WOYWW #253

Nothing exciting on my blog of late, I have to confess that I have been working on something I can't show yet. A while ago, Glenda Waterworth, of Chocolate Baroque, did a DT call for new members, and while I didn't get chosen, she did get back to me and ask if I would be willing to do a guest DT post- which I thought was way cool. She wanted a project by 28th April, and knowing how I would get stressed about getting it perfect if I left it too close to the date, I got on with it. Anyhow, its done and e-mailed to her now, so when its going to be published, I will be letting everyone know, lol! So, on to the reason we are all here,(even if most of us are not all there!) is our regular meeting at our Head Deskers place, Julia at The Stamping Ground.
What is on my desk this week, is the Ink Palettes I bought, now complete with all the alcohol inks I have. A few missing, about 8 I think.
I had seen Tim say there were labels on the Ranger site, but when I went there I couldn't find them, so did my own. They look like little butterflies, which is ace, they are actually punched from sticky labels with a 4 leaf clover punch, I just cut the stem off, then coloured them with the appropriate ink off a cotton bud.The ones in the closed palette , on the far right side, are not Tim Alcohol inks, they are by Zig, and if I remember rightly, I bought them from Jenny, The Artistic Stamper. Funny thing though, yesterday on FB there was a post by Tim with a link to all the labels for  his product lines. Organise your Ranger Products- this is the link if anyone wants it. They are colour coded labels for all the inks/inkpads etc. Just print off onto a sheet of sticky labels- I have some A4 sheets divided into 4 labels I got from Staples which are perfect- and stick them on. I also did some little circle ones that I put on top of each ink bottle, to make finding them easier.

I thought it might be time as well to start colouring some of the Molly images, from Visible Image stamps,- knowing how long it will probably take me to get an image I'm happy with- for Merlins birthday card. So I stamped up a bunch, on different types of white card. Funny how inks 'take' on different card. The top two are Memento, on Neenah card, and are not as black as I would like. The next two down are Versafine, on 'Super Smooth A4 white card' from Samuel Taylors, picked up last year from the NEC, and they are a nice solid black. The three on the left are on Clarity Theuva card (the two images) and Clarity Silk coated card (the single image). Both in Versafine, and I have heat embossed these with clear detail powder. The bottom sheet is White Stamping card, from Hunkydory craft, I think it came from Crafters Companion, and the left image is Versafine, the right one Memento. It really is a bright white card, and on this one there is little to chose between the two stampings.The Versafine is still the darker one, but only just. So, I'm reasonably confident I can get at least one usable image out of all these,lol.

WOYWW #218

So how is everyone this lovely Wednesday? I'm guessing here that its a nice day- I'm writing this on Tuesday afternoon, lol. Stroll over to the Lovely Julia's, at The Stamping Ground, and join in this delightful cruise around the crafting desks of the world, messy or tidy, ( the messier the better, tidy makes some of us feel guilty!), we love to see what everyone is up to.
 Two things I spotted over the last couple of days, wandering the net, as you do. Two of our friends on here had great weeks- Maisie Moonshines name was on the list of winners for the Tim Holtz Tags of 2013, August, this week, and Chris at Pearshapedcrafting won the Artistic Stampers July challenge!We all know how fabulous our friends are, lovely to see their creativity being rewarded.
 So, my desk then.

It was while browsing the various challenges, that I saw on Clarity Stamps that their challenge this month is Animals. I have two sizes of her Wolf stamp, so decided I'd have a go this month. Only got as far as stamping the image, and I'm not sure yet which one I will use. I used a variety of cardstock to stamp on, but all were stamped in Adirondack Pitch Black, so I could use a waterbrush over them to just pull some colour into the image.I can just about handle that sort of colouring. The three on the lower right are on Clarity card, using the Acrylic plate stamping method from a few posts ago as a background for the image.Its a fairly glossy cardstock, but it worked quite well. The top right one is stamped onto a marbled cardstock, and the left hand one is just on a plain white background. One or two I'm not overly happy with how the colour pulled in, one or two sharp lines- I might try a little more blending.Then again, maybe I'm being overly picky & precious- its only card & ink!
 In my net browsing, I found myself on Pinterest ( how surprising!), and looking at some humorous pins. I saw this one, and instantly thought of all my WOYWW friends! So here, ladies, is the perfect answer for why we have untidy craft rooms-

