Faces...

 

Hey, 

Happy Monday!

Well semi-happy for me, as it is my first day back at work after a week off!

I am a big fan of Carabelle stamps and last year I discovered Kate Crane!! I love her work and she just happens to make a range of stamps for Carabelle.

I loved these x4 mini face stamps that were released earlier this year, so I splurged and bought them.

Totally worth it as they were a lot of fun to play with.

I made x2 very similar cards. I stamped, watercoloured and fussy cut x2 of the faces from the set. I wanted to use these alcohol ink panels I had in my stash. To make the faces pop off of the background I added glittery gold paper elements behind them. The Taylored Expression sentiment strips worked really well with these cards too.

I love it when I get to use one or two of the HUNDREDS of backgrounds I have. When I am a bit stuck for inspiration or tired, but want to play, I make backgrounds.. I have SO many of them.

Do you have a default 'craft' thing that you do to help you get inspired?

Alcohol Ink Lift...

Hey,

Happy Monday!

I hope you had a good weekend.

I have spent most of the time either cleaning my closet or playing with digital scrapbooking - new to me, but lots of fun and I am enjoying cherry-picking which photos I want to scrap. I am not into doing entire years - I just don't have the patience for that!

A while ago I was trying out the alcohol lift technique. My results were not too bad. The actual alcohol ink panel didn't come out so well as you can see, but the lift result was lovely and I made the pretty thank you card that you can see in the photo.

If you fancy giving this a go, I suggest watching this video - Jennifer McGuire does a much better job of explaining this than I ever could.

I am going to keep practicing and see if I can improve the results on the ink panel.

Cx

Alcohol Ink Birthday..

Hey,

Last day of January already! This month has flown by.

I have enjoyed blogging this month, I have stuck to my 'no pressure' attitude of 2019 and it's made me relax and post a bit more!

Today's card is a fun one.

I LOVE alcohol inks and we did a fun class with Cheiron last year.

Lisette bought me a bunch of new colours for my birthday and so I had a play and created the fun background you can see.

I stamped over it using archival ink and added a happy birthday die-cut.

It felt a teeny bit flat against the black card blank, so I added some glitter paper and that made a huge difference.

I have loved the discovery of metallic alcohol ink mixatives, they add such nice touches and shimmers to these alcohol ink pieces.

Cx

Remember to be grateful...

Hey,

As you know July was spent celebrating Hubby's 40th birthday.

He had x2 parties, a birthday vacay and x2 family lunches - phew.

I really wanted HIM to say 'thanks' to a small group of people that had helped make his birthday fun and who had given him gifts (gifting is always optional with us).

Knowing Hubby as I do, I knew that if I left it too long to make the cards the moment for him to write them out would pass...

So I looked around my desk for inspiration and came across an alcohol ink thank you card that was already made. I dug out x4 more alcohol ink panels (top x2 use the alcohol ink lift technique) and whipped up x4 more cards!

I am super pleased with these, they look great and used things that I had already made.

Don't you love it when you find desk loot? Almost as good as loop furniture (I live in a complex that has 'loops' and you can put out your old furniture on the loops) - see below for Hubby's new desk that we found 2 weeks ago in our loop.

Cx

Alcohol Ink Techniques..

Hey,

A few weeks ago I did a fun Alcohol inks class taught by Cheiron and it really helped me to understand how to use them a bit better.

I made this little set of backgrounds and I played with the alcohol ink lift technique too.

They came out so well! So bright and varied - but heavy on the pink, as I love how bright that always is with these inks.

I made the four fun cards that you see in the main photo. The one bottom left is what you get after you do the alcohol ink technique and then stamp it off. It finally worked for me!

My supplies clockwise from top left -
30th Card - The Ink Road stamps, MFT Banner die, Misc number dies (gift from Cheiron)
HB Card - Tim Holtz stamps, Stampin' Up die
Thanks Card - Lawn Fawn scripty thanks die
Alpaca Card - Taylored Expressions stamps and dies, Hero Arts swirls background.

Jennifer Mcguire has a few cool videos on these techniques if you are interested.

Cx

Alcohol Ink Playtime...

Hey,

Happy Monday!

I hope you had a great weekend. I did! Hubby and I great fun on Friday night and I got to hang out with Lisette on Sunday (obvs we hit Macy's...).

I am a big fan of alcohol inks, you can make amazing backgrounds. I always felt that I hadn't mastered them and then recently they seem to make a bit of a come back and it has been fun to watch various crafters videos with tips and techniques.

I have just found Rubeena Naz - thanks to Cheiron and she is the latest in my very long list of craft crushes. She did a whole series of playing with Alcohol inks and I found her tips to be really useful.

