WOYWW #503- The Fairly Tidy Edition.

'Cos fairly tidy doesn't happen too often. Not very tidy, of course, just fairly.😁
 Wednesdays here again, so time for linking up at Julias place, The Stamping Ground, for another weeks desk baring & sharing.

 It's actually better now, as I've put the stamps away. And the inkpads. And the blending sponges.
 Which are packs of make up sponges from Primark. £2.50 for a pack of 4, 1 large, 2 medium & 1 small.

The Really Useful Box contains dried out-clean- baby wipes, for inking, the way Card-io do it, by blending over the edge of torn paper to produce hills.

 Which was what I was doing at the weekend, making some Christmas Cards for the Club.

 And glittering onto acetate. Well not acetate, but OHP film, which does the job just as well. Got a couple of boxes of it really cheap when our Staples was closing down.

I have to say, the Stamping Platform is ace for this technique, as normally when hand stamped with Staz-on onto film, the stamps have a tendency to slip or slide. Not a problem now.

 Don't know about anyone else, but over the years I've picked up lots of 'glitter glue kits', with bottles & fine nibs, but I always find the nibs clog, and the bottles can be really hard on the hands, needing quite a bit of pressure to squeeze.
 Back to my favourite enabler, Jennifer McGuire, who was talking about some cheap, soft bottles she'd bought on line. So I had a look, and found some on E-Bay. 
10x 10ml bottles, each with a fine nozzle & lid for £1.62. And they are a lovely soft, easy to squeeze bottle.

The lid is attached to the bottle, but I snip that through, otherwise I found it gets in the way. I've also put some Multi Matt Medium in one, and that works great too. And so far,when I've finished with it, I just poke a pin down the nozzle to make sure it's clear, then wipe it with a baby wipe, put the lid on, and not had any clogging at all.

 On the left, stamped image with the Platform.

 On the right, adding glue from those bottles.

Here, 3 of my glittered snowmen when they'd dried.

While we're sort of still on the subject of Staz-On, this acrylic block on the left is why you should never use Staz-on cleaner on them. This happened years ago, long before I learnt what was causing it. So I didn't clean my stamp on the platform, and I've kept this block just for doing that. I know Tim said that you could use anything on them other than acetone, but I'm not taking the chance!

Now, another tip, from another You Tuber. Been watching crafting videos from a guy called Simon Hurley. He's only a young guy,I'd say late teens probably, but is clearly going places, as I saw today he's now got a product line with Ranger at Creativation. 
 His channel is called INKLIPSE.
EDIT:   Actually just found out he's 16! Total respect to someone so young,especially being a lad.
 Anyway, I digress, as usual. He was talking about blending coloured pencils, and how he wasn't happy with the results using blending stumps with things like Gamsol, or Zest -It. What he did was take a Ranger Alcohol Ink Blending Pen, and fill it with the Zest It blender for pencils, and it worked like a charm. Bonus is, you have a solid tip and a brush tip, compared to just the pointy tip on a blending stump.




I can post this card now at the bottom here, as it won't show up on Facebook! This was the card I was working on last week, a Retirement card for a work colleague.









Which brings me to.......And Finally.......








                  ...ain't that the truth!

Glitter embossing paste, and an experiment

This turned out to be a side project from some other Christmas cards I was making. These are done with a Sweet Poppy stencil, and some Cosmic Shimmer glitter embossing paste that was among the items I was gifted a while back. I'll post the actual cards in a day or two.

I thought I'd give it a go, to see what it turned out like.
 To be honest, it turned out very well, and the real beauty is that you have the glitter look, without any shedding.
 On the downside, I think it's very expensive for the amount you get, given that this pot holds 50ml, and retails anywhere between £4.50 and £5.50, depending where you buy from.
 Sweet Poppy's own paste comes in 150gr jars, and retails around £9.
 After a bit of Googling, it seems that 1ml= 1gr, so you get three times as much in the Sweet Poppy jar, for around double the jar cost.
 However, as yet, Sweet Poppy don't seem to do a glitter paste.
 It was while testing it- and forgive the slightly blurry photo here- that I had a thought.

As I applied it, it seemed to me it had a very similar look & consistency to glitter glue. It had quite a gritty feel to it too when spreading it over the stencil.
Apart from Stickles, I don't have any glitter glue, but I will be getting a pot to see if it works. I may have to add some glitter to thicken it up, but we'll see.
 Now, I had another idea. Could I mix normal glitter into a Translucent paste, and get a good result?

I dolloped some paste (Dreamweaver), onto a small mylar mat. then added a generous amount of blue glitter. The fine stuff- there is a company called Glitter Magic who are often at craft fairs, and any number of retailers on E-bay.

Gave it all a good mix together, I used a combination of a palette knife and an old store card to do this.

I used the same stencil, and it applied just as easily as the ready made one.

This was the piece after I removed the stencil. I left it overnight to dry. At this stage, it looked much the same as the 'real' stuff.

The excess went into a little pot for next time, if it works ok.I reckon I'd probably get 4 or 5 stencils from the amount of paste I made.

Next day, and I've got exactly the same effect- nice glitter sparkle, with no shedding. Now I can mix up any colour of glitter paste, and I'm pretty sure it's going to work out way cheaper than buying little pots.

Playing with Punches

As I have been having fun with the Tim dies for the Tattered Florals, it reminded me that I used to use my punches to do similar things.




 As you can see, I punched loads of different flower shapes out of various papers, even mulberry paper.

  This works best if you 'sandwich' the mulberry paper between ordinary copier paper, the mulberry is too flimsy on its own and just tears rather than punches.

I'm using a large ball embossing tool and an old mouse mat to give the flowers a little shape.

 
 


 Then its just a matter of layering them up together
 in various combinations. I use a little Glossy
 Accents, or silicone glue for this bit.






 Final touch is the centres, I use either Glitter Glue, Stickles or Glossy Accents with either seed beads or loose glitter.



Last but not least are the leaves- again these are mainly punched from mulberry and handmade paper for effect. This fern leaf punch is by Woodware.

 Here's a card I used a small selection on- a better size for this project than the Tattered Florals.

Get well soon

Pale blue mulberry paper torn to fit down the centre of the card.A silver mesh panel added on top. Craft Creations Vase peel off fixed onto blue patterned paper and cut out. Flowers punched from a selection of blue & purple papers. Fernleaf from a punch by Woodware.Small tag has a blue eyelet in the top with ribbon threaded through and sentiment added.