A Happy Little Accident!

Now I am aware that there is not much that is brand new in the way of crafting techniques, but this is a new one on me! It all happened when I wanted to glaze a stamped image to look like a tile, and was too lazy to go and find my Versamark ink pad, so I used spray adhesive instead!  The result looked just as though the image had water sitting on top of it.  So today I spent a happy morning in my craft room playing around with various embossing powders, stamps and inks.  Here are the results.  I have tried to get some really close up pictures, so in some shots you cant see the entire stamped image.

Firstly a piece of black card, covered with Versamark ink, clear UT (ultra thick embossing powder, if you haven't come across this it is larger grains that give a thicker coverage, think granulated sugar rather than icing!) This is obviously this is the traditional way to glaze with embossing powder.

Heated from the top, one coat of Crafty Notions diamond clear  UT. Nice and shiny but nothing out of the ordinary!

This one is the same card stock, but sprayed with Crafters Companion Stick and Spray, same UT applied and heated from the top.  It appears that the more heavy handed you are with the spray adhesive the bigger the "droplets" are, as you will see. I put quite a lot of adhesive on this one.
I also put a bit of gold gilding creams over the top of this

Then I moved onto a stamped image which I coloured in with Pro-Markers, and gave a lighter spray of adhesive before applying the UT, as you can see from the close up the droplets are much smaller.

I was really pleased with the result here, it genuinely does look like water sitting on top of the image.

Flushed with success, I thought I'd have another go and see what happened with a finer embossing powder, so out came the stamp, ink and pro-markers again, and this time I used a Wow sparkling crystal embossing powder, the effect was very pretty but not so pronounced.

My final experiment was to use the spray adhesive on white card and apply clear UT, again I heated from the top and then when it had cooled  I applied a distress ink over the whole thing, then wiped over it with a tissue, so the ink only coloured the exposed card and not the embossed areas, (I mention the cooling down thing because this is the second of my efforts, I forgot that UT takes longer to cool down than normal embossing!).

This is a close up of the last image. I really enjoyed playing around with this technique, and hope you like what you've seen, and perhaps you will have a go at this sometime.
I haven't tried the technique with other spray adhesives, but I can't see any reason why they shouldn't work just as well.



Thank you for taking the time to read this blog, and, until next time, Happy Crafting.

DivaRed Workshop on Saturday 4th May 2013

It is shaping up to be a really good bank holiday weekend, we had a fantastic workshop on Saturday, despite me having a sore back which made me walk like a duck! Lots of laughs, quite a lot of biscuits and some lovely cards. Thanks to Rosie who allowed me to post a picture of her inky fingers on Facebook - have a look she is very blue!

So amid all the giggling, this is what we made!

This one was made using a combination of free stamps which came with Creative Stamping magazine. It was a huge sheet of stamps, and I think I might have to do an entire blog of stuff I've made from it. The sand was a moment of inspiration in Sainsbury's. Whilst wandering round despondently (I hate shopping with a passion) I spied a packed of that gritted paper you put in the bottom of your pet budgie's cage "ah ha" I thought, a beach!
The shells are from the free stamps, the birds are a Lavinia stamp, and the background is my favourite stamp in the world, sea bubbles from Ryn.
So this how it was done.

• Stamp, colour in and cut out the beach huts and the shells. 
• Cut a square of white card, 6x6 inches, and using cut and dry foam or a blending tool, ink lightly with blue, leaving some areas lighter to resemble clouds.
• Mask off the sky area with a piece of copy paper to give you a straight horizon, and ink in layers of green and various blues to resemble waves, (mine is quite green, I used lettuce Adirondac, but then I was aiming for a North Sea effect!)
• Rip your budgie cage paper into a shape that looks a bit like sand with sea coming in onto it, and stick it to the base of your picture, then trim off the excess at the base of the card. (At this point it doesn't look very promising, but stick with it!)
• Stamp the birds in the sky, and stick the beach huts and shells in place, you will need to use  Pinflair glue gel to get them to stick to the gritted paper.
• Stamp the back ground paper (7.5 inches square) in blue ink with Ryns sea bubbles, and glitter the bubbles.
• Then mat and layer everything onto an 8x8 card. All done!

This is the slightly brighter one I made at the workshop using more of the free stamps and different birds. The background was stamped with Stream Adirondac ink, and personally I prefer it to the blue.

This next one is a card  I made to send to someone special, but I liked it so much I used it in the workshop and it will be on it's way to its new owner tomorrow.

It uses  a Sheena Douglass sentiment stamp, and Lindsay Mason's meadow flower stamps, available from Personal Impressions. 

