh. This has occupied DH for several evenings now, which might not sound like much, but he is normally pretty quick about fixing things of this nature. Sadly, he is but one man, working against the combined might of the overlord's XXIVth and XIIIth Legions stationed in Seattle, with only the clandestine whispers and murmurings of internet chat groups to support him in his struggle. He thinks that it's because the latest version of this OS can't recognize big USB drives. Odd in that storage devices like this have been increasing in capacity in past years, so it seems reasonable to expect that to continue or at least maintain the current capacity. This is why I was reluctant to get into blogging. The least thing goes wrong and I'm completely thwarted. What irks me the most is the mendacious dialogue boxes that pop up and tell me what's wrong. At least the programmers could have had the decency to tell the truth there: "You are getting an error message because this computer hates you and has decided that you should be doing something worthwhile like laundry or cleaning off your dresser top. This scanner will work when it is good and ready and not before. Ok?"

....next day... [basement, scene fraught with tension and (occasionally) suppressed fury. Blogger enters stage left.]....

DH got the scanner going and I was able to load up this card (on the fifth attempt, five different things going wrong, grrrrrrrr), which I made yesterday out of scraps from my stash. I had the black and white background rejected from another project, but it is stamped with a Heather's Stamping Haven stamp (a ship's record), ginkgo leaf (Old Island Stamp Company) and large flower (The Stamp Barn). The black ginkgo panel was a reject from an afternoon spent trying to fake yuzen paper for a class. It's tissue paper glued to black paper and stamped with gold ginkgo leaf. (It looks exactly like ginkgo leaf stamped directly on black paper - hence its arrival in my reject bin.) The hearts are from a scrap of glossy paper coloured with alcohol inks, which I cut out in various heart shape sizes on my Cricut (George cartridge). They are stamped with some Tim Holtz stamps (Stampers Anonymous) using Stazon. The only piece that was a fresh cut was the mustard fleck mat for the white piece. Everything else, even the card base, was from another project. Nice to have a home for all these pieces! Inside I stamped it with my sentiment stamp (Paper Inspirations) that says "Life is the flower of which love is the honey. Victor Hugo."

I'm going to try to use more scraps. I will try to photo the scrap pile before it becomes a card, since I always enjoy those photos on blogs. However, if it adds an additional step that causes the whole effort to fail, I won't bother.

Thanks for stopping by!

My brother is a Guitar Hero junkie. My brother had a birthday recently. And my brother is the victim of this semi-literate card.

I used alcohol inks on glossy card and blew them around with a can of compressed air. It's a somewhat satisfactory technique, but your hands get cold pretty quickly. It also makes you wish you had more colours of alcohol ink even though you have a lot of colours already....

The rocker (Stampin' Up) is stamped in black Archival ink (Ranger) and embossed in black. I mounted the main panel on black and added a few extra things, like a chipboard circle, painted white and stamped with the same dragonfly (Inkadinkado) as on the white card. I used red versamagic ink for that. I dithered for a while about what sentiment to use, and wished in vain for a grunge alphabet set. Then I recalled my snazzy dymo label maker and whipped off this semi-literate little number. (That little space between u and r is what turns this from Sumerian anachronism to hipster-cool.) The blue paper is textured Pacific Point (SU), torn on the bottom. I notched the "hero" sticker like a pennant and added some denim dimensional pearls. I love how this turned out! I don't normally stamp in the psychedelic grunge style, but this isn't bad for a first attempt!

Butterfly Birthday

Merry Christmas! Has anyone's true love sent them four calling birds today? How about four pounds of back bacon? My true love went for groceries (twice) so he's in the good books today.

How was your Christmas? Mine was great, and now we are in that lovely, indolent, gluttonous aftermath. I have Jamie Oliver's leek and turkey pot pie in the oven and we are all hoping it is as good as it sounded in the recipe. Yum yum! Can't wait.

I have even been doing some stamping, withe extra bonus of having my mother here to stamp with! Last night we did a whole bunch of thank you cards featuring that cute little MS butterfly punch. I also did a birthday card for a friend of mine who has a birthday coming up. I went with a clean and simple card since I have been labouring away doing Timmy-style tags with endless layers and colours and textures. I was ready for something clean and non-Christmas. This butterfly has been kicking around my desk for a while so it was good to find it a home. It started out as a trial of versafine on glossy (works if you heat set it), using my SU floral stamp. It kicked around on my desk for ages like that, then it got used as a trial to see if alcohol inks can go over top. (They can.) This one uses silver and shades of blue and green. Then it kicked around on my desk for a while until I got my SU butterfly die for the Big Shot and it was the perfect thing to cut butterflies from. Poor little butterfly got moved from pillar to post, buried, discovered, tidied, buried, lost, found, you name it. Finally, last night was it's night! It even got some tiny rhinestones to celebrate.

For this card, I went with a simple layout, which I'm sure was inspired by a layout on Natasha Trupp's Clean and Simple blog, but can't remember exactly which one. Anyway, it's a plain white card, with a rectangular focal point is in the middle. The flourish (SU, Priceless) is in tempting turquoise with some royal blue glitter pen accents on the dots and the antennae. The sentiment is PTI, stamped in turquoise and versafine blue. Warning! Versafine needs to dry or be heat set if you are stamping on whisper white! Or your clean and simple will be all smudged and you will have to do it all over again! But don't worry, it will be faster the second time around because you will have already figured it all out.

Hope you're having a wonderful Christmastide!

Happy stamping!

12 Tags of Christmas #1

I recently discovered Tim Holtz' 12 Tags of Christmas feature. Wow! It's really amazing. I fell in love with them and wanted to try my hand at them. One of the techniques featured was on how to make plaid backgrounds with alcohol inks so I set to it. It's really easy and I have a tidy pile of them on my desk (tidy used figuratively here of course).

I used mostly reds, golds and purples for this background, and stamped on some wintry images from the Winter Post set (SU). I even tried out my new scratching tool - aren't I getting grungy here! I used versafine ink, which seems to be wearing off. Ink that rubs off is a bit more of an extreme distress effect than I was going, so I will need to be gentle with this card until I try a replacement panel. I will have to try a different kind of ink next time, and just hope for the best.

I also scuffed up the edges of the tag (textured cardstock, named similarly to the irascible hotelier at Fawlty Towers). A bit about how I made my tag. In the absence of the elusive #8 manila tags, I made my own from cardstock and trimmed the corners at the top. For once they are even, a fluke that will never happen again! I also punched a circle from burgundy, but punched across the edge of the paper to get a flat side. Then I added an eyelet with my crop-o-dile. I stamped it a few times with a snowflake from Winter Post and edged in plum and artprint brown. The fibres are from my stash and I just love how they add texture and interest and a hit of colour. The layers are various colours of Mr Fawlty cardstock, edged in artprint brown. The brown one was run through my Big Shot for some texture, and the light burgundy has been stamped with a non-SU Christmas tree in bronze. The main card has been stamped in snowflakes in gold and versamark. The brads are square and spell "joy". They were silver so I tinted them with my alcohol ink applicator while I had it out. They're not so stark now and blend better. When all was said and done my hands were filthy but I was very happy with the result. I loved the tag, but I needed to put it on a card. I'm not so assimilated into the TH cult that I can just make tags for the sake of tags. I'm also a few steps away from doing large amounts of metal work in my papercrafting. Please pass the koolaid!

Thanks for stopping by!

Lamb baby card

A friend of mine from university recently (well, not that recently, but it still feels recent to me) had a baby boy. This is very exciting news and I wanted to send a card and my well-wishes. I don't have a lot of baby stamps because it seemed like all my friends were done having babies. But they aren't, so I had to expand my repertoire of suitable images (more stamps - poor me!). I found this one at my LSS and it has a coordinating word-y image, which I used on the navy background.

I cased the sketch from Krista's summer class (the peapod one) and turned it portrait instead of horizontal. Really this card started out with the alcohol ink polished stone panel and I had a vision of that as the starting point, with soft blues and a dreamy quality. Then I had to colour this little lambie to match (used markers and paintbrush), and then took forrrrr-evvvverrrrr (said with all the dramatic emphasis I can muster) to find some matching blue cardstock to bring it all together. There were some tense moments at the last minute that it all wouldn't fit until my mother, who was visiting, suggested I turn the critical piece 90 degrees and whew! it all came together. (Have I mentioned that I have very poor spatial skills???) Anyway, thanks to my spatially gifted mother, this card all came together. I almost ruined it by over-stickling the sheep, but did you know that you can scrape most of the stickles off once they have dried. In the absence of a carding comb, it is a good way to remove excess glitter from a fleece.

Now I just need to get this and the present in the mail!

Thanks for stopping by!

Alcohol Ink Splatter Card

Here's something I came up with after being inspired by Tim Holtz's video clip on alcohol ink splatter technique. I thought it looked like a really cool thing to try, so I got the few supplies together (compressed air, glossy paper -not photo paper - and alcohol ink), put on an old shirt, and sat down to play. I can't quite recall all the colours of alcohol ink I used, but if I were to guess: citrus, lettuce, denim, sailboat blue, red pepper, cranberry, lemonade, and currant. I am a big believer in using lots of colours! But you knew that about me already.

This background was my second attempt, since it does take a bit of practice. I used a variety of colours, some bright, some deeper, just fooled around a bit really. DH was not at all impressed with the initial (pre-stamped) background, and to be fair, it did look a bit blobby and messy (but to be fair back again, this is the point).

I thought my grungey-collagey stamps would be perfect for this. I got them in Victoria (BC) when I was there last year and my aunt took me to her LSS. They're Australian (Stamp-It) and are really useful for this kind of thing - very pretty background stamps in interesting textures and shapes. I used the corner mesh with a flourish and the large flourish and stamped with black India ink. The sentiment is embossed in black and sponged in yellows and greens, with a bit of navy around the edges. It's more vibrant in real life. (I couldn't get through a post without saying it looks better in real life, now could I!)

Normally I have a hard time figuring out what to do with this kind of background (generally being loath to cover up the splendid colour, but I took a deep breath and went for it. This one looked great on an early try with black and real red. I thought the sentiment panel being fairly plan balanced things nicely. I had some flowers in my stash, with some brads to finish it off. As an afterthought I pried off the sentiment panel and added the cord, and stuck it down again. This card also has a side hinge. If you're going to go outside the box, go all the way I say. Nothing says "wild and crazy stamper" like a side hinge card......

Here's a better shot of the alcohol ink (at the expense of washing out the sentiment panel and flowers). There's quite a lot of colour going on. It's so pretty that I want to try this again!

I highly recommend this type of card for late-night NVR (no vendor restriction) stamping therapy. The bright colours will really cheer you up and you will feel extremely clever and pleased with yourself for very little effort. Plus you get to use the canned air that has been kicking around the office for ages!

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies: Stamps: sentiment - Full of Life set (Stampin' Up), background - Laura Koh set (Stamp-It, code sisetoo8lk); Ink: versamark, India Ink, citrus, yoyo yellow (yes, I used yoyo yellow on a card!), gable green, tempting turquoise, night of navy (yikes - did I really use that many????); Paper: whisper white, glossy, basic black, real red; Other: Adirondack alcohol inks, black embossing powder, silver cord (SU), Making Memories flowers (Fifth Avenue collection), BasicGrey brads.

Easter Blessings and Alcohol Inks

Woohoo! New toys!!! I got this Easter stamp way back when because one time (years ago) I didn't realize that all the Easter stamps would be sold way before Easter. I had gone to my LSS to get one and she shook her head sadly and said they had all sold shortly after Christmas. I stored away that little nugget and this year when I saw this adorable filigree egg, I snapped it up, I think it was September.

Card details - short version. The eggs were stamped on pre-made background paper and embossed in black and silver, trimmed and mounted on the background papers. The sentiment is heat embossed too. So pretty!

Card details - long version.

I recently got my first alcohol inks. I used these a while ago in a class and fell in love with their rich, vibrant colours and the beautiful patterns they make. I used Wild Plum, Bottle and Silver on photo paper (misguided thriftiness, stay tuned) and the blending solution to make a sort of polished stone look background. Then I stamped the egg three times with versamark and embossed two with black and one with silver. The silver one got embossed on a paler piece that I'd inked when the felt was starting to lose its colour. So it's just a lighter version of the other two. The misguided thriftiness became apparent when the photo paper started to curl and melt a little under the heat tool. Still, it was salvageable, but I think I'll only use the photo paper when I know I won't be embossing. But I wasn't done with my heat tool yet! I used it to emboss the sentiment and heat up some neat craft foam that I got from my LSS for making texture stamps. After it was heated, I pressed the bristles of my hair brush into it (long side in) to make sort of a grassy look. I used this foam piece to stamp the turquoise background. It's a bit faint. I'll be experimenting more with this foam - it's fun! My aunt generously shared some with me when she was visiting. Wonder if she's tried hers yet??? I trimmed the eggs, stuck them down, added ticket corner punch and black mat, peeled off eggs to add organdy ribbon, stuck them down again, added matching brads and mounted the whole thing on an orchid opulence card base.

Now if you're still reading, you deserve a medal! Hope it was all worth it ;-) It's also why I put in the short version!

Supplies: Stamps: Easter egg - The Artful Stamper, sentiment - Magenta; Ink: versamark; Paper: glossy photo paper, cool caribbean, basic black, orchid opulence; Other: ticket corner punch, light turquoise brads, orchid organdy ribbon, black and silver embossing powder, moldable craft foam and hair brush, alcohol inks (Ranger) in Wild Plum, Bottle and Silver plus blending solution, felt and dabber tool.