I also FINALLY bought some Yupo - why did I wait so long?

As Yupo is seriously expensive....like SO expensive. Seriously. I used 3 sheets and created x3 backgrounds experimenting with colours. The middle sheet I did something a teeny bit different. Instead of letting it dry naturally, I patted it dry with a cloth, hence the muted more mottled look, which I really like.

Once they were dry I die-cut the same size panel out of each sheet, which still leaves me with x3 more backgrounds for future use.

I really wanted to show as much of the backgrounds as possible, so kept my embellishing to a minimum.

I like the purple card-bases, they show off the backgrounds really well. I cut these myself using Simon Says Stamp cardstock and this colour is Blue Violet and is my default coloured card base stock.

All three cards are a bit different - the first one just has Tim Holtz stickers, the middle one uses a bit of Vellum, so that the sentiment die is legible and the third one uses a Avery Elle heart die and some fun labels - made using this Dymo Labeler (which I ADORE).

Here is a better shot of the anniversary card, which is already on it's way to it's new owner -

I love it when I get to play with older things and learn new tricks.

Cx

CAS Mix-Up...Inky Flowers..

Hey,

Whilst I was looking at some blogs the other day, I stumbled across a link to CAS Mix-up.

I really like the idea and the January challenge was very appealing -

I chose to use alcohol inks as my liquid colour. I like working with alcohol inks, you can create such random shapes and patterns.

I decided I wanted flowers this time and these were really simple to do and I made a few variations, but this version was my fave.

All you have to do is take a piece of glossy photo paper, drop your ink on and blow on it through a straw to spread the colour. Simple.

I added the stamping with my sentiment (by Scraptastic Club) and in the flower centres (by Concord & 9th).

My choice element was the little black pearls to finish off the flowers.

I die-cut both panels using MFT stitched rectangle dies and I love how the small purple border makes the flowers pop.

I am hoping I followed the rules correctly and that my alcohol inks count as an 'art product' for the mixed media part of the challenge, no matter, I still love it and there's always the Feb challenge to master the rules LOL.

Cx

Cheiron's Ranger Christmas Class..

Hey,

So I am now in London hanging with my folks. So for the next week my posts will be scheduled.

Finally I am showing you my makes from the class I did with Denise at The Inkpadnyc. 

Cheiron was our teacher and as ever the cards we made were gorgeous and fun times were had by all - even my non-crafty Denise had a blast.

My cards aren't in order of make!

The main photo is my fave, partly because of my amazing bow (yep praising myself). The white void at the top is because I messed up the red stamping, but I liked it so left it as it is.

We heat embossed the die-cut Believe and in real life its really shiny and lovely.

The next card, took the longest, but is so beautiful I actually don't know if I can bear to give it to anyone...

It was technique crazy and really stretched us all. We had to fussy cut the Deer, so you can imagine how long that took. The trees are this awesome technique of stamping in white first, then in green, but dropping the stamp down slightly.
We were supposed to tear the white snow, but I wasn't feeling that..not precise enough :) Yes I got teased for that..so I cut mini snow hills instead!

The card above was the easiest one of all and believe it or not that gingham background was a stamp!!!

I love the simplicity of it and I have used the layout a lot in the last 2 weeks to make more Christmas cards.

Our final card is a beauty, again I might have to keep it, so I can gaze at its beauty..

The silver background Cheiron had already embossed for us, same with the blue background, but we spritzed it and dried it. All our colours were so different, I really like using mists, but I get so messy, I need to fashion a spray booth..

The snowflake we heat embossed and the greeny/blue bling, we created that colour using some alcohol ink..

It was such a fun night - as always, I love hanging with the girls (Anna, Cheiron, Lisette, Jamey, Ava, et al) at The Inkpad classes..finally some NYC craft buddies, how nice is that!

Happy weekend everyone.

Cx

New Technique...

Hey,

As we all know I am a technique / tool junkie..its an addiction and I need help :)

Recently I was on YouTube watching videos (enabling me to purchase more!!) and I came across this video -

It blew my mind..

I have been spending my birthday money on lots of new goodies - alcohol inks were on the list, so I thought I'd have a go.

I am really happy with the 2 cards I made, the inks look awesome on the acetate and it made me brave enough to play with them on other paper as well - more on that later in the week.

The headline card today was made by cutting a 3x3 square section of my acetate creation and attaching to the card with mini staples. I die cut fabric circles and added a blingy fabric flower, that I removed from a paperclip (image below shows what they normally look like) -

I am pretty pleased with the die cutting of the fabric - this a new one for me - finally putting the Big Shot to the test!

Here is my second card - very simple - in part because I LOVE the patterns that I ended up with.

They are a little bit weird / unusual, but I think they are fun.

Cx