You see, a perfectly logical & sensible reason for it. Its a self defence thing.
 My Buddleia, commonly known as The Butterfly Bush, has been living up to its name this year, its been covered in Peacock Butterflies. Dozens of them over it, along with a few cabbage whites.

But here's a question for all the Brits on here-
have any of you seen any Ladybirds this year?
I haven't seen a single one anywhere, not even during those really hot summery days.
 Probably could have been briefer, sorry Julia- its a good job I'm writing, not talking, lol.You'd be here for days, rofl! Have a fab Wednesday, catch up with you all later.

WOYWW #217

Another week, and month, been & gone.Time for this weeks Virtual World Tour, courtesy of our Amazing Hostess, Julia, at The Stamping Ground.So, whats to show this week? Firstly, my desk- I admit, slightly tidied, so I could take the pictures that follow it.

4.30 on Tuesday afternoon, and a bit of summer sun through the window- not as much as the last few weeks, but sun nevertheless. Top right, the remnants of the weekends play with acrylic block stamping,(posted lower down) lower left, assorted tags, both finished & blank, a watercolour pad I was using for the stamping, and an assortment of stamped images for cards- waiting for some inspiration on being put together.
 The Poe card for my son got finished, and is in the post below this one.

 Got some Happy Mail last week, first one from Deeyll,aka Queen Lightwell, a WOYWW ATC swap. It arrived too late for me to put it in last weeks, Love the colours & layout, but especially the sentiment: Be the Best You that You can be.Gorgeous little fabric flowers included too- saving those for something special. Thanks Deeyll, I really appreciate it.







 
 Second was a purchase. I had my eye on these as soon as I heard about them- Distress Markers in the 'limited edition' colours. As the first lot of markers took so long to get over here, I wasn't expecting to get them yet, so it was a nice surprise to get a promo e-mail from  Jennie, The Artistic Stamper, with them on. And a Summer Discount code too!


 A heads-up here to everyone who has the Distress Markers- I noticed this label stuck on the side of the new pack.

I distinctly remember watching Tim's CHA video at the first launch, when he said it didn't matter how they were stored, upright was fine, thats why they came in that container. It seems like that has changed, and it DOES matter! Haven't seen anyone commenting anywhere about problems, but I'm guessing that one end or other is drying out. So, if you've got the DI markers, best get them lay down comfy somewhere.
  Still loving my night shift, not having any problems sleeping during the day either. I think maybe the mornings have been the coolest part of the day recently. You can tell how well we sleep- yesterday(Monday) apparently we had thunderstorms all morning- never heard a sound, lol. Scheduling this for early morning, and I shall link up as soon as I get home. Have a great week everyone.

Caught in Crystal

Back before Christmas, I purchased a stamp from Jennie at the Artistic Stamper, by our very own Doone,(Donna Louise Rogers), which is a Green Man. I must admit, these are a particular love of mine, Green Men. I have a few around the house, and a couple of stamps already.So, my vague plan has been to stamp him onto a 'caught in crystal' background, then during this weeks WOYWW, one of the bloggers mentioned a bottle of Johnsons  'KLEAR' floor polish,which is used for this.Which prompted me to make a start. The KLEAR is very much like Glossy Accents, but for something like this a LOT cheaper. This post will go up in two parts, as having made the basic sheets, they need a while to dry.
So, what do you need ?

Tissue came in a huge pack from The Works.

 Old newspaper,
 a bottle of Johnsons 'KLEAR' floor polish
transparency sheets, or acetate
 Masking tape (any will do, mines from Poundland)

Inks - reinkers etc
Tissue paper- white is fine, I've used a couple of colours here. I've also heard of people doing this with kitchen towel & facial tissues.
Disposable gloves are a good idea!

First step is to tape your transparency sheet to a couple of layers of newspaper with the masking tape, sealing down the edges well. Now pour on some of the 'KLEAR'- you want enough to be able to spread over the whole surface, best done with your fingers, and its good idea to wear disposable gloves doing this too.

Once its spread over the surface, begin dripping an assortment of inks into it. Best to stick to only 3 or 4, or you'll end up with a muddy mess. I used Distress Re-inkers for this one, using 3 different greens and 1 brown.
I did find the DI reacted it bit strangely with the KLEAR, going a bit thick, that doesn't happen with Alcohol inks, but it still comes out fine.

Here I used red, orange & yellow Alcohol Inks.   

  



 The next step is to move your inks around in the KLEAR- fingers, paintbrush, whatever- just be careful how you mix them so it doesn't turn to an icky mess.


Next you need a piece of tissue paper slightly larger than your coloured sheet. Scrumple it up, then smooth it back out.




 

Now you lay it on top of the inky KLEAR.

Gently start to dab it down, using your fingertips- don't press too hard, or rub or push. The wet paper tears easily, although you can gently push any torn edges back together. Now you need to put it aside to dry, at least overnight. Don't try brayering/rolling over it, it will muddy all the colours together.
 WORD OF WARNING
Even though its taped to newspaper, the ink can seep through- wherever you are going to put it to dry, put plenty of newspaper underneath it. Or lay a large bin bag down and put it on top of that.

You can see here where it leaked through onto my mat.

So thats the basic idea.

The reason its called 'Caught in Crystal', is because before you place the tissue paper down, you can add inclusions- glitter, fibres, beads etc.





I'm hoping you can see I've added glitter in a few different greens to this one.

 This one I've sprinkled crystal glitter in, and I'm going to use yellow tissue on the back.





 The thing with inclusions is, if you make them too dimensional, it becomes extremely difficult to stamp on the smooth side. You can of course do your stamping first, then flip it over and do the crystal part if you want to include beads etc in the crystal. I just like to do the crystal first, as then I can choose where best to stamp my image to best effect, rather than the random effect I'd get doing it the other way.

I've used this a few times, the Christmas Angels I did were made from it and one or two cards I've done in the past have used it.

So that's Part One. I did two green sheets, and one red/yellow, so they are all on one side now drying out.


EDIT:   Okay, I'm stepping back in time from 2020, as I discovered that KLEAR had been discontinued ages ago, then while searching for an alternative, I found out it had actually been re-launched, this time under the name of PLEDGE MULTI SURFACE POLISH.
 Pic here of what you're looking for. 

I mentioned my Green Men earlier, here are a few of them:

Clocks Birthday card

Another one with a strip of card mounted onto the base, as the base card is textured.














The strip of card was sponged with yellow & orange Distress and Adirondack inks.

I overstamped it with clock images, mainly Paperartsy, and some cogs stamps from The Artistic Stamper. I used the darker Oranges I'd used on the background, as well as Adirondack Caramel and Hazelnut, and some Espresso, using the second impression.
I heat set all these inks, then stamped a larger clock, again from Paperartsy, in Copper Pigment ink. Heat embossed these with copper powder.

Using a sponged, streaky background to stamp on, I stamped  Papermania's Beautiful Timepieces square stamp in Wild Honey, and heat set it. Then I stamped the watch again in Copper, and the Happy Birthday sentiment, and heat embossed both with copper powder.




 The clock face then got a layer of Glossy Accents to mimic the glass front of a pocket watch.

Left that to dry overnight, meantime I matted the strip to the front of the card.

The clock and sentiment got cut out this morning, and mounted onto the front with some sticky pads.

