Distress Markers- a little playtime.

    I’ve had my Distress Markers for a while now, but only found a few minutes to have a go with them, so today I made a determined effort to do something more creative. I’ve watched the Tim video of him at the CHA, and loved what the pens will do,especially being able to colour straight onto the stamp. What really amazed me though was just how many impressions you can get from just one inking of the stamp.
   I had also bought the Papillon (CMS106) stamp set, Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous, and wanted to have a play with that too.  I had bought some Tim Die cuts on e-bay, dies that I haven’t got yet, and frankly, at the price, they’re a fantastic way to get a good selection. Loads of people are selling them on there, mine came from DIECUT HEAVEN, and I got the Sewing room set,some Weathered clocks, Cogs and Bird & Cage, and I think each set cost me around a £1, and the Sewing set for instance contained 10 each of the Mannequin, cotton reel and button.


 In the main, I used Clarity card for stamping on, again, only bought recently, but highly recommended by a lot of people I know. I can see why, having tried it. Its a silk coated card, and is indeed a beautiful surface to work on. Its A5 in size, and they pack it in either 25 or 100 sheets.
So back to my Tim Markers & stamping:





     This was the stamp I saw him using in his video, blending the inks on the stamp, then ‘huffing’ on it to re-wet the ink. So for my first go, I used :Mustard Seed, Spiced Marmalade, Fired Brick, Frayed Burlap,Tea Dye, Aged Mahogany , Brushed Corduroy, Spun Sugar, Barn Door and Rusty Hinge.
As he explains, you can take your time at this, there is no rush to get the ink on, because you reactivate it by breathing on it.

  


You can see here that I got 4 impressions from just one inking, obviously getting paler each time, just by breathing on the stamp between impressions.The first one is on Clarity card, the second on a piece of white card that had been coloured by dipping into water that had had alcohol ink dropped into it, a technique from Andy Skinner, ( I’ve linked this to his video tutorial) the third onto a white pearlescent card tag, and the fourth onto a piece of white copy paper.
Being quite pleased with the success of this, I tried it again, using mainly Blues & Purples:


  The first one I did onto one of the Die-cuts, which is just a plain white cardstock, the next two onto Clarity card again, and the final and palest onto a  piece coloured using the Andy Skinner technique.
   Looking at this picture now, I think I have  number two & three the wrong way round, but the imprints were so close together in colour I wasn’t sure which way round they were.
The pens blend together wonderfully, and even working dark to light, you just scribble the pen onto scrap paper and the colour returns to true.
 Another stamp set I had was the Wallpaper & Wood set, also by Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous. I tried the Wood stamp using a combination of Distress Inkpads & Distress Markers.










Again, I got three really good impressions, and would have got a fourth,really pale one. For these, I first swiped all over the stamp with Pumice Stone Distress pad, then added Frayed Burlap and Vintage Photo in thinner swipes & patches. Finally I added Walnut Stain, Tea Dye and Brushed Corduroy with the brush end of the Markers. All three pieces were done on Clarity Card, which is just a tiny bit bigger than the stamp.
I  also stamped one of the mannequins with the Wood stamp using Walnut Stain Distress pad,and then using another piece of  Clarity card,I stamped the Wallpaper, this time using a blue selection of Distress pads; Stormy Sky, Faded Jeans, Broken China & Tumbled Glass. I applied the pads using a slight swiping and twisting motion, so I got more of a blend of colour without any sharp edges.




Finally I stamped yet another mannequin, this time using the Papillon background with Archival Black ink.















So I have a few nice pieces now, and something to expand on. I think I might get some nice tags from the Wood background, and I am also thinking that the Butterflies would look good stamped over the pale Wood background as a second impression, using the first Impression to cut them out and mount over the stamped image, slightly raised, like the sort of thing you see in museums.
And perhaps a dress for the mannequin, cut from the Wallpaper background? Now that reminds me that I have a box full of fabric swatches somewhere- maybe a nice silky/shimmery piece of fabric draped over the mannequin? Methinks that the Tim Holtz magic is working, because Mr Mojo is definitely edging closer than he was this morning!

