WOYWW #555-The ' There was a sale on' Edition

Yes, there was, at Amelias. And although I visited, I was very, very restrained. As was Beloved Hubby, for a change. 😁

These are all my purchases-possibly because I had everything else! Hubbys choice was the Unicorn stamp, I spotted an old Lavinia Stamp I didn't have, a pot of Silver stencil paste- no harm in having a spare-and a pot of Sweet Poppy glitter in a lovely navy blue.
As I'd had to buy an Engagement die recently, I grabbed this Phill Martin set that was half price, as it has another larger Engagement in it, plus the Retirement one, and a small Crafters Companion Engagement too. And that was my lot. Possibly just as well, as I've been keeping up to date with new stuff being Demoed at Creativation, and there are some must haves for my wishlist. I'll mention a few, in case they appeal to you too.

Top of my list are Tims new Embossing Glazes. These are embossing powders, but unlike the usual ones which are opaque, these are translucent, so you can see the colour/image below them. These are the first colours to be released.


I'm loving the look of these, as I have a very old pot of something similar, a blue one that gives the appearance of blue glass. This is it here, used on a heart embellishment.
There's a link HERE to one of his videos, showing them off, and what you can do with them.
 There are also Alcohol Ink Alloys, which are different in the way they behave to the AI Mixatives.
A useful tool I think will be the Alcohol Blower. You may recall the 'puffer' gadget he brought out? This one is bigger, and I think will be useful to me, as I currently use a straw to blow the ink around, but have a tendency to run out of puff if I'm making a few backgrounds.💨
 The final item to grab my attention I think will be of interest to anyone who is interested in foiling.
 DecoArt make a Transfer Gel, which works great with foil, but needs to be heat activated. They have just brought out Deco-Foil Duo, which can be heat set, but can also be applied without heat by running through your die cutting machine. So that looks to have numerous possibilities.
 Not sure if they'll go on my wishlist, but there is also a storage tin for the regular size of Distress Inks. And they store on their edge!

Made some Christmas cards last week, in the post below, and also finished off these cards, using a smaller cover die than the one I did the Engagement card with. Again, left blank until needed. I ran some white card through various embossing folders as a background. The cards are A5 folded. I was MIA last week, as I caught a cold, which inevitably started to become a chest infection, and although I wasn't having difficulty breathing, I was getting short of breath far sooner than normal, so it took a few days before I felt like doing anything. But all good again now. I'll be adding my link over at Julias place, The Stamping Ground, and visiting later on. Which, at last, brings us round to.....................And Finally...................

UFO's- Part 2

Been a couple of weeks, but around other things, finally managed to complete another few of my UFO's.


The three backgrounds are all from Clarity stencils, as are two of the stamped images.

I made the backgrounds quite a while ago, while I was just playing around with stencils, ink & brushes, and they've sat waiting for inspiration to strike. Which it finally did.

 

This Clarity stencil is called Flare Frame, and is one of their many 7" square ones, which are a perfect fit for their 7"  stencil card, which also comes in other sizes. The design part of the stencil comes out at 5½",so you have matting & layering ability.
It also has the central square 'mask' so you can blank that area off, if you wish.

This first one was done by adding ink through the stencil and letting it dry. I re-taped the stencil in place, then applied Translucent stencil paste (Sweet Poppy) over it, which was sprinkled with glass microbeads, for texture.
 Being a bit messy, I'd got some ink & paste into the central aperture, which I'd masked off, and was partly why it got put to one side, while I figured out what to do with it.

Finally had the idea to mount a small stamped panel over it, and went with that for all three.
 The owl stamp is also by Clarity, and actually has 3 owls on it, but that made it too large for the centre, so I masked off an owl on the right, as that was the easiest one to cover up, inked, removed the tape and stamped.
 Colour was added with Prismacolor pencils,and some Distress Ink in Stormy Sky sponged over the edges, after I'd trimmed it down to a 3" square.

To add all the panels, I die cut a square of white fun foam slightly smaller than the panel,and used that to give the image a little dimension.

These were the images I selected for the panels, the Owl & Lion stamps are both Clarity, the Tree image is from Inkylicious, called Daydreamer. I had to trim off parts of the image for this to get it down to the right size.

I also added some stamped grasses along the bottom of the Lion image, from a set by Indigo Blu called  Nature 1.

This one uses another Clarity stencil, this time called Circles Box. Same size & details as the previous one. This just had ink added through the stencil. The Lion stamp also has three images, so again I masked off one on the right as before.Chose a pale purple cardstock as my mat, and mounted onto a 6" square card base.

Again, ink through the stencil and then I found a closely matching cardstock for the mat.
 The image was stamped in Archival Coffee, which I also blended around the edges.
 This Inkylicious stamp has the person, tree and ground as one stamp, then there's a separate small bird flock, and the word Daydreamer.
 All three are mounted on a 6" square card blank.
 Left them blank at the moment, so I can use them for any reason later.


Entering this in the Crafty Cardmakers Challenge, Add some Texture. 
Crafty Creations Challenge, Anything Goes.

Part One of Using up UFO's.

Over the last few days I've been tackling my UFO folders, and so far have made 9 cards from them.
 All the cards are 5¾x 4¼. An assortment of top fold and side fold, landscape instead of portrait.

 These two used Tim Holtz layering stencils and stencil paste that was then hot foiled.
 I die cut a strip of cardstock with a fancy edge in a matching cardstock. The Stitched Hearts die I believe came from The Works, and the stamp set for the sentiment is from Woodware, called Little Messages.
Doug had recently said some 'Just 'Cos' cards would be a good idea, and we happened to spot this set on a recent trip to a local craft store.

The top stencil is Mosaic, the bottom, Splash.


These two again used TH Layering stencils, this time just using paste. I coloured Translucent paste using reinkers for these.


The green one has an edge from a Spellbinders Shapebilities set ,called On The Edge. The top one uses a Stitched Border from a set bought on Aliexpress.


The top stencil is called Woven, the bottom one Splash.

Another TH stencil, Gothic, again stencil paste & Hot Foil. The sentiment comes from a Phill Martin set, Baroque Sentiments 2. Heat embossed in Copper EP, The Banner die is another Aliexpress purchase, and the dies are much longer than this, I just re- sited the die and cut it off shorter.

More Hot foil & TH stencils, in both cases the foils are multi coloured or have a gradient.
 The Birthday Wishes sentiment is another Woodware set bought at the same time as the first one, called Double Birthday.

The die cut sentiment uses two dies, the HUGS is an Aliexpress die, the Birthday comes from a Crealies Happy Birthday die.

Last pair of cards, Both using coloured stencil paste. The top one uses Translucent paste coloured with reinkers, to give a blended look across it, and the stencil is another TH one,called Lace.
 The bottom one used a stencil from a company called That Special Touch, and is called Waves. This time I used three of the Sweet Poppy  Pastel Stencil mediums, Pink, blue & lilac.
 The sentiment on this one is another Phill Martin one, Mini Baroque Sentiments. The top sentiment is an Aliexpress set, which is mainly a lot of individual words. The strip was diecut with a stitched strip die, again, Aliexpress. You get 6 dies, in either stitched or plain edges.

Snowflake Christmas Cards

Putting all of those snowflakes to good use, and this is the first 3 cards made using them. They were inspired by a card I spotted on Pinterest back last week.

 This is the card that I saw, and it was mainly the embossing folder that caught my eye, as I have that one.  It's by Darice, called Snowflake Swirl.

The cardmakers name is Carol, and her blog is Our Little Inspirations.











I think my card is made larger than hers was, as I needed to add some embossing to the lower part of the piece of cardstock I was using. Mine is based on an A4 sheet of cardstock scored and folded.
 A few weeks ago I did some stencilled sheets using the Tim Holtz Merry Christmas stencil with silver embossing paste and sprinkling it with Crystal Glamour Dust, but they weren't long enough for this so I needed to do some new ones.

I found this stencil best to work with upside down, as the tiny parts of some letters- notably the 'R' and 'M', can easily get caught as you spread the paste. This also applies when cleaning them, you do need to be very gentle to avoid bending them.





I also had to do each one in two sittings, as the stencil wasn't long enough for my card front, but they only take about an hour to dry.I tried with the first one doing the whole strip, but it's impossible to do without smudging the paste you've already laid down.
 As you can see, epic fail!

While I was waiting for the paste to dry, I made a start on layering up the snowflakes. They're not all for these cards, I have another set planned. There are 3 or 4 snowflakes used in each one.

 I trimmed the strip down to roughly one third of the card width, then trimmed the embossed panel down to fill the front.


Both were attached with DST. I added a very narrow strip of silver ribbon to cover the join. For that I cut some narrow dst roughly down the centre, and added that over the join, then wrapped the ribbon around the card front, siting the join where I intended to place the large snowflake at the top.

The card base and the embossed panel are both Pearl White cardstock.

The sentiment is a Crealies die, and I cut it 3 times from white cardstock, and once from silver glitter and layered them up for a dimensional sentiment. I added a tiny acrylic jewel as the dot on the 'i'.






I also did a couple of stencilled sheets using Glossy White stencil paste- both this and the silver are by Sweet Poppy- and again sprinkled with Crystal Glamour Dust.

 So I changed it up for the third card, using the white sheet, and swapping the sides round too. In each case the ribbon join is under the large snowflake.

A small acrylic gem in the centre of each snowflake finished them off nicely.

Mixed Media & Stencil Paste Baby & Wedding cards

Been having a play with some stencil paste and Tim Holtz Layering stencils today. I thought this flourish design lends itself to so many useful cards, it all depends on the colour paste you use. I coloured white paste with pink and blue  Memento inks to make the baby cards, and left it white for the two wedding ones.In all cases, I gave the wet paste a very light sprinkling of Glamour dust, just to add a gentle sparkle.




 Useful things to know about this technique:
  When colouring your paste- and you can colour white or Translucent- you can use a variety of mediums. Inkpads, reinkers and acrylic paints all work fine, and subtler shades can be achieved with mica powders. You can also add mica powders along with your inks/paints, for a pearly sheen. You can also add glitter, for sparkle that doesn't shed!

One thing to remember when using liquid colours to colour your paste is that the liquid will alter the consistency of the paste, so this is one case where you do not want to start with a little, and add till you've got the colour required. Acrylic paint will not be too bad, as it's not so liquid as ink, but with reinkers especially, go for a fairly dark colour, just adding a drop or two. You can always add a little more paste if you want to lighten it.Remember also, when adding to white paste it will lighten the colour anyway, and it will usually dry slightly lighter as well. Also, don't skimp on mixing up your custom colours. If you run out before finishing, you'll never mix exactly the same shade!Any leftover paste can be stored in small screwtop pots, and will last for a few months. If there is not enough to make that worthwhile, you can spread the excess onto a scrap of cardstock, using that to add all your waste paste to. Then, when dry, just cover with a sheet of hot foil, run through your laminator or foiling machine-you can even just iron it on- and you have a sheet of foiled card you can die cut sentiments from.
Use a fairly good thick cardstock to work on, as the moisture from the paste will cause thinner cardstock to buckle.
Here are some I've done in the past.

 Also, Mylar stencils such as these are not going to lay as totally flat on your cardstock as metal ones, so more care needs to be taken when adding paste, so that it doesn't  start to seep under the edges of the design. Try to add enough paste, and use a wide enough spreader to cover the design in one sweep.  Too many spreading motions will increase the likelihood of the paste going under the lines. Sweet Poppy have a fab wide spreader for this, and Lucy Ellis of Sweet Poppy has some cool videos on You Tube showing how to get the best results.
 Finally- cleaning your stencils. You want to do this as quickly as possible, and I take a sandwich box with warm soapy water  in up to my craft room to drop them in, to save going up and downstairs to a sink every time I've used a stencil. Make sure you have a bowl/tub large enough to lay the stencils flat in. Keeping them flat while washing & drying is really critical to keeping them in good condition. The paste comes off easily if you do it straight away. I have found that the Cosmic Shimmer glitter pastes are really difficult to remove if they start to dry on your stencil,so speedily dropping into water is important. I have an old towel on a work surface, and stand the tub on that. A small nailbrush is ideal for removing the paste, then I lay it onto the towel, and PAT dry. That's important, especially if the stencil has unattached parts, like the Flourish one does. If you bend parts through rubbing, they will always let paste/ink etc seep under the design. This applies to metal ones with unattached parts too, not just Mylar.
So, back to the cards. The card bases are topfold, half A4 sheets, which end up as 5¾ x 4⅛. The cardstock I used for the stencilling was 6 x 4 so I had a little to trim down to tidy it up. I finally trimmed the panels to 5¾ x 3⅜.
 As the panels were narrower than my base card, I decided to die cut some borders, you could also use border punches, of course.
 I made some choices from this set by Spellbinders, called Shapeabilities On The Edge. They are just a hair longer than my panels,but these dies are fully repeatable, so you can make a border as long as you need.

I chose pearl papers and cut the edges twice for each card, then split down the middle. The pink one, which was the second up from the bottom in the dies, actually gives you two for one- you could easily use the offcut as a border too.
The pearl papers came from some paper blocks I bought years ago at the NEC, from a company called Craftwork Cards, who sadly no longer exist.They are really useful for borders, or for punching from.




The strips were attached to the back of each panel, along the edges, with dst, then trimmed down to fit.

All four done.
 Now they just need mounting onto the card fronts, and again I used DST for this. Remember to add tape to all 4 sides, as there will always be a little warping of the cardstock from the paste. If you are a wet glue user, I'd recommend laying them down with a weight on top for half an hour or so.






Now to add a sentiment, and I chose to use these Crealies Text dies for the baby cards. They are a small die, but the perfect size for these cards. there is quite a selection of sentiments available too. The 'A New Baby' sentiment is one die, but the three words are all separate, which I love as that gives you freedom of placement. I cut  the die 4 times from white scrap card, then once each from the pink & blue pearl paper I used for the borders. This was so I could layer up the white die cuts twice, then add the

colour on top, for a little dimension.












 I have some stitched banner dies, from Aliexpress, and used the smallest size from the long set for this. It was actually a little longer than I wanted, but the bottom set was a little too short. I sorted that by just replacing the banner in the die, matching up the stitched lines, then trimming it shorter.

A simple fix. You may notice than I am cutting down into my bottom plate in my 'Bug. I saw a few crafters switching the order of their plates, putting the 'B' plate on the bottom, and the 'C' plate on the top. This is great, as you can see exactly what you are cutting, so makes precise placing easy. I'd lain my words on the banner first to decide how much shorter it needed to be.

A ZIG glue pen- in fact any glue pen- is ideal for layering up the words, and for attaching to the banner. Again, laying them down under a couple of acrylic blocks for  a few minutes helps them set.

To add them to the card front, I used a few foam pads. Because the surface is uneven, and glittery, both of which can cause problems with adhering stuff, I added a small dab of Pinflair Glue Gel to the top of each foam pad. This helps to make sure it will stick to the awkward surface, and also gives you a little wriggle room to position it straight.

I decided the banners needed a little something else, so added an acrylic heart to each. I used a clear one for the blue card, as the only blue hearts I had were not close enough in colour to the blue used in the card.

For the wedding cards, I used the same banner die, but added the sentiment with peel offs, as there currently isn't a wedding die in the Crealies line. I have emailed to ask her about the possibility,though. 😀 A small white half pearl was added with some Glossy Accents.