WOYWW #176

Well that's another week gone by, and here we all are again, courtesy of Lady Julia of The Stamping Ground. My desk this week is a bit of a shambles, to be honest. Having a bit of a sort out & tidy. Lots of stamped images getting sorted out, and going into the plastic wallets I bought ages ago. I often make a lot of backgrounds in one go, or stamp up a bunch of images when I have a particular stamp out,or sometimes something doesn't work for what I wanted, and they get dropped in a drawer, completely forgotten about. Hopefully this way they will be out where I can see them and they'll get used.
A few months worth of Craft Stampers to take the stamps off & put away.  The new Tim Holtz Embossing Diffusers on the bottom of the pic, next to the Mini Mister stand, both from where I visited on Saturday. And where was that? you ask. The wonderful new shop opened by Jennie, The Artistic Stamper, is where. I've posted about my visit here, and all the other goodies I came back with. I mentioned in there that it was the Official opening of Jennies Workshop Room, and she got us to decorate something for the walls. She very kindly gave me permission to post it on my blog, so here it is. You can tell what a squirrel I am, I even kept the flyer on the right that I had been stamping off & testing colours on as I thought' it'll make a great background with a little bit more work' lol. 

  I missed last week, as we went to Paris for our Wedding Anniversary, and we had a smashing week. I've put some pics in a post here,so you can have a look later if you like, but one thing lots of you will love to have a look at is in this post here- United Buddy Bears at the Eifel Tower. The most amazing 'altered art'- just right up our street,.
So have a great Wednesday, show us your best (or worst), stock up on coffee & biccies, and lets wander the worlds desks together- sort of Crafting Buddy Bears.

What I did on Saturday……. Visited The Artistic Stamper

On the last WOYWW  I did, a couple of weeks ago, I saw a post from Jennie at the Artistic Stamper. To cut a long-ish story short, I remembered seeing that she had now opened a bricks-and-mortar shop, and just out of curiosity, as we were going to be driving to the south of England, Dover to be precise, I thought I'd just have a look and see where she was. After all, it might not be TOO much of a side trip…..lol. And what did I find? Jennies new shop is about 20 minutes away from Dover!! The gods of crafting (All Hail Tim Holtz) were definitely smiling on me. So on Monday, we did a little side trip to The Artistic Stamper.Well, Jennie wasn't there on Monday, but we had a lovely chat (and coffee) with Mal, I had a browse (and shopped) and my Beloved Husband suggested we came back on Friday. Then we realised that by the time the ferry docked, they would be closed. So Beloved Hubby said why didn't we stop at the Dover Premier Inn again on Friday night, and come up on Saturday, when Jennie was having the Grand Opening of her New Workshop area. Which is exactly what we did. I got to do a little project for Jennie, along with some other lovely ladies, and I am sure Jennie will be putting these up on her blog when its all sorted out, so I'm not going to post any pics here yet. I also got to shop (again) and a day of fabulous company. We got the warmest welcome you could wish for from Jennie & Mal, plus lots of coffee & cake!

  By the way, I am not really much taller than Jennie- I just had 5" platforms on, lol! My super size gig-going shoes. Hard to show the size, but here is one next to my normal trainer. The platform is pretty much as high as the whole trainer!


So, what did I come home with?
An exciting bag of goodies…… 
Some of Jennies stamps….
Lots of Tim Holtz goodies……
and a few other bits & bobs.
Two Tim items I really had my eye on, and Jennie had both- the Snowflake Rosette strip die, and his new Embossing Diffusions set.I also got a pack of Fragments to have a play with.


I am looking forward to having a go with these Embossing Diffusers, I have seen lots of You Tube videos on making your own. The idea is that you can either emboss all of a piece of card/paper except for a round or oval panel, or just emboss the panel, leaving the rest plain. So effectively you get 6 options, which is not bad. When I have done a couple I will post up what they look like.