You will also need Flitter glue, Yorkshire Dales gilding flakes, gold detail embossing powder, Versamark ink pad, various coloured small ink pads (I used Versacolour), a 7x7 inch card and card for matting and layering.

• Stamp and emboss your sentiment, trim it to required size and mat onto a piece of contrasting card.
• Cut a piece of white or cream card to 6 inches square, and make a very light pencil mark to indicate where the sentiment is going to be placed.
• Stamp a selection of the meadow flowers along the bottom edge of the card, going up to, but not over where the sentiment is going to be. Use various different colours to stamp the flowers and a couple of different greens for the stems.  Don't worry if the green ink gets onto the flower heads, it actually looks more natural.
• Next select a pretty shaped flower stamp and ink it up with Flitter glue, stamp it along the bottom edge of the card, don't stamp too many flowers with the glue, unusually for me, it is a case of less being more. !
• As soon as you finish stamping with the glue, put the stamp still attached to the acrylic block into a bowl of water, do not wait until you finish the card to do this, do it straight away!
• Next stamp a couple of butterflies with the flitter glue, and then stamp two more onto a piece of scrap card. Then put the stamps straight in the water.
• Sprinkle the gilding flakes over your card, rub in with the flat of your hand and then rub over with the Scoochie sponge, and brush off any surplus bits of flake (these can be used again so put them back into the container.).
• Cut out the two spare butterflies and 3D them onto the ones you have stamped onto the card.
• Mat and layer onto a 7x7 card in quarter inch increments .
• Place your sentiment as desired with 3D foam pads.
• Remove stamps and acrylic blocks from the water and dry them off.
• Go and have a cup of coffee!

If you are unfamiliar with using gilding flakes, go to IndigoBlu web site, or search You Tube for Kay Halliwell-Sutton and watch the instructional videos.

Once again I made a brighter version at the workshop. I can only stay subtle for so long!

The sentiment stamp on this one is from Stampin Up Sassy Sentiments, which are a beautiful font and it is embossed with Halloween powder from Wow.

I also added a couple dragonfly brads to this one.

The next two cards were Janet's designs, and you can find the instructions on her blog Cards, cats and coffee. Janet and I work together a lot, and it is well worth a look at her blog.

This Rosie (not the one with the inky fingers, the Clarity Stamp). I did vary this a bit, by using my own embossing folder and cutting it out rather than tearing, I'm not a big fan of tearing, always  love it on other peoples cards, but somehow it never looks right on mine!!

Janet forced me to use a Gelli plate, and I am so glad she did! I really enjoyed this one. I used my own flower stamps (freebies again, well I do have Scottish ancestry!) and put a few gold peel off dragonflies on the background, other than that I did what I was told for once!

Well I'm off now to finish knitting for Teeny Gotham, who should make an appearance into the world in the next couple of weeks. Hope you have enjoyed seeing these cards, next weekend is a real crafting bonanza, Claritystamp East on Saturday, and our regular monthly craft club on Sunday.

Enjoy the rest of the bank holiday. Hope to see you again soon.

DivaRed Craft Club on Sunday

We had a full house at our monthly Sunday craft club meeting yesterday, and amid lots of laughs, coffee, tea and cakes, we managed to make a couple of cards!

This was my effort.  I saw Kay Rutter demo the basic design on Create and Craft, and I adapted it a bit. You can make the base as wide as you wish, just by increasing the width of the card you use, Kays original measurement was 9 x 4 inches, I used a piece of card 10 x 4 inches. If you want full instructions with pictures, you will find them in "Everyone needs a Hougie" book 3, this is my potted version, you don't have to have a Hougie, but I must admit it is much easier if you use one! I have pinched Janet's bullet point idea for the instructions, hope she doesn't mind!!!

• Scoring: Score at 2 inches  lengthwise, and at 2 inches on each of the short edges.
• On the long edge of the card, make a tiny mark at 3.5 inches from each edge at the top and bottom of the card.
• On the central score line, measure 1/2 inch inwards from where your horizontal and vertical score lines cross and make a tiny mark. Repeat this on the other edge.
• Score from the mark on the centre score line to the mark on the bottom edge of the card, and then from the centre score line to the mark on the top of the card. You should now have score lines that look like a letter K. Repeat this on the other edge.
• Decorate your base however you wish. I used Sea Bubbles from Designs by Ryn, and I stamped them randomly in various pinks and blues and a bit of silver. I then coloured in the bubbles with white gel pen and chalked round the edges.
• Folding: with the decorated side down, fold along the central long score line, open   the card up again and still with the decorated side down, fold  up at the 2 inch score lines on the short edge.
• Turn the work over so the decorated side is uppermost, carefully fold the score lines that run from the centre to the edge of the card. 
• You need to fold the card in half along the long score line whilst gently pushing the edges inwards, and it should all pop into place.
• For the main image I used the largest of the standard circle Nesties, and matted it onto the largest scalloped circle. I stamped the branch and coloured in the leaves then the flowers were stamped with grey Memento and embossed with clear embossing powder, then painted with Cosmic Shimmer and H2O's, cut out and stuck on. Again the edges were stamped with the sea bubbles and chalked. Then the circles were stuck in place on the base.

We did think that the base would make a fantastic place name for a wedding, lot of scoring and folding though!



Janet did her lovely butterfly pan pastel card, which I love,  for the instructions, click on her name to link to her blog. But this is my interpretation.

There was a certain amount of concern expressed from the ladies that I went all girly and pink, very unlike me, but never fear normal service will be resumed as soon as possible!

Saturday Workshop 6th April 2013

Really enjoyable day on Saturday at the workshop.  Many thanks to the ladies who attended, we hope you enjoyed it as much as Janet and I did. This is what we made:

This was my first design. The stamps are from Hobby Art poppy range (I am a big fan of Hobby Art), I used the bordered poppy as the main feature and then the large poppy from the poppy scene-its at the bottom of the card.
The card is 7 x 5 inches, and I used a pink card stock from Anna Marie Designs, the colour is a bit brighter in reality.
Then you need a mat 6.75 x 4.75 inches in a contrasting cardstock and a layer of the same cardstock as the base card 6.5 x 4.5 inches.
The bordered poppy is stamped with black Versafine and coloured in with pencils, and then I wanted to use fusible film and fibres just on the poppy heads, unsure as to whether the stamp was safe to heat or not, I rang Hobby Art and got to speak to Jenny Mayes, who suggested that I try it, and if the heat did damage the stamp she would send my another one out (well you can't say fairer than that can you?) In the event I wimped out of trying it, because I needed the stamp for the workshop the next day, but I will give it a go this week and post the results! The way round this was to fuse the film and fibre sandwich between two bits of baking parchment and then stamp the image onto it once it had cooled down, unfortunately this means using Stazon, which is not good for acrylic stamps, but if you clean them immediately with a baby wipe it seems to be OK. (Do not use Stazon cleaner on acrylic stamps it is far too aggressive for them.).
I matted the poppy image onto a piece of the pink cardstock cut about 1/2 inch larger than the image, and stamped with tiny butterflies around the edge, but any small  stamp will do, this I  stamped with Versamark and heat embossed  with Cosmic Shimmer Silver Lustre. Then I matted this onto the contrast card which I cut about 1/4 inch larger.
Cut out the poppy heads and stick them in position with a glue gel (I used Pinflair). Now your topper is made.
Take your piece of pink cardstock (6.5 x 4.5 inches) and place your image in the position you want it, but don't stick it down yet.  With the topper still in place you can decide where you want to stamp the large poppies, I stamped these with Versafine and coloured them in with coloured pencils.
Once you have done that you can stick your topper down.
The butterfly is a very old Dawn Bibby stamp, which I stamped and coloured with the same pencils I used for the poppies, cut it out (I have to admit that I chopped off its feelers - life really is too short!!! ) Fold back the butterfly wings and stick down the body, you can then draw in the amputated feelers if you wish.  To get the little butterfly trail I used a black Micron pen and drew dots and dashes in a twirly shape. I then used Diamond Sparkle Stickles to highlight the butterfly wings and the trail.
Still looked like it needed a bit more, so I dotted a few gems round just to make it look a bit more spring-like.
You are very welcome to use this design if you wish, but if you publish it please give me a credit.
If anyone needs help with using film and fibre, please leave me a comment either here, or on Facebook (Moira Walters) , and I will happily do what I can to help.

This was the second of my designs, well I say my designs, it is a slightly altered idea from Eileen Godwin.   I actually posted the instructions for this card in a previous blog which I think was called  Sunday Workshop, and it was published in March,  you will also find the link to Eileen's blog there.

This card was Janet's design, the background is done with pan pastels, and then the cherry blossom is stamped and embossed, and the flowers coloured with white gel pen.  The butterflies are from Spellbinders, and are beautiful if a bit fiddly to remove from the die, even with the help of waxed paper. If you want to see the original, go to Janet's facebook page, Janet Pring, and have a look at her designs, they are stunning.

This was the second of Janet's cards, and the image was done with a Dream Weaver stencil and pan pastels.  Janets original version was much more subtle than this and she had torn the edges of the mats, which looked amazing. When she tears paper it looks all arty, when I do it, it looks like .........well like torn paper! Do go and check out her facebook page.

Well I think thats all for today, off now to make a good strong cuppa!