I’ve posted another project over at Wow! Embossing Powder blog as part of their design team. This time I have designed a bouquet in a perfectly formed custom gift box, making use of the February fluorescent theme colours. Pop over for the instructions.
Templates and instructions for the box can be found on my new Templates page – look in the toolbar above, or click here.
Since I joined the design team for Wow! Embossing Powders, I’ve had the chance to play with all their powders, embossing glitters and stamps. February’s tag reflects this, featuring several of the coloured and glittery embossing powders, with the background stamp being their ‘Brocade’. Instructions for making this tag can be found at the Manic Stamper blog.
I’m demonstrating all sorts of things heat embossing on 22nd October (see About Me page), and finished off my demo board this morning:
And here’s a close up of the faux dichroic glass piece for those that like shiny things 😉
As promised, here are pics of my handmade travel journal. I decided that I would take an art journal with me on holiday and I’d keep to a plan of drawing/writing daily – after all, I’d have the time! Well, that didn’t quite work out between sun and sangria and nights of cards and local honey rum, but I have finished it:
I’ll be showing the group at the Craft Club on Saturday how to make the journal, and there will probably be a tutorial coming on here later.
I’m teaching my card project today in Leicester – and I think this may be another innovation… For the squares on this card, I’ve cut up a juice carton (the foiled type Tetrabrik) into 3.5cm squares before embossing using a Big Shot and Fiskars texture plates and then colouring with alcohol inks and mounting onto black cardstock. I took off the ink with a cut’n’dry nib soaked in blending solution, and outlined the areas with a black permanent fine tip marker. The ‘leading’ is Pewter Liquid Pearls from Ranger. Recycling at its best!
I’ve carried on playing with my newly discovered technique, and thought I ought to try Paper Towel Printing with distress inks. Here’s a step by step guide:
Firstly, place your sheet of paper towel onto a glass mat or other non-absorbent surface. Wet by spritzing with water.
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Then I spritzed with homemade glimmer mist spray – good to have a background colour. I think it also helps the other colours keep in their place… This one is Peeled Paint with gold perfect pearls.
[To make your own mist – take one dropper full of reinker and add it to a mini-mister. Add a small scoop of perfect pearls. Fill with water to three quarters full, replace cap and shake vigorously. Spritz.]
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Drop on ink from your choice of distress ink reinker – this is Faded Jeans.
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Spritz each of those dots with water until they start bleeding.
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Repeat with more colours – this is Spiced Marmalade.I also added Dusty Concord.
Spritz with water.
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Start printing! Lay a tag/paper/cardstock/ATC on the towel and smooth down with your fingers. You may see water squeeze out of the edges at first – that’s what you’re after 🙂 You’ll also find the colours start to spread a little more into one another.
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All of this from one sheet? Yup – and they are all double-sided as well. It seems that the colours stay pretty much where you put them, so this would be great to carry a colour theme throughout a tag book, or art journal, or across several pieces of cardstock for scrapbooking or card making.
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And there was still some left over to do my art journal 🙂
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Close up of the tags – they’re a bit blotchy still as I didn’t wait to dry them before sharing this blog entry with you! Lots of texture on some, lovely watercolour effects. Love it!
I’ve been playing today 🙂 And one of the things I got playing with was a paper towel. I originally planned to dye it with acrylic paints/inks for decoupaging into my art journal. But one thing led to another, and before long, I’d ended up with what I think to be a totally novel technique – at least I haven’t seen it in all my hours browsing art journal techniques online. I’ll be calling it Paper Towel Printing, and this is the result:
