Alcohol inks on Mirror card

Well, the Black Hole that is Pinterest does actually yield some interesting stuff. Mind you, if I wanted to make everything I've pinned, I'd have to craft 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the next couple of lifetimes!  But still it sucks me in. However, today I spotted something, pinned it, and for once had a play with the idea there and then.  So to all of you now suffering biblical plagues and floods, sorry, my bad! The thing that caught my eye, was someone using alcohol inks onto what she called shiny card, for that read mirror card. Now I just so happen to have a Really Useful Box full of that stuff- bought back when I first started card making, and did a lot of decoupage. Always made a nice backing panel. Then I discovered stamps and ink, and was lost for ever. So if you have any of this knocking around, and don't know what to do with the stuff anymore, have a look-see at this.
I've got some plain 'pillars of light' style card, and some with patterns, so I thought I'd give both a try out. The tub of felts for the blending tool by the way- I bought a pack of felt sheets off e-bay and cut my own. A pack of 10 9"x9" squares cost me £4- the contents of that tub is from one square!
By the way, I give you fair warning now, this is a picture heavy post!

 For the first one, I tried out three of the new colours- Mermaid, Indigo and Honeycomb.

 Its not easy to show on here, but the effect is really amazing, a little bit like glass paint on a mirror.

 This next one is Purple Twilight, Raspberry and SailBoat Blue.

 Because of the holographic effect of the card, you get different colours depending on the light direction.





This is one of the pieces with stars in the foil- Poppyfield (another new colour), Pesto and Sunshine Orange were used here.

 This one used Raspberry, Wild Plum and Raisin, with a tiny bit of Black Soot added at the end.

 I thought the starry background would look good in night sky colours- Purple Twilight, Raspberry, Stream, Denim and Sailboat Blue.

       This combo is  Botanical, Honeycomb,(both new) and Sunshine Orange.

                                                


This one is Indigo, Poppyfield and Terra Cotta.

  

 The four completed panels.










             






And the three with the pattern.











Now I wondered how the plain ones would look with some embossing folder texture added.




















This is a Cuttle bug folder, Gears.





The second two are Tim Holtz folders.




 As is this one.

The four sheets, all embossed. You get a lovely deep reflective colour using this card, plus the bonus of changing shades depending on the light source.

Love with your Heart

Yesterday, Saturday, Visible Image stamps were at a craft shop local to me, Pink Tulip Crafts of Studley. So Beloved Hubby took me there in the afternoon. Mark and Helen (Visible Image) are both lovely people, I've met them before at the NEC Hobbycrafts show. Mark was running a workshop, and you can see some lovely cards created there on their Facebook page. Hazel Eaton was there creating samples, and proof of my visit is me in one of the photos, happily browsing, lol.
 Anyway, when I got home, I unpacked my purchases- some new VI stamps, a couple of Indigo Blu stamps that were a real bargain at 50% off, and a Sweet Poppy stencil. I clearly unpacked my mojo as well, as after I'd put my new stamps away, I got creative. The two Visible Image stamps I used here, Love with your heart and Grunge Flourish were two stamps I already had.
 I beagn by stamping the larger square of card with the Flourish all around the edge in Versamark, adding White embossing powder and heat setting. Then onto a smaller piece I stamp the word stamp the same way.

Next I added colour, using Distress Inks and a blending tool,using Broken China, Salty Ocean, Dusty Concord and Seedless Preserves. I made the edges more prominent by going around them with more Seedless Preserves. Then a piece of kitchen roll took all the ink off the white embossing.

Broken China.

Dusty Concord next,followed by salty Ocean and Seedless Preserves.

With all the inks sponged on. Finally I trimmed the word sheet down to size, then stamped around the edges with the Flourish stamp again, this time in Chipped Sapphire.

The word section was matted onto blue card and fixed to the centre of the Flourish panel, and mounted onto a square white card blank.
 For the final embellishment, I die cut some flowers from purple and blue vellum, using the Spellbinders/Heartfelt creations die set called Delicate Aster. The centres were done with Glossy Accents and seed beads.
Supplies:
 DI in Salty Ocean, Broken China, Chipped Sapphire, Dusty Concord and Seedless Preserves.
 Visible Image stamps Grunge Flourish and Love with your Heart
Versamark pad
White WOW embossing powder
Flower Die.

WOYWW #264

Cannot get my head around where this year is going- almost the end of June already. Not a lot happening since last week, to be fair- we did go down to Stonehenge for the Summer Solstice on Friday night/Saturday morning. Had a glorious day for it, the sky was completely clear, so it was a beautiful sunrise.
Epic shot of the moon over Stonehenge as well.


