By the Sea…Craft A Scene

This was a bit of a panic moment, as I had the image in my head that I wanted to use- a lighthouse, from Stampscapes.
Trouble was, when I got my stamps out, I realised that this is not the lighthouse image I have, mine is the one from U/M set 4, and the one I thought I had is on U/M 12! As it is, I think the digi version probably worked better anyway.
 





So this is my first project using Digi-Stamps – the only ‘real’ stamp here is the Postcard word, from Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous here (USA), and here (UK). The Beach Huts are from Stitchy Bear Digital Designs, and the Lighthouse, from Daisy’s Digi Doodles.
I merged the two with photo editing software, and tried a couple of combinations of lighthouse positions before I settled on this one. The scene immediately made me think of a postcard, so thats what it became.
I was nicely surprised to find that printer ink is quite compatible with Promarkers- I had visions of an icky mess! I had a watercolour type image in my head, but I don’t think that would have gone well with the printer ink, so I stuck to pale Promarkers, lots of blender, and only adding colour to small areas. I used Archival Black for the Postcard word, the shell is a found item from a beach, and the little starfish was in a basket of small shells bought on holiday once. Both added with silicone glue.
The image was printed onto Neenah Card, and when I printed out the image, I also printed another one onto cheap copy paper to give me a mask for the beach huts so I could stamp my lighthouse behind them! A project for another time when I have the right stamp, I think.

Craft A Scene, Spring Flowers Tags

I think this has been the hardest of the briefs for me- not really a flowery person, at least not in stamping! I love my garden, and having flowers in the house, just didn’t find it easy to create scenes with them. I think its hard to get the scale & perspective to look right-anyway, here’s my final effort.

   I ended up with a pair of tags from my original scene- the  second isn’t really a scenic image, it was actually what was left   over after I cut out the first tag, but I thought it was too pretty to discard. 
The grasses, Black Cat and birds are all from Inkylicious. The Hedgerows are by Hobby Art, a set called ‘In The Country’.







It has hedgerows, fences, a bridge, couple of buildings etc.







The tall red flower on the second tag is from set by Chocolate Baroque,( formerly Graphicus/Elusive Images).The DL sized sheet is called ‘Autumn Hedgerow’, and has both outline & silhouette versions of the stamps.


I brayered a piece of card with a variety of blue & green Adirondack inks, and stamped the grasses along the bottom in Adirondack Meadow. The taller flowers and grasses were stamped as a second impression, just to make them a little lighter. I added colour to them with Tims new Distress markers. I also stamped a little flowers stamp, from Lavinia Stamps, in Fired Brick & Festive Berries Distress Inks,randomly in the grass.
The cat was stamped in Black Archival ink, and then I cut out the tag shape. I think he looks as though he is watching something crawling on or in the grass! The Hobby Art set is a clear polymer stamp, so I could bend the hedgerow stamp on my block to get a more natural shape, and I stamped it twice, to edge the field, then added a third one coming off that to create a second field. Looking at it, as the hedgerow is just lines & squiggles, you could adapt that by colouring in browns/greys and turn it into drystone walls, I think. Final touch was a couple of bird flock stamps from an Inkylicious birds set, called Take Flight. I punched a hole in the tag and added some green fibres, and used blue & red fibres in the second one.

Teenagers Birthday Card

    Not the easiest people to make Birthday cards for, male Teens!  This card was made for a friend at work who ordered it for his son, and I sort of know the lad, so had an idea of what would appeal.
I stuck to a simple but ‘full of impact’ black and white. Black base card, and the images are all stamped on white pearl card. The Guitar is from a set by Inkadinkado, 98693, Rock Star clear stamp set. This doesn't appear to be available over here anymore, but I found it on Amazon .com, and a lot of US places have it and will ship over here.

The Skull & Crossbones border, Winged Skull motif and ‘Rock Star’ phrase are also from the same set. The Winged Guitarist came with a free set of stamps with  Creative Stamping this month. I don’t often buy mags with free stamp sheets, as usually they are not my sort of style, but as you can see this one does have some really useful male images.


