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Tuesday Techniques and Tutorials – Embossed Edges, Tin Cans, and Dirty, Faded Ribbon

20 Tuesday Nov 2012

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Are you interested yet? 😉

I had the thought to put people in the car from Road Trip (thanks Krista, for that idea!) and wanted to use the phrase “Enjoy the journey.” And all of that led me to thinking this would make a great wedding card.

The only problem? I have no weddings coming up – nada. zip. zilch. So, I’m going to give it to one of you – hopefully someone else can make use of it! 🙂

If you want to make one of your own, here are the supplies:

Start by inking up a background stamp with Pumice Stone Distress Ink and stamp onto a manilla tag. Then use the ink blending tool with the same colour to ink the edges and soften the stamped image by blending over it.

Now, stamp some flourished with the same ink. Because we’ve blended and soften the background colour, the new stamped image will show up well.

Set this aside to dry – we’ll be doing some heat embossing later and we don’t want the powder to stick to the entire tag.

Ink up the car stamp with black Archival and stamp onto a spare manilla tag, then cut it out.

Using a craft knife and cutting mat, trim out the windows of the car, then use an ink blending tool to colour the edges with Gathered Twigs Distress Ink. If you want, use the Ranger Fine Detail Nib Water Brush to pull the ink from the edges into the centre of the car.

Now, use the Distress Markers in Broken China and Barn Door to colour two small wood veneer people (or whatever colours you want to go with the couple being hitched!). Add a little Glossy Accents and attach them to the back of the car, in the windows, with the coloured side facing out.

The next step is to make tin cans – what’s a wedding car without a little tacky happening? 🙂

Cut three narrow strips from the scrap manilla tag and ink them with Iced Spruce, Faded Jeans, and Aged Mahogany Distress Inks. Add a dot of Glossy Accents to the back on one end and add a piece of twine.

Wrap the paper around the twine until you get the size you want, then trim the end and adhere with Glossy Accents.

Use a piece of tape to stick the three “tin cans on strings” to the back of the car.

Set the car aside for later and get out the stamped tag.

I saw Tammy Tutterow do something similar on the edges of a tag she had on her blog and fell in love with it – now I’m addicted! Here’s how I do it, changed up a bit from Tammy’s:

Add embossing ink to the edges and cover with clear embossing powder.

As you can see, I wasn’t precise about it, it makes it look better this way.

Now flick the tag to knock off a lot of the powder and then heat set the rest. Use an ink blending tool with Gathered Twigs to ink over the embossed areas, then repeat the powder step again. Next, ink with a darker brown, like Walnut Stain. You should see light areas under the powder and dark areas in between where parts of the powder were licked off then inked over. It’s a neat, aged look and effect.

The darker you ink the top and the lighter you leave the base, the more interesting it looks. I left it pretty subtle for this tag but it was a bit more pronounced on last week’s.

You’re going to need ribbon to finish off the tag so run the Aged Mahogany ink pad over some Crinkle Ribbon, then spritz with water to blend. Crumple into a ball and dab with Gathered Twigs. Let dry or heat set – the two colours should give an aged and faded look to the ribbon.

Now, let’s put it all together! Add foam adhesive to the back of the car and adhere it to the left of the stamped and embossed tag. Get some word stickers and add them to the top right corner of the tag. Thread the ribbon through the hole in the tag. If you want, adhere the tag to a card and go party at a wedding!

I really love this tag and it makes me sad that I have no weddings that I can bring it to. So, leave me a comment and I’ll randomly pick someone to get it – if you’re lucky and have a wedding on the horizon, the card will already be done for you (and I will add it to a card before sending it off)!

Link me up if you try out the embossing technique, I’d love to see how it turns out for you!

S.

Tuesday Techniques and Tutorials aka Hello, my pretties!

