The Doctor & Ms. Longstocking

28 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by Sara in Mixed Media, ScrapBook

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Balzer Designs, Mixed Media Layout, Prima ColorBloom, Stampendous Embossing Enamel, The Crafter's Workshop, Wink of Stella

Molly asked for almost a year to be Pippi Longstocking for Halloween and Gabe, as usual, just wore what I brought home for him and loved it!

While I was at the Paperie Retreat I just wanted to play a bit with some pastes, powders, and sprays – This was the outcome. It’s not exactly what I wanted but it was still fun to play! I do love the texture of the bubbled paste and embossing enamel, especially when mixed with Prima ColorBloom Sprays and Freckled Fawn silver puffy hearts:

And these gold Thickers are my new faves!

Plus, look at the sparkle on the wood veneer from the Wink of Stella pens – I’m a big fan of the white one, it’s so cool!

Have you had fun just playing lately? What products are you using these days – I’m always on the lookout for new ones!

Cheers!

The Best!

25 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by Sara in ScrapBook, Techniques

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Distress Ink, Perfect Pearls Mist, Ranger, Stampendous Embossing Enamel

Just before I headed off to Vancouver to see my brother I went to a four-day scrapbooking retreat at The Wilds. The Paperie hosts these twice a year and they are a must-do! I admit, I planned my trip around it!

I was actually super productive this time around, something that usually doesn’t happen for me and to be honest, I don’t really care. For me, it’s more about the break and having an awesome girls weekend while doing something we all love! To get lots done this time was a huge bonus!

Two of my favourite LO’s came about due to a challenge I took part in. I used a couple of Halloween pics so I’m going to share these now before we get too far past that time and into full-blown Christmas!

I bought some foam Thicker words at the Retreat and they were perfect for these LO’s:

To make both LO’s, I picked three different colours of Distress Ink and blended them to get an ombre look, starting with the lightest and working my way up. I used the small round ink blending tool from Ranger, I like it better than the large one, and went over the colours a lot to get a seamless and smooth colour blend. I find that if you start light and keep adding colour, you are less likely to get lines from both the tool and between colours. If you look carefully, it seems that I have more than three colours on the page but that’s because of the overlap while blending.

To get the shimmery, bleached out dots I simply sprayed Biscotti Perfect Pearls Mist in my hand, flicked it onto the background and after a few seconds, rolled my paper towels over the top to pick up the excess mist.

I used the exact same technique for Gabe’s picture, with cool colours instead of warm.

For the stars on both pages I used either diecut cardstock stars or wood veneer. I covered them with VersaMark and then sprinkled on Aged Silver Embossing Enamel from Stampendous. It’s the best antique silvery colour and is my fave lately, along with the Aged Gold.

Distress Ink techniques are by far my favourite – these inks can seriously do almost anything, I think they have magic powers! Let me know if you try this out and have another fun technique to share with me, I’m always looking for new ones!

Cheers!

Sweetness | My Favourite Things 2015 (& Happy Thanksgiving Canada!)

12 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by Sara in Classes, Mixed Media, My Favourite Things, ScrapBook

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Balzer Designs, Mixed Media Layout, My Favourite Things, Prima Color Bloom, Stampendous Embossing Enamel, The Crafter's Workshop

Back in June, a local photographer, Stacy Breen-Crane, was offering mini photo shoots with the proceeds going to charity. I jumped right on board and got some amazing pictures of Molly and Gabe at the park on one of the only nice days we had that month! They were perfect to use in our July class with lots of Prima Color Bloom sprays.

We layered mist through a stencil, then modeling paste through a large stencil, then more paste through the same, but smaller, stencil. All of that was heated in between to overdry and bubble up the paste, making lots of gorgeous texture. Then, we sprayed and sprayed and sprayed. And dripped. And tossed on some Stampendous embossing enamel while the spray was still wet. Look at the awesome texture!

As if that wasn’t enough shine, we dusted Perfect Pearls over the spray to take down the stickiness (thanks to Cathie for that fabulous tip!)

You can see there’s also gold thread under the photo, and we finished with some sticker labels and rubons:

Believe it or not, the second LO is almost identical, including the sprays. Just to show how different these colours can look depending on how much you spray and how you layer them, I used the exact same colours but in different order and intensity:

We also sprinkled the embossing enamel on the paste before we dried it, which allows it to cover a completely different area than the first LO.

There’s still tons of shimmer and texture, just done in a slightly different way:

We had a ton of messy fun doing this one, and it was incredible to see how different all the LO’s were, even when people used the same products and colours.

For my fellow Canadians, it’s Thanksgiving – enjoy, eat lots, and have fun doing your thing!

Cheers!

The Paperie | January Card Kit

06 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by Sara in Card Kit, Cards

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Card Kit, Julie Nutting Doll Stamps, Prima, Stampendous Embossing Enamel, The Paperie

It’s back to the daily grind my friends! I took a couple of weeks off over Christmas and although it was busy, as Christmas always is, it was also relaxing and fun. I’m sad it’s over but excited to get into the new year and new classes – there are some awesome ones lined up at The Paperie!

To start things off with a bang, here are some of the last projects I made with the January Card Kit – I was so productive that I couldn’t get everything made in time for my deadline! To see everything else I made, you can check out this post or pop into the Paperie for the real items. Like what you see? You can call them to get one held for you and then you can show me how you worked with it!

First, a small lunchbox note:

I heat embossed the flower from the included stamp set using Stampendous Aged Silver Embossing Enamel – I love the black bits!

Next up, a small tag to hang on a birthday gift. I used a Darcie’s Stamp Set I gave Gabe for Christmas and paper pieced a fun knight (sorry for the wonky exclamation mark and blurry photo, getting decent light here lately has been a challenge!):

To add a bit of shine, I coloured parts of the suit with my Uniball Silver Gel Pen (The Paperie also carries Gold!):

Finally, another stamp Gabe got for Christmas, the Toby stamp from Prima by Julie Nutting:

This is a full length tag made from paper in the kit. We usually use these instead of cards on birthday gifts and tell the recipient to use it as a bookmark!

And that’s it – I pretty much only have scraps left! That’s what I love best about Card Kits; they’re smaller than regular page kits so you can bring one to a crop, make a bunch of stuff, and be done with it – hardly any leftovers to worry about!

I’ll be back here again tomorrow with some new Simple Scrapper LO’s and news so make sure you stop back.

Cheers!