Acrylic block stamping

I'm back today with a card for a couple of fun challenges.

I combined the below inspiration photograph from the Essentials by Ellen August Pin-Sights challenge with trying a new technique, namely stamping with an acrylic block (or rather: 2 acrylic blocks)..

I focused on the wedding cake and the colours. After dabbing distress ink onto my acrylic block (Tattered rose, Tea dye and a few spots of Worn lipstick), I spritzed with water and stamped onto a panel of water colour cardstock. I used a water brush to smooth out the ink. I repeated the process for my top layer, using a smaller acrylic block and leaving out the Worn lipstick. I stamped the Mondo Hydrangea using the same distress inks (the bottom cake layer in the picture has a tone on tone relief) and stamped the single petal on a separate piece of water colour cardstock using worn lipstick, coloured the image using more distress ink and a water brush and then fussy cutting it. To spice up the colours a little, I added a little Abandoned coral, which I also used to overstamp the petal after my colouring was done. I also used a mix of Worn lipstick and Abandoned coral to paint a ribbon and ink the edges of my card base. The sentiment was stamped in Versafine sepia ink. I could not resist adding a little sparkle using clear Wink of Stella on the ribbon and petal and adhering a few gold sequins by Pretty Pink Posh.

I'm linking my card up at:
Essentials by Ellen August Pin-Sights challenge
Shopping our Stash - 267 Learn something new
AAA Cards - 72 New to you technique
Tuesday Throwdown - 309 Clean and simple
STAMPlorations August CAS challenge - Anthing CAS goes, with optional twist: gold
Stamping Sensations - August anything goes with a stamp
Penny Black and More - August anything goes with a stamp

 

Creative Chemistry 103 - Day 6 Play Time

Here's one more project I created using some of the techniques taught in this awesome class. Day 6 was about using different surfaces and substrates.

My colourful panel started its life as a failed attempt at the splattered florals technique. After I had managed to create a floral on a second panel, I decided to play around with this first panel. I added plenty of alcohol blending solution to break up my thick layers and then went in again with some brighter drops of ink and blending solution. With a bit of imagination my shapes look like rose petals (or not haha). I added some foil accents in the upper left and bottom right corners, adhered some jute ribbon to the back of my panel on either side and then mounted this onto a panel of woodgrain cardstock that I had coloured using a wash of distress inks and smudging distress crayons on top. To finish off, I mounted my panel onto a white card base (slightly shorter than A2) and added a die cut from my box of left-overs. Since the dot for the 'i' was missing, I used a dot of glitter glue instead.

Thanks for visiting. I hope I have been able to inspire you.

I'm also linking my card up for the current Mixed Media Card challenge (#26), where this month's theme is Rainbow with the option of Dragonflies. I do hope my card qualifies.

Creative Chemistry 103 homework - batch 5 (last one)

So here's my last batch:

Day 3 - Texture Paste Resist

Day 4 - Distress Crayon Smudge

Day 5 - Alcohol Ink Faded Layers

Thanks for bearing with me. I always appreciate your visit and comments!

Creative Chemistry 103 homework - batch 4

Without further ado, here's batch 4:

Day 3 - Grit paste grunge - I don't have any grit paste so I experimented with something I did have, namely CreaPaste Fine Sand. The image is a digital image from Tlc Creations.

Day 4 - Distress Crayon Gesso Fresco

Day 5 - Alcohol Ink Texture Resist on Yupo

Thanks again for visiting!

Creative Chemistry 103 homework - batch 3

Here's my next installment of technique tags:

Day 2 - More spritzing with water colour markers

Day 3 - Texture paste - I used Opaque matte, Aleene's snow, Dreamweaver translucent

Day 4 - Distress Crayon Blended Background - This time I used all colours of my set of distress crayon to create a rainbow.

Day 5 - Alcohol Ink Splattered Florals on Yupo - I used my spritzer tool to move the ink around.

Thanks for your visit.

Creative Chemistry 103 - Day 5 Liquid Landscape

I figured this inked beauty deserved to shine all by itself. Wouldn't you do a happy dance if your first attempt at creating a landscape using alcohol inks on Yupo turned out the way mine did? I can assure you that I was doing several happy dances all of last night and this morning. I don't think this piece will end up on a technique tag but will be framed instead so that I can look at it often.

When I started with my sky, I was almost despairing, because I only produced odd blotches, so when I finally saw something acceptable, I stopped immediately and went on to create my hills. Again, things did not at all go as smoothly as Tim Holtz made it seem in his video. However, the nice thing about these alcohol inks is that you can keep layering them because the new layer will replace the underlying layer. While I was working in the twilight outside (after all you need a well ventilated room to work with the alcohol ink and blending solution), the light was fading quickly (as is normal here in Crete) and I could not exactly make out my colours any more, but I added a little of each colour I had set out, added a little more blending solution and suddenly magic happened! Just look at those hill tops, especially the one on the right. That's magical, right?

When my panel was fully dry last night, I went on to stamp some grasses (Sheena Douglas) in black Archival ink, but the stamp was too detailed and I pressed it onto my panel for too long, so the image became a an indefinable blueish blob. Oh no! So I grabbed my new TH Christmas stamp set featuring these tall pine trees and stamped those several times while varying the height. Oh my! You can still see glimpses of the blueish grasses through the trees but it creates such a wonderful forest feel. Oh my! Doing another little dance here!