14 Wednesday Nov 2012

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I had an awesome weekend at The Paperie Fall Retreat with all my buddies, playing, crafting, laughing, drinking, demoing…

The item I demoed is a new one for the Paperie and after my trip to Orlando in October, it was one that I knew had to be in the store! I was super excited when it showed up in time for the Retreat…

This is going to be more of a quick and simple overview introducing you to
Silks than an actual tutorial but I hope you like it anyway!

You’re going to need:

Supplies

Silks, Sticky Back Canvas, Craft sheet, paint brushes, Archival Ink, and stamps.

To begin, Silks are a Luminarte product, as in the people who make my beloved Twinks, so you know they’re going to be awesome and shimmery! They’re a water based acrylic glaze which means they’re not permanent or opaque but really fluid and translucent – and shimmery!

For the first tag (sorry there are no pictures of the process, my camera battery died and my little point and shoot just wasn’t up to the challenge, sad) I simply painted the Silks over the Sticky Back canvas, blending as I went, and let them dry, making a background. The beauty of these paints is that they don’t mix together and make mud colour – they just blend and stay gorgeous!

Once it was dry, I stamped the images in Archival Ink and then painted them in with more colours of Silks. As you will see, no muddy colours, just awesomeness! And great shine!

The second tag I made so I could show you how the Silks act as a resist. I stamped the same images in Jet Black Archival on the Sticky Back Canvas and heat set them…

…then painted them in with the same colours of Silks as the first tag:

This looks all wet and messy because I have found that on canvas the paint covers better and easier if I wet the fabric first. You do want to be careful because if you use too much water (I have 4-5 layers of paint and water on the house) you will get this wicking of the paint happening. Not an issue for this tag, I have plans to disguise it and the style of the stamp lends itself to an imperfect effect anyway.

Once the paint was dry, I misted over it with Dylusions Spray Inks and then misted lightly with water to blend them a bit.

You can already see that the Silks are resisting the sprays and keeping their intense colours – love it!

I’m impatient, so I used my cloth to blot up the excess moisture and then heat set the tag:

You can also see that the shimmer comes through and resists the mist too – so cool!

And a good black mixed media pen disguises the wicking flaws!

I didn’t do anything with the tags except add crinkle ribbon because I really just like them as they are. The ribbon for the first tag was painted with the Silks and it has awesome shimmer plus is just a little stiff – enough to hold some shape.

See the top of the tag? Easy and cool technique that I’ll try to remember to do next week!

Here’s the first tag – painting Silks over Silks on canvas:

I love the softness and overall shimmer of this one.

And the second tag – Silks resist with mist:

I think this is my favourite – I love the contrast of the shimmer paint and the matte mist and the colours are amazing!

Click on any of the pictures to make them bigger and see the shimmer a little better – I only wish I had the skills to really photograph it!

Let me know if you have played with Silks and show me what you’ve done – I’d love to see it! And if you don’t have any, go get some, really, they’re worth it!

S.

 

Tuesday Techniques and Tutorials – Twinkling H2O’s

30 Tuesday Oct 2012

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I have a mad love and passion for Twinkling H2O’s.

I admit it – they’re just one of the most beautiful products out there and add so much to a project.

So I had fun today and decided to try them out on a couple of different surfaces using a resist technique. My plan was to see if I could come up with some Christmas Card ideas and I think I have!

All you need (I forgot to take a pic of supplies!) are Twinkling H2O’s, a paintbrush, water, a mister of water, embossing powder and a heat tool, and any surfaces you want to paint on – I used vellum, watercolour paper, and kraft glassine.

First, mist your Twinks with water. These are solid paints and they need to sit a bit to get , well, painty! For this technique I made them really liquidy, like watercolours.

Mist your Twinks…

Next, stamp your image with Versamark ink and heat emboss. I did kraft glassine first:

kraft glassine embossed

As you can see, due to the nature of the coating on the glassine, the image isn’t as crisp as it would have been on paper.

Now, swipe colour over your embossed image, the coating on the glassine will cause the paint to pool a lot on the surface:

painted…

At this point, I pressed my cloth onto the surface and picked up most of the liquid, and so, the colour:

As you can see, it’s very faint but the shimmer sat right on top of the glassine and looked awesome!

glassine shimmer

I tried watercolour paper next, and because of the surface, it took the colour really well but left less shimmer – definitely the easiest surface to work with but not as much final impact:

watercolour paper

It’s still pretty though!

Finally, I tried out vellum. This was the hardest surface, it curled a lot with the water, and the colour didn’t sink in so ran a lot because of the curling, but it had the best combination of colour and shimmer together:

vellum

Also, the translucency of the vellum made a great effect too.

Once  I had tried them all out, I went back to the vellum and held it down so it wouldn’t curl and the colour wouldn’t run as much. Then I heat set the paint until the surface was dry. I like how it turned out but it’s way too much fussy work for quick cards:

I also used silver embossing here, instead of the white I used on all the other pieces – love the extra shine it gives!

I went back to the glassine and thought that the colour might take to the glassine better if I crumpled up the paper and broke the coating, which I did, and then added another layer of paint. It turned out pretty well!

And this turned out to be my favourite card – I love the soft colours.

My favourite effect though, happened when I embossed the stamp on glassine, then crumpled it all up and painted on the broken surface – the darker paint colours stayed vibrant with a ton of shimmer!

And see the flecks of white on both glassine surfaces (you can see it best on the first card)? That’s the embossing powder. When I crumpled the paper it broke the hardened powder and when I painted, the brush and water caused flecks to flake off and stick in the paint colour. I think it looks cool – love that side effect!

I’ll definitely make some more glassine cards – it’s too much fun not to and it’s the perfect thing to do at the Retreat when it’s 3am and my mind no longer functions properly!

Hope you liked the cards, and I really hope you go buy some Twinks to play with – they really are the bomb!

S.

 

 

 

Tuesday Techniques and Tutorials – Distress Marker Resist

23 Tuesday Oct 2012

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Finally, I’m back with another technique, and it’s one of my faves – Distress Marker Resist!

For this one you’ll need:

Supplies

Distress Markers, Specialty Stamping Paper, Distress Ink, an Ink Blending Tool with foam, and a stamp (I prefer rubber).

That’s it! Pretty limited and simple supplies but the specific items are a must. I have tried this out with Stampin’ Up! markers and found that it didn’t work as well, plus, the paper it a definite – this won’t work on other surfaces!

First, colour your stamp with your markers:

This is why I like the Distress Markers and a rubber stamp – I find the rubber holds the ink better, and the Distress Markers don’t become muddy or cross contaminated, even if I decide I want to go in with a light colour after already doing the dark colours.

You can mist before stamping, but for this technique I like a crisp impression so this is one of the rare times where I will stamp without misting it first.

Huff (blow hot breath) on your stamp and press your image directly on the Specialty Stamping Paper:

Allow the image to dry. This only takes a minute but you don’t want to smear the image so make sure it is dry, even hit it for a second with your heat tool if you like.

Can you believe how sharp the impression is with markers? Great definition!

Then, take your Ink Blending Tool and ink the entire surface with the Distress Ink of your choice. You could use any colour you like, but my favourites are Pumice Stone and Weathered Wood, though the browns are nice too – I like how the colour of the markers pop against the greys and browns:

Can you believe how the markers resist the ink? Like magic to me every time!

Now, mist water into the palm of your hand to make a puddle and then flick it on the surface:

Blot away the water drops and you instantly have a multilayered background without lots of time and fuss!

Looks pretty cool, hey?

Finish off your tag and stick it to a card and call it done! Mine hasn’t made it to the card yet, but the tag itself is finished:

If you have Distress Markers and want to learn more fun things to do with them, or are on the fence about buying them, check out Wendy’s demo at The Paperie retreat if you’re lucky enough to be going. She’s going to be showing a bunch of tips and techniques with them and she’s always got something fun I never thought about up her sleeve!

Let me know if you try this one out – you know I love to see what you make so leave me a comment and a link!

See you tomorrow!

S.

Tuesday Techniques and Tutorials

25 Tuesday Sep 2012

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Note: This is a super duper photo heavy post – you might want to grab a coffee before you start! 🙂

A while back I posted this mini album…

Let the fun begin…

…I had made from one sheet of patterned paper and washi tape. That was it. Oh, and I threw on a bit of unnecessary baker’s twine at the end.

I said it then and I’ll say write it again, this is the easiest and smallest kit you’ll ever pack for a trip or crop! A couple of people asked for detailed instructions so here they are!

You will need:

Supplies

A paper trimmer and/or scissors, a pen for journaling, one sheet of patterned paper, and coordinating washi tape – as much or as little as you like.

You could really use any patterned paper you want but I love the sheets full of cut apart elements – they just seem to cry out to be made into minis! This time around, I used a sheet from Echo Park‘s mini line, Toy Box. The nice thing about the “Jump” sheet is that it has great embellishment elements as well.

First of all, just cut everything apart and trim out any elements you need – for example, I cut apart the words and tickets, and trimmed the scallop border.

Next, lay out your pieces in order from front cover all the way to the back, then group them into pairs, with the covers being a pair and adjacent interior pages pairing up.

Next, use washi tape to adhere each set of interior pages to each other, but only use washi tape on one side.

Now, fold the pairs in half, as they’ll appear in the book, and adhere adjacent pairs together. Again, only use washi on one side. Below you will see the “play all day” pair and the “I love you” pair:

Finally, add a strip of washi tape to the front cover, on the exterior left. Add a strip to the back cover on the exterior right.

Now, sandwich your stack of interior pages between the covers and press the two pieces of washi tape together, forming a flap.

Use one more strip of washi to wrap around the whole spine, pressing down the flap you created a moment ago.

That’s it, you’re done!

I did stick in some of the borders but left the words to add once I put in my photos. Obviously, at this point you could make it much fancier and add more details and embellishments but essentially, it’s finished!

I hope you try this out and tell me about it in the comments – I’d love to see your mini!

S.

Tuesday Techniques and Tutorials

18 Tuesday Sep 2012

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So, I’m back with the Tuesday Techniques after a summer hiatus but I’ve decided to change it up a little and have tutorials sometimes as well! Today is going to be a mini tutorial on my Project Life Album cover. Let’s hope it turns out because it’s the only one I have! 🙂

When I went to buy an album for Project Life, I had planned to get a really colourful leather one, but when I got to The Paperie, they had one more of these Amy Tangerine Sketchbook Camera Albums left:

To me, it looked like the perfect album for Project Life!

One small problem, I wanted some more colour – black and white is not normally my go to colour combination!

A little while ago I saw this post and video by Ronda Palazzari and I thought it was the perfect solution to my album cover! I didn’t use stencils, but I did decide to paint the cameras, some of them anyway.

I started by painting a few cameras with Titanium White Golden acrylic paint.

I wanted the colour to really pop so I needed a light layer beneath to cover the black, kind of like using primer on your walls.

It was a very thin coat and, as you can see…

…I wasn’t very particular about covering the whole area neatly. I only did three camera on each of the front and back covers and I liked the look so much that I was very tempted to leave it just like this!

However, I had it in my head that I wanted red cameras so once the white paint was dry, I broke out my favourite Twinkling H2O’s and used the Poppy colour to paint them in.

 Again, you can see that I wasn’t fussy about the neatness.

I like how the pops of red turned out, but I may add some more colour later. I’m still debating whether one colour is enough or not!

I’m planning to do a tutorial on how to make my one sheet, washi tape mini album next week. If there are any tutorials in particular you’d like to see, let me know!

S.

 

 

Tuesday Techniques – Dylusions Ink Sprays

10 Tuesday Jul 2012

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Before I start I just want to say that this will be the last Tuesday Technique post this summer. The weather is beautiful, we’re always outside, and I simply don’t have the time to blog like I want to right now! Hope you all understand – things will get back to normal in the fall! We have so little great weather here that I feel the need to take full advantage while it’s nice!

Moving along…

You should all know my love of Dylusions Ink sprays by now, I do use them once in a while! 😉 So, I decided to do a quick little tutorial on how to use and layer them to build backgrounds. All you need are your Ink Sprays:

…and some water!

Dylusions work best for the techniques I’ll be showing you as they were made to react and play with water for neat effects.

First, pick your colours and randomly, but heavily, mist your surface:

I always mist with water and roll paper towel over it after the initial step. This will blend the colours a little more and take off the excess water while subduing the vibrancy a bit. Remember, we’re going for a background here, it needs to be a little more subtle!

The next step is to lay a stencil over the misted surface and spray with water.

Since the Ink Sprays react, the stencil creates a ghost like image to appear. Don’t worry if it doesn’t show up immediately when you try this, it takes a second for the water and ink to react and as the surface dries, the ghosted image becomes more pronounced.

Finally, after drying what’s been done so far, I spatter mist on top to get coloured droplets. All I do is remove the top of the bottle and shake the tube of ink over the surface – instant drops instead of mist!

I almost always finish my bright backgrounds with black stamped images – they stand out better and they make the colours pop. For the lighter images, I rub the ink pad over the stamp instead of properly inking up the stamp. You get a second generation look without having to stamp off first.

Hope you enjoyed this last tag of the summer and I hope you stick around for my erratic postings over the next month or so!

As always, please link me up to your projects – I’d love to see what you create!

S.

Tuesday Techniques – Stencils Part 4: Modeling Pastes

27 Wednesday Jun 2012

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We’re at the end of the stencil techniques and today is my favourite way to use stencils – with modeling pastes!

I love texture and dimension on my work, especially little pieces like tags. On a small surface, it’s hard to add lots of embellishments so extra texture adds interest without overwhelming the piece. Today, I’m going to show you some of the pastes and gels I use and the difference between letting them air dry or heat drying them.

First, here are the supplies I’ll be using:

Either a stiff card (like an old bank card or hotel key), a palette knife, Light Molding Paste, Flexible Modeling Paste, Coarse Texture Gel, Coarse Pumice Gel, and Clear Gesso.

First take whichever medium you want to use and spread it over the stencil. I like to go heavier in some areas and lighter in others for extra texture but it looks great all flat too.

I chose to work with the pastes from lightest to heaviest so light molding paste is up first:

I heat set the left side and let the right dry on its own. You can see that the left is puffy and a more even looking layer:

The second paste I tried was flexible modeling paste:

I again heat set the left and allowed the right to air dry, and again, the left is puffier and smoother:

Next up was Coarse Texture Gel:

It was really hard to get a good picture of this one, but the left side, which was heat set, went translucent and although it puffed up during heating, flatten when it cooled. The air dried right side is more opaque in colour and less shiny:

Finally for the pastes, I used Coarse Pumice Gel which is so thick it’s almost not spreadable:

It’s very cool though, and the difference between heat setting and air drying was minimal. The heat set left side was slightly lighter in appearance:

Finally, I used clear gesso, which is much runnier than black or white gesso, just to see what it did:

Once heat set, it puffed up but then, instead of falling flat, it fell down all wrinkly (kind of cool), while the air dried side was clear and rough:

Finally, I misted them all:

I found that the mist did soak into the air dried pastes more, whereas I noticed I could get more ink off the heat set side, almost like it was a resist. I didn’t do this with the Coarse Pumice Gel for two reasons: 1. It wasn’t dry, that stuff takes hours! and 2. I’ve tried it before and it always looks awful. I have been told that mixing colour in first works well though.

Speaking of mixing in colour, I’ve been trying to find a pigment to mix with pastes so they’re coloured without getting runny. Remember, the drier the better for stencils and clean designs! The best colour I had found so far was Golden Heavy Body Fluid Acrylics, and it was just ok for me, maybe I need more colours to experiment with. Today I tried my Perfect Pearls Powders – in a word, awesome!

All you have to do with any pigment is take some paste out and plop it on your craft sheet, then add (or sprinkle!) the pigment and use your palette knife or card to mix it up. Then smear it over the stencil like usual. My only complaint about the Perfect Pearls? Once mixed in they’re not shimmery! But the colours are great and because they’re a powder there’s nothing to liquify the paste.

For my finished tag, I used Flexible Modeling Paste which I air dried almost completely, then heated to get fine little bubbles on the surface – more texture! 🙂

And see that quote? I had the card done, then found that on a sticker sheet – perfect!

Love the texture…

If you have any questions – let me know. If you try out modeling paste in a project, link me up in the comments – you know I love to see them!

S.

Tuesday Techniques….

26 Tuesday Jun 2012

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….will be super late today – sorry! 😦

S.

Tuesday Techniques – Stencils Part 3: Mist

19 Tuesday Jun 2012

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We’ve done dry media (ink), wet media (paint), and so today we’ll do fluid media (mist).

As I mentioned in my first Stencil post, the drier the medium, the better the results if you want precise images. However, I also said that wet mediums can be used dry, like stippling with paint, for example. The same goes for mist, which is fluid.

You can mist your heart out:

And get this:

Now, to be honest, no one will ever mist that heavily and, chances are, they would roll paper towels over it first to soak up some of the excess before removing the stencil so it wouldn’t be this messy. I just wanted you to see how fluid the mist really is.

You can also spray some mist on your craft sheet, pick it up sparingly with a paintbrush, and get this:

Kind of a fun, arty look – not perfect but still quite defined.

Or you can go easy! Now I’ve been told that’s easier said than done so here are my tips and tricks to get a perfect misted stencil image every time. Keep in mind, it’s not wrong to mist your heart out if that’s they look you’re going for! If it’s not, read on!

First, do not, I repeat, do not press all gentle and nice on the mister. That will guarantee you splotches and puddles of ink. Not what we’re going for here! Just press down my friends, give it a good push and commit to the spray! I know I’ve mentioned this before….

Second, stand back; you don’t need to be on top of your project. Mist has a mind of it’s own and although you can say, “I want it round about there,” that’s as precise as it gets. It’s liquid and you’re spraying it, you have to be content with drifters. That being said, masking can beat the pants off fly away mist!

See? No mist will go where I don’t want it to be (like the top and bottom of the tag)!

Hold your mister about 12″ away and go for it. Don’t do it too much, two maybe three sprays are plenty, we’re trying to stay dry, remember? Carefully lift a corner of your mask and check, chances are you’re good to go – more ink comes down than you think.

This was two sprays, loads of colours and a few puddles – that’s why you don’t want too much.

My other no fail trick? Don’t spray on your project. No, seriously, it works! This is one of the only times I break out my misting box…

Set your paper inside, lay down your stencil, mask if needed, then aim your nozzle at the back of the box and go! Lots of ink will drift down over your project and give you a great image. This is fabulous with white mist on black paper – perfect snowy night!

Because this is an indirect method, it’s also the driest, but may require a few extra sprays. Always lift a corner and check, then mist again if you want.

See – a lot cleaner but the colour isn’t as intense.

One more thing – don’t waste all that mist on your stencil! Flip it over and press it onto another tag, or in an art journal, or on a 12×12 piece of cardstock for a LO background. Just use it!

You get the negative – sweet, huh?

Here’s my finished tag:

I misted three colours heavily (though not as heavily as the first example) and blotted the stencil before removing. I  wanted a defined but not perfect image and it worked!

I hope this makes you want to go play with mist a little – remember to leave me a link in the comments so I can check out your work when you give this a spin!

Next week – fun media with stencils! 🙂

S.