 After leaving there we paid a visit to Woodhenge,which is only a couple of miles from Stonehenge and is marked out with small concrete posts now, as the wooden posts would have rotted away long in the past, but its a very unique site. Then it was on to LLJ's for a catch-up and breakfast! Lovely seeing them all again.
 So, desk-wise everything on it is from other people. A gorgeous ATC and charm arrived from Jozarty this week:

Thanks Jo, they are awesome. And last, but not least, my Blog candy from Marg, Silvercrafter.

Some lovely dies and stamps here, Thanks Marg ( and Becky, her 'offline random number generator', lol.)
 So, get yourselves over to the recuperating Julia's at The Stamping Ground, and show us all what you got.

WOYWW #263- I think

Hi everyone, missed a week last week, completely lost track of what day of the week it was. Hopefully our much -loved Hostess of Desks, Julia,back home at The Stamping Ground,is fit and well enough to herd us into order this week, after her ordeal on holiday last week.  Big hugs Julia {{}}.
 I decided my inkpads needed a tidy and to re-label some of them. I was going to use the printable ones that Tim has on the Ranger site for the Adirondacks, which print out with the colour as well as the name. Then thought that the colour representation might not be brilliant- printer ink varying so much. So I just did the names on an A4 label sheet , cut them up and swiped  the end of each one on the matching inkpad.
Adirondacks and DI's are re-done, I shall gradually get around to the others.
 The black cased pads on the bottom, the first two stacks are Encore Pigment metallics, the next four are mainly Ink It Up pigment pads- and I've had most of them for about 10 years now, and they still haven't dried out! Not too keen on the Ink it Up ones anymore, and I just tend to use them now for stamping into my image folders- and thats another job I've fallen behind on. The trouble then is not knowing which stamps you haven't catalogued, and I forget entirely about having the stamps. I have gradually been adding all the stamps I have into Evernote on my tablet, so at least I have a record when I go shopping.
 The only crafting going on has been touching up some of the Northern Lights I did at the crop.

I shall post up about them when I've finished them, but heres a taster. This is the 'before touch-up' image.

Here it is with some colour added to the rocks and water.  Still a bit more to do, I want to bring the pink/purple in the sky out more yet.

There was also the inset piece I did for Beloved Hubbys guitar, in the previous post.

 Last couple of pics, of two ATC's received, from Krisha and Annie,(Wipso). Thank you ladies, love them. Now I think I am going to have to make a little book or something to put them in. I still have last years in an envelope.

This one,left, from Krisha, and this one,right,from Wipso, (Annie).

and now for something completely different.....

Different indeed. I may have mentioned that Beloved Hubby is teaching himself to play guitar, with Rocksmith.
 Bass guitar, at the moment, and so the guitar collection is building up. The constant tuning and retuning for different songs goes through guitar strings like crazy- now we know why you see so many guitars on stage at a concert! Its better to have a guitar for each set-up, than to keep retuning. So this is the first two,one a bass which is heavy on the shoulder, after a couple of hours, and the other is a lead. So he bought himself another, lighter one. New to him,but a pre-loved guitar.


















This is it, in need of a bit of TLC. It also has a badge missing, from the headstock, and thats where this post comes into it.
Hubby said' those raised shiny things you make,could you make a badge for that space?'
 Good job I can follow his train of thought, what he wanted was a triple embossed piece for it.
 Black, maybe with some blue speckles, and a skull was the brief.

 So I started by tracing the shape for dimensions, and had to cut it by hand from some thick card. I was hoping Nesties might work for it, but the oval shape was wrong. Thats the thing with ovals-  a square is a square, a circle a circle. But ovals? Long ovals, thin or wide ovals- too much range! So, DI in Black Soot onto the base card- then the question, did he want a flat black, or a glittery one? Up to you came back the oh-so -helpful reply. I was about to use a glittery black EP on it, when a thought struck me. It might be too glittery, and make the image hard to see.  Then I spotted some Crafters Companion Iridescent Glitter spray on the shelf, so I gave it a blast with that.
Doesn't show too well, but it gives it enough sparkle without being overwhelming.  Let that dry then patted it onto a clear embossing pad.
Three layers of UTEE, and  into the top layer I sprinkled a little Blue Glass Ep, then it was ready for the stamp. This had me a bit worried at first, as I know I have a few skull stamps (who, me?) but didn't think I had one small enough when he suggested it. Visible Image stamps to the rescue! A recent set I bought, Max Rocks, has the perfect sized skull in the set.










I used Silver Encore Pigment ink on it, to contrast the black.

 And this is the finished piece- worked out quite well in the end.










Here it is in place in the guitar: