Saturday 31 March 2012

Day 10 Creative chemistry

The last day for learning new techniques and just one tag, I shall be so lost next week although I still have to revisit one day that at the time I didnt have the materials for and I have a final project to complete.

The last tag was using Rock candy distress stickles.  I created a pale background before stamping a wallpaper stamp that had been inked in two different colours of distress inks.  Finally I wiped the rock Candy distress stickles all over it and voila!

Thursday 29 March 2012

Day 9 Creative chemistry

I don't think pictures do these techniques justice, the mica doesn't show up on camera but here are my three tags from today.  I was tempted to decorate them but I just want to put up the basics here in my online diary.

Wednesday 28 March 2012

Day 8 Creative Chemistry


Its day 8 already!  I suppose my house and family will be pleased when it's over but I will miss the classes.
The techniques I used left to right were -
Crackle paint resist, unfortunately I don't have the distress range so I did it the old fashioned way using an undercoat of pva glue, then painting with acrylic paint.  I did the tag on grunge paper because I wanted to see how it went, and I found the acrylic adhered almost too well.  The second picture is done on fabric and is Paint Dabber resist, Again not having the dabbers I dabbed acrylic paint onto a stamp using cut n dry foam.  The third tag used the shattered stains technique and it was done on grunge paper.  The stains were not bright enough in places so I used a little re inker to strengthen and brighten in places.
I've taken a seperate picture of the last tag hoping the light will show the crackle better.

Tuesday 27 March 2012

Day 7 Creative Chemistry



Todays experiments have been great fun and I'm so pleased with the outcome I hope to use some of the rusted enamel pieces shown in my final show and tell project.


After making the tag I cut out the other pieces and applied the same technique of wiping on distress inks, applying clear embossing powder and then removing some before heating and distressing.  I applied rusty hinge to one of the bookplates and think the end effect looks like old leather.






For the nostalgic Batik technique I used the same stamps as on yesterdays tag just changing the colours, I'm not entirely happy with the colour scheme but have posted it below for reference.

Monday 26 March 2012

Creative Chemistry Mixing up days 4 and 5


My inks etc all arrived on Saturday, thanks to Countryview crafts for speedy service :)  Today is actually day 6 but I don't have any distress markers, nor am I likely to get them in a hurry so I've continued to play along last weeks themes.   For this tag I used smooth watercolour paper which I wetted with a brush.  I used brushed on reinkers using a wet brush to create the background.  I then spritzed the various reinkers that were on my worksheet and blotted the dried tag onto different areas of it to get more texture.  I stamped the Barbara Gray swirls with picket fence distress stains and added the Barbara Gray galleon in archival.

Saturday 24 March 2012

Day 5 Creative Chemistry


Day five of one of the most inspiring weeks of my life.

Today we worked with spray inks and stains.  Apart from the cosmic shimmer sprays I mentioned yesterday I don't have spray inks but I do have a few stains so that part of the lesson was great.

I gave this piece of kraft resist a coat of picket fence stain before staining it with a couple of colours, the music notes resist varnish called for a musical themed stamp which was stamped using black archival.  Unfortunately the stamp is not as clear as I would like, next time I may emboss it to bring it out more.

Thursday 22 March 2012

Day 4 of Creative Chemistry

Today we looked at re inkers and maintenance.  I learned a lot from just the maintenance part as I'd never been able to sucessfully re ink a pad before but now I know to spread the ink in after applying it.  I don't have many re inkers so my playing consisted of trying the ideas using what I had.  Reinkers and a couple of new pads have now been ordered as Ive realised most of my colours are very similar, hopefully by next week there will be a bit of a change in my colour pallete!

Instead of using re inkers I watercoloured this stamped image on watercolour card with distress inks that i pressed onto my worksheet.
Without the reinkers I thought I'd not be able to do this technique which should have been spritzing re inker and water from a bottle.  But I have cosmic shimmer mists so hought I'd give it a go so I could see how the masking turned out, I love this idea and will be using it soon as a background.

Day 3 Creative Chemistry with Tim Holtz


The past three days have been amazing, doing the online classes with Tim I have learned so much. Today I managed just two of the three projects in around 3 hours.  I have so many ideas rolling round in my head to use these processes for other projects.

For the archival resist technique we stamped colour archival onto gloss card. I only had 2 Brilliance archival inks and none of Tim's texture stamps so I used sequin waste as a mask and then flipped it over to 'stamp' the residue ink onto the card.  I love the strong black image in contrast to the briht colours, the photo really is a washed out version of my original.


I loved playing with alcohol inks, and discovering how much they moved when the solution was added.  Again the picture is a bit paler than my version.

Wednesday 21 March 2012

Day 2 Creative chemistry

Today we got down to the business off getting messy with distress inks.  As I have quite a few in my box it was great to actually use them in different ways.

Blended Spritz and Flick - says it all really :)  A great background.

















Wrinkle free Distress

This one was interesting because at first I didn't know where it was going, now I've tried it I realise I can control the final effect by my choice of colours and where I place my card.












Brushless Watercolor - A really simple and effective technique, I think I'll be using this one over and over again.

Monday 5 March 2012

Taking the butterfly one flutter further.

I would like to enter the following card into Emmas Crafty Challenge for March.

After trying the mosaic technique on the butterflies for Tims challenge I decided to see where else it could go. I attempted to cut grungepaper with double sided sticky sheet adhered to it using the largest spellbinder butterfly die in my big shot.  Unfortunately the machine didn't want to go through all the layers but this turned out to be a happy accident.  It went through far enough that I could cut around the outside easily.  Leaving the  on the sticky side I removed the backing paper from just the cut out areas the die didnt quite cut through, leaving behind the sticky.  I then brushed on some blue mica powder into those areas before moving the rest of the backing paper leaving the rest of the butterfly sticky.  I followed Tim Holtz tutorial to mosaic the butterfly before brushing in a vintage green mica powder to the grouted areas.

Most of the scraps came from off cuts of the papers I used to piece into the debossed area of cardstock embossed with the Geometric Special Touch Mica Mask.  This was matted and layered onto some metallic card and then onto a5 size white card that has been embossed with butterflies.
The sentiment is from a Creative Expressions set I won last year.  I stamped with versamark then embossed with a red WOW embossing powder, I then brushed over parts of the embossing with the same mica powders used in the butterfly, heating between each application, this gives a colour changing effect not quite seen to its best extent in the photo.  I finished off with a strip dicut with spellbinders, some pearly glue dots and 'hat pins'.