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A Charming Patina

December 19, 2012 By 2 Comments

We have had a lot of cool new products on the website lately and I have been a little bit like a kid in a sweet shop.  One of the recent additions was the Vintaj Patina kits and I need to go public and state that I am officially in love with them.  I was so impressed with the gold and silver that I decided to get the colours in.  I have used them on metal charms, but did you know that they can be used to create a resist too?  Here’s some charms that I painted and you can see there’s a range of finishes from the slick shiny black of the top hat to the chalky verdigris finish on the filigree embellishment.

All these charms started out as plain brass or metal – click on the image to see an enlarged version.  As you know we also now have the Dylusions sprays on the website and I used a mixture of the patinas and Dylusions on the block behind the charms which was painted first with crackle paint.

I still haven’t fully explored the possibilities with these Patinas, but I love what I’ve seen so far.  They clean up with water and mix with water based products and a little goes a long way.  They contain a little ball and need shaken up before use like a lot of metallic products do and they come in the same type of bottle as the Ranger alcohol inks which means they have a fine tip, but they are liquid so don’t hold a rigid shape if you ‘draw’ with the bottle.

They are waterproof when dry and this means you can paint with them, then add a wash of colour over the top and your patina will stay put creating a resist type look.  I only know that from the scrap paper under my work when painting these charms, I haven’t actually put that little nugget of information to a creative use – yet!  (I’m thinking cut’n'dry and stencils …)

I’m starting to sort through my craft stuff ready to pack away and I’m building three piles.  The ‘definite keep’ pile, the ‘stuff to get rid of’ pile and there’s a third one evolving, which is ‘stuff I want to keep, but not pack up in the hope I’ll get time to play with it over the holidays’ pile .

Guess which pile is biggest (hint, it contains the Vintaj Patinas)!

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A week of Christmas Inspiration – Day 4

December 6, 2012 By 9 Comments

I want to start by saying thank you all for the encouraging comments – I haven’t been blogging as much as I used to and it’s doing me good to get back in the groove – I just love inspiring people!  I know some people struggled yesterday to leave a comment and I noticed that the blog was painfully slow myself.  Not sure why, but I’m hoping that it was a temporary glitch.

Todays card began life as a large tag, but I trimmed a tiny bit off the top to turn it into the background layer for this card.  The tag was coloured using Distress inks and Cut’n'Dry foam – Tumbled Glass at the bottom, Antique Linen in the middle and if I remember rightly Tea Dye at the top.  Might be Tattered Rose … I did the background a while ago.

I then used the same inkpads to stamp the word Joy (from Steampunk Christmas) repeatedly down the card and rubbed a little Vintage Photo ink around the edges.  I then embossed the snowflake tree (also from Steampunk Christmas) in white at the bottom.

What you can’t really see now is that I also took a Versamark pen and drew a hill for the tree to stand on which I embossed in Sparkling Snow WOW embossing powder.  That is mostly covered up now by the chipboard town shape.  I also added my favourite Stardust Stickles to the centre of the snowflakes on the tree.

Winter Town laser cut chipboard

The chipboard shape is from a Magenta laser cut set called Winter Town.  I almost discontinued this product after we had them sitting on the shelf all year doing nothing – then I thought I would just have a little play and they’re charming so I’ve brought it back from the brink.

I used Chipped Sapphire Distress Stain to colour the chipboard then left it to dry thoroughly before patting a Versamark inkpad all over.  I embossed it with a sparkly powder – I think it was Clear Hologram Sparkle because I have that one in a large tub which makes it convenient to just drop in shapes like this.

After cooling, I used a sponge to add a little versamark to the top and embossed again with Sparkling Snow.  If I make some more cards with the rest of the shapes, I will probably add a snowy hill that shows up behind the town.

I finished off with a sentiment from Warm Christmas Greetings stamped in Versafine.  The whole thing is mounted onto a slimline copper pearl card – I’m back to that copper and blue combination again aren’t I?!

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X does not mark the spot

June 26, 2012 By 8 Comments

Did you ever draw a pirate map when you were a kid?

I was transported back to childhood doing this project and thoroughly enjoyed it.  When I was a kid my favourite books were the ones with a map of a mythical world in the front of the book.  You knew it was going to be a good story if they started out with an unfamiliar map full of strange place names, hinting at adventures to come.

