INKY FINGERS

It’s John’s birthday today so I just made him a quick card.  Must admit, I’m quite pleased with it.  I bought this stamp specifically for him (he’s a biker) last year and almost forgot about it.

  

Oops, I’m busy this week and almost forgot to post the names of the winners of the Blog Candy I offered – sorry :(

So, without any further ado, the winners are…….

Cuttlebug Embossing Folder – ANGIE B

Twinklers – MO HOTHAM

Congratulations, ladies.  I’ll get them off to you ASAP, but please be patient…

One of my recent Blog Candy winners was the very talented and lovely Martina, from Germany.  Today, the postie woke me with a surprise box of fab artwork from her – wow!  Some great Zettiology for you to see AND a gorgeous card.  Photos don’t show how good they really are and the ‘Alien’ is in a photo frame, so doesn’t photograph brilliantly.  Thank you VERY much, Martina.

This is the Alien – sorry I had to tilt it to get a good photo.  If you click to enlarge, you’ll see the amount of work and detail in this – amazing!!  Wish I understood the German, though :(

Here’s another way to use up those everlasting Twinkling H₂0s. They just don’t seem to ever use up, do they, lol? Especially not if you have the larger sized pots as I have. I’ve never seen anyone else do this and even if they did, I didn’t know that, so I was quite pleased with this technique. It WAS when Twinklers first came out.

This is the ‘by product’ (both very shimmery)

• 
  
  Firstly choose your H₂0s – not too many and not too many stark contrasts, though by all means experiment :)
• 
  
  Add water to them, either with your paintbrush or the spray and give them time to blend a little. You don’t want the paint to be too thin when you paint it on.
• 
  
  Lay a piece of mulberry paper over the card and spray with water until it’s pretty wet.
• 
  
  Paint the H₂0s randomly over the mulberry paper, adding more water to lighten the colour if it starts to get too dark.

• 
  
  When you’ve allowed time for the colour to transfer, peel the mulberry paper from the card and lay them out to dry separately. You can heat set with a heat tool, though the Mulberry paper goes brittle if you do. The card is fine.

Someone asked me about Marvy Metallic backgrounds the other day and I’d been planning a few background sessions for here, so here’s the Marvy Metallic one :)

All you need is a spritzer (a common old garden spray will do – don’t go to any unnecessary expense), Marvy Metallic markers (or ANY OTHER WATER BASED BROAD NIBBED METALLIC PENS), glossy cardstock (I used black and white), a Craft sheet or newspaper to protect your work surface and some Cling Film (Saran wrap for those in the US)

Shake those pens up and down – see, you’re getting exercise while you do this – then pump until the ink is flowing freely. You can either do this on some scrap paper, your worksheet, or the actual card you’re working with – which is what I did :)

Then add scribbles and dots of the marker randomly over the glossy card.

Now spritz with water.

You can, of course, also scribble the markers onto your Scrap Sheet and ‘mop them up’ with cardstock, but beware, they do muddy! So keep them apart. I have to confess that I don’t like the results as much when I do that.

Then

a) Leave to dry naturally

b) Place another piece of card on top, smooth down and pull apart carefully (it’s worth enlarging the white card on the right, to see the gold on it – it’s lovely)

c) Place another piece of card on top, twist and pull off

OR

d) Crinkle up some Cling Film, spread it over the ink and LEAVE TO DRY!

I know this last one is blurred but it’s pretty!

Then use to your heart’s delight, either for stamping on, behind acetate or as a matte.

A few people have said they will try to get these pens - PLEASE DON'T!!! This tutorial is for those who actually already have them and need to find a use for them - you can stamp with them, too and they do look good on black. But you can get just (or almost) the same effects with metallic acrylic inks, metallic acrylic paints, Lumières and even with Mica powders (Pearl-Ex, Moondust, Faerie Dust, Perfect Pearls, etc). You need some kind of medium to hold them in place but you don't need anything too fancy - the ever resourceful Jo used spray starch in a workshop at Stamp Club a couple of months ago and it worked fine, giving very similar effects :)

Twinkler Backgrounds tomorrow!

Today, I’ve been really, REALLY messy, to make up for the clean cards I made in the last couple of days, lol. I’ve been making Marvy Metallic Backgrounds and Twinkler backgrounds – this one was my very own idea, too – not one I found elsewhere, so I’m quite proud of it.

One of the advantages of having had a stamping business was that I had to have a supply of most things I sold, so that I could demo them and also so that the people attending workshops and Stamp Club could use them. I know it sounds daft but it was sometimes a disadvantage because there was just too much to choose from and Twinklers were no exception, although I rarely use them now, which is a shame. They’re so glitzy and the colours are so beautiful. My set is the larger sized jars and in amidst all those pretty jewel like colours, I found some of the smaller Twinklers – 13 in fact – which we must have used before the larger sized jars arrived! So if anyone would like them, just leave a comment here and I’ll put your name in a hat. If they’ve been used at all, they’ve been VERY lightly used, but some of them have no lids – I don’t use lids because they jam if you put them on when the paint is still wet…

The colours are:- Fuzzy Peach, Stargazer, Coral Berry, Wisteria, Evening Primrose, Razzle Berry, Nutmeg, Black Orchid, Bolivian Blue, Oregano, Caribbean Mist, Jasper Red – I think!!

While I remember, I also have a Cuttlebug Embossing Folder that I managed to double up on – don’t know how, but it was probably while doing classes or something… again, very lightly used, although I can’t tell the one I’ve used more from the other now. If you’re interested in that, please leave a comment. It’s the Birds and Swirls design.

I’d VERY MUCH appreciate it if you’d stipulate which one you’re interested in – Twinklers or Embossing Folder – or I won’t be able to enter you for the draw. I’ll draw a name over the weekend.

I spent half of yesterday stamping and cutting out flowers and flutterbies from some of my stash of backgrounds, so I made a couple of cards with them, just for fun :)

It’s been a nice change to do some ‘clean and simple’ cards.

Here are two completed cards, using one of the Bleeding Tissue backgrounds and Roni’s card idea.

After playing digitally and still being somewhat incapacitated, I had itchy fingers, so decided to play and get them inky :)

BLEEDING TISSUE TECHNIQUE

Supplies

• Cardstock
• Spritzer filled with water (hopefully, cleaner than mine)
• Scraps of coloured Tissue Paper

NB – the cheaper the tissue paper the better – more expensive varieties don’t bleed and we want it to bleed…

Instructions

• Spritz cardstock thoroughly with water.
• Tear off scraps of tissue in your chosen colours and lay down on the wet card, smoothing down as you go.

• Spray with water again.
• Leave for a while – depends on how dark you want your card/paper to be – if you want paler colours, then don’t leave for too long, if deeper, leave for longer – then peel off the wet tissue and voilà – Bleeding Tissue Backgrounds!

TIP don’t leave it until it dries or the tissue may stick to the card!

Here are my results – still wet, so I can’t scan them and it’s dark now, so the colours aren’t totally accurate. If you click to enlarge, they do look better and they’ll look a whole lot better once they’re stamped. I love the little veins the crumpled tissue leaves – a bit like mulberry papers when painted with Twinklers.

I’ll try to make some cards with them later, all being well. One of the things I wanted them for was to make the Valentine’s card Roni made here. Hers look really good made with Distress inks, but I’m a bit ‘off’ Distress inks at the moment, so thought I’d try something different. I'll be revisiting other 'oldie but goodie' techniques in the next few days, so watch this space.

This week’s Challenge on Art Creations Friday is to use this angel image and the So Artful Challenge (which is where the background came from) is ‘Out of this World’, so I thought I’d combine the two and play with CS3, something I haven’t done for a long time.

I was trying to get my Number ATCs done for a swap on KCUK and got carried away cos I was quite enjoying myself - I did take a flower stamp downstairs with me, too - just in case I wanted to use it for the Theme Thursday Challenge.

You won’t see me using patterned papers very often but I do like this one and it fitted the Number theme.

Firstly, a BIG thank you to Ju, who sent me a Thank you card for the Blog Candy she won a little while ago – love it and here it is :)

She’s used those stamps in exactly the same way I do AND it looks as if she’s stippled, which I much prefer to any other way of adding colour!  Thanks, Ju.

I can’t do much at the mo cos  my back’s BAD but in my drugged up state, I did a bit of colouring – as you can see where I go out of the lines, lol.  The colours actually blend more than the scan shows, but hey ho.

Now that it’s finally arrived, I can upload a Birthday book and To Do List book I made for Mum’s birthday.  Wot, no stamping?  Not one jot, lol – not like me at all :) 

Just noticed that you can’t really see how this works, so thought I’d explain.  The bottom half of each page is a fold up pocket for popping cards in and the pages are actually folded in two, the open end being the one with the coil.  Inside the covers are some great library bits, which would do for notes (or telephone numbers) or postage stamps.  I’ve made a few of these and really like them :)

I’ve also been knitting and here are the results…

This is a gorgeous book which the lovely Lottie sent to me – isn’t it fab?  It’s photographed on the scarf.

I’m a big fan of black and white any time but aren’t these colours (below) so rich and warm looking?