WOYWW #594- The Christmas Stocking Edition.

 

Here we are again, back at The Stamping Ground, with our much loved leader, Julia, for another Wednesday desk hop.

Long shot of the desk, covered in half made cards, stamps, inkpads and assorted other odds and ends.

The sheet of clear stamps are all HoneyDoo Christmas stamps, used for the cards you can see. The pack of fancy card at the front was bought last time we went to the NEC, sort of oil on water finish to it. I'd used some for the bells, and some baubles I'd also stamped. Like an idiot, I stamped in Versafine, which totally will not dry on shiny/coated surfaces. So I redid the bells, and haven't got round to the baubles yet.

Here are the Christmas stockings, cut down to fit on a square card base, and matted ready.

The Holly & bells, I stamped the bells again onto gold paper, with gold pigment ink, and heat set with gold EP. Matted onto gold card.

Also discovered, via a bit of You Tube searching, why I was having so much trouble colouring & shading. I'd been working from light to dark, which to me seemed logical, when in fact you're supposed to work dark to light, and going over the previous section with the next shade. So, you learn something new every day,lol.

These stamps on the left Julia are the ones I was telling you about. I also added a Birthday background stamp- lots of words and phrases for birthdays. Saw a sample done with it stamped in black onto an ink blended background, and thought it would make some quick birthday cards, just add a die cut sentiment. Or you could stamp in Versamark, heat set with white EP, then ink blend over that, so a few options.

Speaking of sentiments, I picked this up in The Range. I have a few friends who don't celebrate Christmas as such, so thought this will be useful. I think it was about £3.50.

So thats my desk for this week, and my regular enabling provided- you're welcome,😀.

Which brings us round to ..........And Finally.............

Bleeding Art Tissue Fun

  Had a play with this stuff again last week, mainly as I had it in my head that they'd make good backgrounds for my Woodware Quirky Birds stamps.


The Bleeding Art Tissue is different to ordinary coloured tissue paper, as generally the ordinary sort doesn't  do this, although I've heard some of the really cheap stuff will, but the pack of the proper stuff I bought was from Amazon- where else?- and cost £5.62 for 20  50x76 cm assorted colour sheets.

 Which gives you loads to experiment and play with. There's a wide colour range, with lights to darks in each colour.

The process is really simple. Just add  tissue to a cardstock background, spritz well with water, and leave to dry. How less complicated could a thing be?

The cardstock I've used is just a regular white cardstock, nothing fancy. I had some A3 sheets, so used them.

 I just tore up my tissue, but you can die cut it too, if you wanted circles/squares/ diamonds/hexagons etc. Depends how regular you wanted the background to be. Also, depending how carefully you lay the tissue down and spray will give assorted results. You can see white gaps in my areas of colour, which is from creases in the paper.

You can allow it to overlap, or leave spaces. You can spray the cardstock with water first to help the tissue stay in place whilst you spray it properly.
 The tissue needs to be wet through, but you don't need water running off the cardstock.

 On some sheets I gave a light spritz with spray inks first, before adding tissue, others I just left white.

These took about an hour or so to dry, then I peeled off the tissue. Don't discard this tissue- it's good for at least a couple of uses at full colour, and further uses after that the colours will gradually get paler.

Mine all went into a document wallet for next time.

All the tissue peeled off, and if there were any that you felt needed more, you could place more tissue and respray.

In order to find the best placings for my stamps, I stamped them onto OHP film, with Staz-on.




These were the 4 images I started with, but I added some more afterwards.



































Now, I've read that it isn't Staz-on Ink that is harmful to Photopolymer stamps, but the Staz-on Cleaner. I'd also heard that you can use hand sanitiser to remove it from stamps, so gave it a go.

                                         




And after. It definitely does do the job.
 And while we're on the subject of cleaning, the colour from the tissue will come off on your fingers, and I can tell you that Imperial Leather soap is ace for removing ink from your skin.

These were all the images I stamped out, after they'd been trimmed down.

These two butterfly ones I've added some colour with Prismacolor pencils.

There'll be a part two to this as I get them all made up into cards.

WOYWW #505-The REALLY Untidy Edition!

I know, that doesn't look too bad, don't worry, I'm saving the best- or worst- till last!
 I'm having a go at a technique I've seen used by a lady on Facebook, but- wisely, as it turned out- I decided to have a practice at it in a journal first. I've used this journal a lot for trial runs/practice stamping, and it's useful.
Linking at Julias place, The Stamping Ground, as always.







I'm using my good old Adirondacks- I think what everyone used before Tim and Distress!
 Anyway, the stencil I cut on my Silhouette, using OHP film. I got a great deal on a couple of 100 packs when our local Staples was closing down, and it's great for making your own stencils, either  with a digital cutter, or dies. Although I find with the dies, they cut best if you're using the Precision Baseplate for Intricate dies. Probably because dies don't actually cut through material, they crush their way through it, and that doesn't work so well with the film.
 Anyway, got my base inking down, so the second part is adding in more colour, like this, using a circle mask.Not happy with it, needs more practice. And I'll watch her video again tonight, lol. Link for that is HERE, if anyone wants to see it done properly. 😃 She also has a link there to the blog she first saw it on.


So, what else has been going on. Some Bleeding Art Tissue over the weekend, for starters.





Made up 4 or 5 sheets, using various colours. Brilliant for making random backgrounds. I got mine from Amazon, Not expensive, and you can use the pieces more than once, although they will start to get paler after about the second use.

I want them to stamp some Woodware Bird stamps on I bought back last year.
What I've done is make use of that OHP film again, and stamped the images onto that, so I can move it around on my background to find the sweet spot.
 This is one of the Quirky Birds, I've a second, and also an owl.


Speaking of Woodware stamps, got these in sales online this week. Reckon the Butterfly will work on this background too.
So, that Untidy Edition bit? Well, over the weekend was the latest Christmas Card Club Challenge,(post below), and my desk from then ties in really nicely with this weeks And Finally. Bit like an explosion in a craft factory.

Inks, stencils,stamps,paper masks- notice the moon mask stuck to my craft tidy, so I didn't lose it?



So here it is, this weeks And Finally....................................

Plenty of potential for fiasco on that desk, I reckon!

Oh, just remembered this- You probably know by now that Google + is finally being withdrawn. If you want to check out what you may need to do with your Blogger settings, I'll share THIS BLOG that one of the CCC ladies posted. She gives clear info, with pictures on any settings you may need to adjust.

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.

Christmas Card Club Challenge #25- Cute

Well, here we are at the last Challenge for this year, and it's been chosen by Sylvie, who wants to see Cute. I actually seem to have quite a number of stamps that fall into this category, and I admit they don't get enough use.

 Mainly because most of them need to be coloured, and until I discovered how enjoyable Prismacolor pencils were to work with, I avoided colouring like the plague. So we have 5 Christmas cards, and 4 more gift tags to the collection.

These two penguin images are by Whimsy Stamps. I've added Glossy Accents to the Candy Canes, and also used Inkylicious Fluffy Puffy Stuff for the fur on the hats. I'll share how I found it worked best further on.

This is another Whimsy stamps image, and Beloved Hubby bought me all three last year for Christmas. He couldn't find them in the UK, so got stung for Import Duty ordering from the USA, but when we visited the Papercrafts Show at the Motorcycle Museum recently, we discovered Dies to Die For, a UK company who stock many of the well known US brands of stamps and dies, such as Altenew, Lawn Fawn,Mama Elephant, Pretty Pink Posh, and Whimsy.
 I used the Fluffy Stuff on these too.

This is a Hobby Art stamp, bought at Happy Stampers a couple of months ago. Called Archie & 5 Pals.

Another Hobby Art stamp, Paws for Thought.
 Both of these are Rubber stamps.

These Penguin tags are also using a Hobby Art set, clear stamps this time, called Round Penguins.

 The Polar bear tags use stamps from Inkylicious, on the left, and a very old Woodware set on the right.  Laughing right now, as I just did a Google search to see if it was still available. The only two images that showed up are both from my blog, so I guess not!

So, I said I'd tell you about the Puffy stuff.
 It says on the bottle to apply a line of it, then heat with a heat gun. That works fine, especially if you are trying to line hills or trees for instance, but I found didn't produce the look I wanted for the fur.






So what I did was to add a thickish line of it onto the fur trim, then used a cotton bud to dab it all over.

I bought these cotton buds in Primark recently, you can find them in their make up/beauty section. They are great for crafting, as you have a thin pointy end, and the other end is flat. I used the pointy end to dab the Fluffy stuff over the fur areas, then heat set. You want a fairly even level, not too thick or it will puff up too far, but not too thin either, otherwise it doesn't puff at all. However, it's pretty forgiving- if you haven't got enough on, or have bare patches, you can just add some more and reheat.




If some areas puff up too far, you can flatten it down- the flat end of the cotton buds was perfect for that!

It's a really great little product for adding some dimension and texture to your Christmas creations.











And so we are done for another year, and I'd like to thank everyone for making this such a fun challenge. You've all provided so much inspiration, and often, reminded me of stamps I have that I'd forgotten about!

It's been great for taking the stress out of Christmas Card making, and made it something to enjoy through the year instead. As I wrote out and sent almost 70 cards earlier in the week, then another 30+ for work colleagues, and 20+ for family, I realised why in previous years-when I didn't start till November- I'd got heartily sick of the sight of them long before I was finished. So thank you ladies, and I hope you all have a quiet, peaceful and Happy Christmas, and thank you all for the lovely Christmas cards that have arrived!