I started by stamping the quote on a mottled parchment paper and then masked off the edges of the paper and stamped various travel words from the Steampunk Travel and Steampunkery sets with Adirondack Pesto ink.  I took the mask off and drew a sketchy border around the masked area then carefully covered over the quote and splashed the stamped words with water.  Adirondack dye ink bleeds when wet, so the words became blurred and patchy.  It needed to look more worn so I decided to add some distress inks and set to with Bundled Sage, Old Paper and Antique Linen – all pretty subtle colours.  I may have added a hint of Brushed Corduroy as well.

I distressed the edges and crumpled the paper around the border before adding stronger colours and water.  While wet, I rubbed a Rusty Hinge distress pad over the creases and misted with more water then when that was dry, I flicked droplets of Distress Stain and water over it quite liberally.

This evolved over several evenings as I kept putting it aside to dry and coming back to it.  I began to pick out splodges and draw round them with a fine liner to create islands.  I used Copic markers to add a  blue line around the outside edge of each island and an ochre tone to the inside edge of each island.   I used Copics as a water based marker of any kind would have blended the Distress colours on the paper more, but Copics or Promarkers won’t move water soluble pigments around.  Some of the larger ones got some little mountains on them too, then I came up with the idea of a sea monster.

I dug out an old stamp set – Here be Dragons – and applied a little masking tape before stamping him (I practised on scrap paper first to get it right).  I then drew in little waves around the masked line and coloured him in lightly with pencils.  I think he makes quite a convincing sea monster.

This is a treasure map, but you won’t find an X on it anywhere.  The real treasure is in the words – a super quote from Steampunk Travel by Mark Twain (hence the American spelling).  It’s got me inspired to create another map with place names on it now – Embellishment Bay, Bling City, Distressville … hmmm, I can see lots of potential here…  So what would the treasure on your map be?

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Eastern Grasses meets RISSP

June 14, 2012 By 8 Comments

I try to avoid acronyms on the blog, but it’s going to get very tedious to type out Ranger Inkssentials Speciality Stamping Paper all the time, so I shall refer to it as RISSP!

This is a small card (12.5cm square) from my play session using Adirondack Wild Plum and Pesto dye inkpads with stamps from Eastern Grasses.  I stamped with the two colours, then added some random sponging using the same colours and after trimming and rounding the corners, I edged it with the Pesto ink.

The backing paper is from the Meadow Lark Prima paper pad and I used a spellbinders fancy die to cut the mat from white pearlescent card.  I added tiny lilac pearls around the die cut and larger ones on the pink ribbon.  I’m not normally an obsessive type, but I am fussy about pearls and gems.  These are the type that come as strips, where the line of pearls is mounted onto a clear adhesive strip.  I always cut them up and snip any bits of the adhesive strip off that are showing as I really don’t like that showing on the card.

I can see the RISSP being useful for creating a quick stamped card when you’re in a hurry.  The sentiment has come out very clear, so I can see how it would be very useful just for that.  I have a box with stamped sentiments in, ready for die cutting or trimming.  In general they tend to be in neutral colours (Brilliance Lightning Black is one of my favourites for sentiments), but sometimes I like the sentiment to be a bolder colour.

The next experiment will be with Versamark to see if it gives a good resist.  Watch this space!


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Steampunkery Airship – a review of Inkssentials Speciality Stamping Paper

June 12, 2012 By 10 Comments

This card was my first experiment with the Ranger Inkssentials Speciality Stamping paper.  My first thought was that it seems quite similar to the Clarity card, though it is more matte.  It has a satin sheen and is highly compressed and polished so has almost no absorbency.  It’s not my favourite type of stock to work on, but I wanted to try out the Distress Markers on it.

I stamped the airship with Ranger Archival black and painted the sky with Tumbled Glass Distress Stain.  I put the stain on an acrylic block and added water.  The card is very unabsorbent, but it does grab ink so it was quite challenging to get the colour evenly spread around, though it doesn’t really matter too much if the sky is a bit patchy.  I faded the blue out as I worked it down the card.

