St. Patrick's Day

 

I worked on this little tag today by inking the background with  distress ink "mowed lawn"  I put the ink on my craft mat and sprayed it with water and ran the tag through it.  I dried it and did it a couple more times to build up layers and give it some texture.  Then I put the ink on the mat but did not spray it with water and randomly dabbed the tag into it.  I printed the poem  and distressed it with "scattered straw".  I stamped a flourish design by inking the stamp and pressing it on scrap paper first and stamping a second time on the tag.  This made it so that the stamp didn't overpower the writing and appear as the background.  Then I added the lace, which was white, but I colored it with my distress marker "scattered straw".  I glued two buttons on either side and added a punched butterfly from the Martha Stewart collection.

Turned Out To Be A Good Day After All

I worked on this page today.  The House is cut from Cricut "Heritage" Cartridge.  I made this when I was visiting my sister in Florida a couple weeks ago.  I did the background using Distress inks Scattered Straw (The moon) Stormy Sky and Faded Blue Jeans (the sky) and Peeled Paint (the ground).  I stamped a willow tree, which didn't come out very well because the binding of my book prevented me from getting the stamp all the way down).  Then I cut out the stampotique guy that I colored a couple posts ago.  I had a set of little monster stamps that I bought on clearance and I stamped one on white card stock and colored him with markers.  I cut him out and glued him to the page.  Then I thought I would go for it and color outside the lines, which is very hard for me.  I dripped Faded Blue Jean reinker from the top of the page.  I sprayed it with water and let it drip.  What I failed to realize was that this picture was the back page to my tea pot lady and the ink bled through.  OH NO!

This is what my tea pot lady looks like now.  I would prefer that it didn't bleed through but I'm not too upset.  I kind of like it.

I cut the clock frame from Tim Holtz Mover's and Shaper's dies.  I colored the frame with my distress markers and then embossed the handle, the bells, the center of the hands and the feet with "aged silver" embossing powder.  Then I had some Tim Holtz ideology paper and found a page with clock faces on it and they fit perfectly.  So I cut one out and glued it to the back.  I love how it turned out even if I did get the embossing powder on the frame of the clock.  The butterfly was simply punched from a card that I did a while ago using aluminum foil and dry embossing it using Tim Holtz, Rivits, embossing folder.  Love both of these and I will find some project to use them on in the future.

This next project was pure experimentation.  I have been seeing all kinds of posts using the Gelli Plate.  I saw a video where someone used an alternative method here.  So I thought I would try using the Spellbinder's embossing pads that I just bought and see if it would work.

 These are the results.  The first picture was done by spreading blue and yellow acryilic paint on the mat using a brayer.  Then I place a stencil over the paint.  I placed a piece of paper over that and then smoothed over the paper with my hands concentrating on pressing through the stencil.  I then removed the paper and the stencil.  Then I took another sheet of paper and put it over the paint that was left with the impression of the stencil in the paint.  I again rubbed the back of the paper firmly with my hands.  The last print was simply taking the stencil with the left over paint and pressing it onto a sheet of paper.  Three different designs. pretty cool.  BUT, the rubber pads that I have are only 5 X 7.  How could I cover an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper?  I remembered that I had some old rubber placemats tucked away.....

This is the place mat and the paints that I used.

 I squeezed three blobs of paint on the mat.

 I spread the paint across the mat with a brayer.

  
I placed a stencil on the paint and then place a sheet of paper over the stencil.  I used cardstock this time. I rubbed the back of the paper trying to make sure I pressed into all the nooks and crannies of the stencil.

 This is the result.  It isn't the best.  I think there are two reasons why. 1. Using cardstock made it harder to press into the stencil and 2. The placemat wasn't as cushioned as the rubber mat.  I suppose that is the point of the Gelli plate.  It is soft enoght to allow the proper pressure to be applied to allow the paint to come through.

This is what the paint like after taking the stencil off.  I too another sheet of cardstock and placed it over this and again pressed down and rubbed over the back.

This is the result.  So pretty!

 Then I took the stencil that was in paint and placed it on a sheet of cardstock.  It went a little wonky because I was on the phone and working with one hand.

This is the result when I removed the stencil.  It is a way to work around not having a Gelli Plate and certainly adds a new dimension to creating backgrounds.  I took everything to my utility sink and washed them right away so that the paint wouldn't dry on them.  The brayer, the placemat and the stencil all cleaned up very well..

Organizing My Embossing Powders.

 I was playing with some new embossing powders this morning and I had the brilliant idea to categorize them like I did my Copic Markers.

 

The first step was to punch some tags from Bristol paper.  Then I punched the holes in the top of the tags using my big bite.  Then I took my Tim Holtz Distress Embossing ink and covered about half the tag with ink by pressing down and the smearing it from side to side.  I checked to make sure the tag was covered with a good coat of embossing ink.