First off I stamped the Guitar image in Archival black, and heat embossed it with clear detail powder. Whilst it was still hot, I added more powder to the main body of the guitar, heat set again, and repeated this a couple more times to give a raised image.  I treated the Winged Skull motif exactly the same way. When both were cold, I cut out around the Winged Skull image, and trimmed the Guitar to an oblong, and although you can’t tell from the picture, I matted it onto black glitter paper before positioning it onto the card front. To matt onto the glitter paper, I used dabs of silicone glue- it will stick to the glittery surface, when DST wont.
I used a stamp positioner to stamp the skull & crossbones border twice, and again heat embossed with clear powder. I trimmed this down and also matted onto black glitter paper, then added to the bottom of the card.
Next up I randomly stamped the Winged Guitarist,( from the free set), Rockstar phrase and the word ‘Rock’(from the Rockstar set) in black onto white pearl card and heat embossed the images with clear detail powder. To get the single word ‘Rock’ from the ‘You Rock’ phrase, I just put a bit of low tack tape over the word ‘You’, inked up the stamp and peeled off the tape before stamping. I used some number templates I have to draw the numbers on the back of the card- remember to flip the numbers if you do this so they come out the right way round-then cut them out with a scalpel.I edged them with a black Promarker, and mounted the ‘6’ with a single layer of foam pads, and the ‘1’ at an angle with a double layer to give it some depth. Finally I added the Winged Skull with a couple of dabs of silicone glue.

Spring Flowers - Craft A Scene for May

Mays challenge is Spring Flowers, not something I have an abundance of, I must be honest, so this is my take on the theme for my first project.
When building a scene, I like to lay out my scene first, using images I have stamped onto transparency film with Staz-on.

I bought my pack of film from Staples, as you can see, they also do one for inkjet printers, which is slightly ribbed on one side to hold the ink. Either works fine for this, and you can use it for so many other things too- making stencils & masks with die cuts for instance.
So to begin, I punched out the windows in a piece of white card(4 1/4x5 3/4”) using a 1 3/8 punch. I only cut the top two, and the right hand two, stamped my Bluebell image( Chocolate Baroque) in Black Versafine, then heat embossed with clear detail powder.  I used one of the punched out squares to draw around for the final two windows, and cut out around the bluebell with a scalpel.The image was coloured with Promarkers .
Next I started playing with a choice of images:



You can see how it gives you the opportunity to move things around, and I could also place my Window on top, and see what the finished picture would look like. I chose to go with the last image, with the Oak Branch, and no mountains.
Now I get all my stuff together:

Stamp Positioner……………. Stampscapes Stamps and ………Espresso inkpad, Pine Needles Distress inkpads & pen.
I didn’t want to use the Black inkpad in the end, and decided I would colour directly onto the stamps as much as possible, and add some more colour at the end.
I used the Espresso inkpad for the church, then used Pine Needles Distress pad for the trees. I went in with the pen to get the trees coloured right up to the chapel,and as you can see from the image above, I tried a few inkpad combos first. This was stamped in the middle of a piece of white card.

I used the stamp positioner to place the winding path, Oak Branch and Two trees images after, following my layout.
 
This is the finished picture cut down to size. I sponged in Green Adirondack inks to the grass,and  a mix of Cloudy Blue & Sailboat blue for the sky.I added a sprinkling of wild flowers to the grass, using a couple of stamps that come on  U/M Nature Sheet #4. They are the two little stamps you can see at the top of the Stamps picture.  For this I used Sunshine Yellow, Sunset Orange and Red Pepper. I used the same two stamps to add the pink blossom to the Oak Branch, but this time I used Pink Sugar Distress pad, then went in again with Worn Lipstick. I added a little Espresso to the Church with a waterbrush.
By stamping the Oak Branch at the top, it helps to create a feeling of perspective in the scene, and I matted the image behind the window using a double layer of foam pads, to add to the depth.
On my Stampscapes page I go into this method in a bit more depth, and show how to make scenes that look very different from each other, even using the same stamps.