I experimented with the markers and found that if you draw a line onto the card, then try to spread out the colour with water it will leech a little colour, but leave a hard edge as the dye really is held fast by this card.  I coloured the airship by scribbling the markers onto the acrylic block using them to watercolour the image.  The pink on the balloon is Aged Mahogany – it comes out much paler doing it this way.

Once the airship was coloured, I decided to be brave and drew in the  hills at the bottom with Crushed Olive and Peeled Paint markers.  I saturated each hill with the marker then went over with a wet paintbrush.  That worked quite well as there was more ink on the card to move around.  It’s still very patchy, but I knew I’d be stamping over it.  For the sea I used a copic marker to get a brighter blue.

I stamped various trees and grasses from the Teeny Weeny Meadow stamp set using a mix of Adirondack dye inks and finished off with a tree using black archival ink.  The tree sits on a grassy mound, so I inked up just the grass and turned the stamp upside down and stamped a couple of times to extend the hill that the tree is sitting on.

I then sponged some Walnut Stain Distress ink around the stamped panel and even that behaved differently to what I’d find on ‘normal’ card.  Again, the speciality card grabs the ink , so where I would normally be able to rub and blend the ink, I found it made a quite messy edge – not a problem for this style of card, but difficult to get a smooth blend.

The stamped panel sits on a piece of kraft resist card which I coloured with Distress inks.  I added some photo turns and a piece of twill to finish it off.

So, my initial findings on the speciality stamping card:

  • grabs hold of ink immediately
  • stamps very clearly with dye inks – particularly crisp with archival ink
  • dries back slightly paler than shows when wet
  • difficult to create an even tone with watercolour
  • cockles slightly when saturated, but dries back flat
  • difficult to dry blend inks
  • once absorbed, dye ink cannot be ‘lifted’ with water, but will bleed a little

I had a very quick go with a Kaleidacolor pad and the brayer and it blended very nicely.

Once dry, I put a stencil over it and spritzed through a home made distress re-inker mist and it gave a great result.  The wet ink started to bleed the background (Kaleidacolor ink is not waterproof so will bleed when wet) and lightened the stencilled areas.  That then gave me the idea to try water, and I loved the results of misting with water and blotting off.  It dried back completely smooth so it looks like a resist technique or faux batik.  So a couple more things to add to the list:

  • brayers nicely, but not quite as smooth as glossy card (may do with more practice)
  • water will blot colour off a brayered background
  • spray inks over a mask or stencil give a crisp result if not too wet

Overall, I still prefer working on uncoated card when colouring an image, but I did like the brayered background and want to play a bit more with that and water.   There’s something about this type of card that I find a little bit teeth-curling and squeaky, but that’s just my personal taste.  It does give a fantastically crisp stamped image at the end of the day.

If you’ve tried it yourself, I’d love to know what you think of it.

 

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Spring Distress Inks

May 10, 2012 By 12 Comments

I managed to get a very quick bit of playtime with the new Spring Distress inkpads.  I used all three colours and I do like the palette.  I started by inking the top with squeezed lemonade and the bottom with shaded lilac, then I stamped a couple of different lace stamps top and bottom with peacock feathers and the bottom two corners with the corner stamps from Lace Fragments.  I misted the top with quite a bit of water and let the colour bleed and run down the tag.  I misted the bottom a bit too, but not as much.  After drying with a heat tool, I flicked a little clean water over and blotted it off.

I then stamped the phrase from Artistic Affirmations about three or four times over the background using squeezed lemonade and added a little more shaded lilac at the bottom.  The lilac stamped corners were a bit faded out by this point, so I added another lace border in shaded lilac.  I then stamped the words and border swirls with Onyx Black Versafine and added a piece of decorated Stampbord.

I can see the lilac and lemonade combination would work really well with our Elegant Iris stamp set – definitely Spring like.  I just wish the weather was!

PS – I’ve been tweaking a few bits and pieces around the blog – menus at the top, side bar content and a little slide show thingy at the top of the main page.  You’ll now find a list of links in the side bar, and in the menu bar right at the very top, there are now links to Cards, Mixed Media and Video which show you blog posts from those categories – like little galleries.  It’s a constant work in progress, but I feel like it’s a bit more organised now – hope you like it!

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