 

 

Then I covered the card in emossing powder over a piece of paper.  I tapped off the excess and used a dry paint brush to remove the powder from areas on the card where I did not want it.  Then I used my heat tool to activate the powder.

 

I am so glad I did this because I didn't realize the different textures of embossing powder.  I thought they all had an enameled look.....I was wrong.  The Tim Holtz Distress Powders tend to have a rough patchy texture.  For instance "Black Soot" reminds me of how the roof of a house would appear.  The Stampendous and Recollections brands tend to have an enameled appearance.  Although, Recollections "Silver" had the look of crinkled aluminum foil.  Stampendous "Gold Tinsel" has a very glittery look to it.  The large tag at the bottom is what started this project.  I took a Perfect Medium pen and rubbed a line, added embossing powder and heat embossed.  While I was playing I thought, how am I going to remember what these look like and bam, I remembered the tag system.

I put them on a key ring, sorted by manufacturer.  Now I have a good reference for choosing a powder.  I love it!!!!

While Visiting My Sister...

 This is the little binder that my sister made for me while I was visiting her.  I added the lace down the side and two rose buttons.  You can see her book HERE.

 This is the inside of the binder.  It holds all of my labels for my Tim Holtz Dies.  Now I have all of them in one nice neat place.  Now I can reference a picture of the dies and go to  my shelf and grab the die I want.  It sure beats keeping them in the original packaging and fighting the packaging every time I wanted to use them.

I was thinking of putting this little lady from the Graphic 45, Ladies Diary paper, on the front of my book.  I cut her out and covered her in Glossy Accents.  She isn't quite try yet so she still looks a little murky.  However, I am not happy with how she looks so far.  There are a lot of air bubbles.  I'll let it dry over night and decide in the morning weather to use it or not.

This is the newly acquired little shelf that I added to my room, the one to the right of the drawers.  They hold all of my dies.  Behind my computer are the wood shelves that my husband made for me to store my Copic markers.  Eventually I will paint them white but I was too excited to use them.  I love them and the top makes more room to store my Distress ink pads.

My sister and I discovered a new method for a faux copper patina look.  We made the clock face and embossed it while I was visiting her.  I added the clock to my journal and made this page.  I gessoed the paper and then painted it with Luminarte Silks Acrylic Glaze, Nutmeg.  I stamped the background using a variety of stamps from my collection.  I stenciled a clock face and clock hands using Ferro Graphite metal.  I glued the clock face to the page and added patches of acrylic paint dauber "Pool" to pick up the patina of the copper clock face.  Now every time I look at this page I will be reminded of the fun I had while visiting my sister.

Found Some Time To Relax Today

I've had this mermaid stamp for a while and have wanted to do a page in my journal with her and I finally had the chance today.  I stamped her with archival ink and painted her using my Twinkling H2O's  I colored her skin with my copic markers. I drew in some sea weed and stamped the sea chest.  I colored the rest using water color pencils, distress markers and H2O's.  In some cases, like the chest, I had to go back over the outline with a fine black pen.  I added the blue bubbles and the green flourishes through the seaweed.  The picture doesn't show all of the sparkle from the Twinkling H2O's.  Photo's never seem to do colors justice. I am happy with how it turned out and I love this mermaid stamp.....So pretty.

Stampotique Stamp Fun.

I just received my stamps from Stampotique and wanted to try them out.  I stamped them on white card stock.  Then I spent a quiet evening coloring them in using Copic Markers and Distress Markers.  Love these guys...So cute in a weird way.

Madhatterz Tea Party

I had a lot of fun putting this page together.  It was inspired by coming across the lady with the teapot body.  I put that together a couple years ago and never did anything with it.  When I saw it, while going through some of my stash, I thought, it is about time she had some legs.  So I went through some of my paper doll collection and found the perfect legs for her.  However, she was a bit misproportioned.  Looking at her made me think of Alice in Wonderland's Madhatter's Tea Party.  So I started doing some image searches on google and found the wonderful picture of the rabbit here.  I found the teacup here  I tried to find the link for the tea party sign but I can't find it.  I have it pinned on my pinterest board but the link brings you to some UK shopping site.  Have no idea how that happened.  I pinned it so that I could refer back to it to give credit but..... I colored the rabbit and the teacup with distress markers (I really love these markers. They're so versatile).  the little birdies were from a teacup photo I found here
 
I created the background with pan pastels, stencils using distress inks, and some stamps. I printed the words "curiouser and curiouser" and cut them out and colored them with my distress markers.  Then I glued everything into place and outlined everything with a Pit Brush pen, to make it stand out.  I added a little doodling and there you have it....a page that makes me smile when I look at it.