BTW, did you notice the face peeking out from between the hills? So fun!

Creative Chemistry 103 homwork - batch 2

More colourful inkiness from me with this second installment of homework assignments for Creative Chemistry 103.

First up, an overview picture with more technique samples for days 2-5:

Day 2 - Distress Paint Resist - I discovered I want need a few light colours to be able to do this technique even more justice. 

Day 3 - Texture Paste Embossing - I used my new ARTplorations stencil for the texture paste embossing and sprinkled WOW gold embossing powder on top.

Day 4 - Distress Crayon Textured Resist revisited - I almost got it right this time. I had let the crayons dry for a couple of hours but did not heat set it, so it started to smudge when I added the distress inks. But maybe the smudging would have happened anyway, since you can see that it piled up thick along the edges of my stencil image (new to me stencil by Sheena Douglas, love it).

Day 5 - Alcohol Ink Stamped Resist on Yupo. These festive colours screamed Christmas to me, so I stamped a TH pointsettia stamp over my background. Next time I will try a Christmas tree...

Thanks for visiting!. Until the next batch!

Creative Chemistry 103 homework - batch 1

I've been a good girl these past 10 days, spending my holiday break watching how-to videos (some of them several times) and doing some homework. I'm pretty sure this is the first online card class for which I have created a project for each and every day, and there is still more to come...

Here are some samples for days 1-5:

Day 1 - Highlight stamping - I used a 'regular' white pigment ink for my base layer. I understand the new Picket Fence distress ink has some extra special properties, so I might buy it next time I shop.

Day 2 - Spritzed watercolour - I used Letraset Aquamarkers since I don't own any distress markers. I can see they react in a different way, but I do like the results and it's a good way to try out techniques with the supplies you do have.

Day 3 - Collage Medium - I happened to throw a set of minis into my basket when shopping last month. Top to bottom: matte, crazing, vintage.

Day 4 - Distress Crayon Textured Resist - this didn't go the way it should have. I was adding crayons on top of crayons instead of blending distress inks, but I managed to salvage my piece by lifting most of the crayon using a baby wipe through my original stencil. Phew!

Day 5 - Alcohol Ink Painting on Yupo. Love how this turned out.

That's it for now. I hope to be back tomorrow with more homework. Thanks for your visit!

Crazy bird and distress crayons

This card was inspired by Kathy Racoosin's inspiration piece using one of the techniques shown on day 4 of the Creative Chemistry 103 OCC class.

I didn't like how my panel turned out at first, especially because of the dark green and blue, but after I had matted my watercolour panel onto some dark blue and gold print cardstock and had added my sentiment using a die by Little B (Block out), I figured my first attempt at using distress crayons didn't look too bad after all.
When I first saw the Little B sentiment dies 2 years ago, I just had to have them, but this is actually the first time that I used it. Does this sound familiar? I left the letters in the dies (Happy & Birthday) so I could add some glue using a glue pen, placed them where I wanted them and then pressed the letters onto my panel using a big round embossing tool. I discovered I could add some extra dimension this way and also better define letters like the 'd' and 'p'. I die cut the 'day' part an extra time so that I could use the 'd' instead of the 'th' to read 'bird day' instead of 'birthday'.

I'm linking my card at:

Penny Black and More - August Anything goes with a stamp

Stamping Sensations - August Anything goes

STAMPlorations color blooms page samples

Hi there! I have been fun practising my Promarker blending skills using the color blooms page sampler that I downloaded for free from the STAMPlorations blog. It's a sample page from the adult colouring book that STAMPlorations has just released.

As I'm posting this, there's another 11 hours left to link up your coloured page to enter for a chance to win a copy of the colouring book.

Hand-drawn roses

Last Sunday, I was determined to do a little more colouring for Kathy's 30 day colouring challenge and I decided to try and doodle a few roses using my black Memento marker. After all, if I can draw penguins (see my post here), I should also be able to draw some simple roses, right? My first attempt did not go so well, but I simply turned my panel over and started again. This time, I was quite pleased with how my roses turned out, so after colouring my blooms using Promarkers and Flexmarkers, I used my panel to create 2 cards.

I first cut out 1 panel using a stitched rectangle die by SSS, which measures 5.25 x 4 inch and adjusted the size of my base card to match. I cut the panel into 2 parts using 2 more SSS dies from the Stitched slopes and hills set (1 to cut and 1 to stitch) and also cut a black mat using the same die.

For my first card, I cut my sentiment from my panel using a Hello die by Wplus9 and then cut it 3 more times from black cs so that I could add some dimension. 

I'm linking my card at:

Less is More - 286/287 Use something tactile

Passion for Promarkers - 357 My favourite things (stitched dies, word dies, inlaid die cutting)

SSS Wednesday - Fabulous florals

AAA Cards - 70 Stitching

For my second card, I matted my panel using back cs and then stamped a sentiment at the top using a stamp by Clearly Besotted and black Archival ink.

I'm linking up this card at 

Bunny Zoe's Summer Florals challenge

Below are a few more pictures showing the process: