STAMPED PAPER CLAY

Paperclay is a good medium for adding large components to cards as its very light so even little cards like this won't overbalance.  It air dries as well.  I've made this gift card from corrugated.  The edges are inked with silver and a couple of strands of silver thread are wrapped around as a border.  The greeting is a cuttlebug die.  The button is paper clay, rolled flat and cut out with a biscuit cutter, then stamped with black ink, using a stamp from Abi's Crafts.

FLOWERSOFT WATTLE

The wattle was out in July, when I made this little panel......The Kaiser stamp really has nothing to do with wattle but I wanted to do a post with Flowersoft and the only colour open was bright yellow............but it looks OK.  I added a bit of Dimensional Magic to highlight the bird.

VERY EASY PAINTED BACKGROUND

Two postings in one day!  I was asked to put this background up after the recent demo I did.  So here it is!!

Its a super easy one - I wanted some background paper on which to mount my pictures of the Pilbara, and so just blobbed some silver, gold and copper straight onto light card (directly from the tube of acrylic paint), and spread it with a brush so that areas blended and the whole page was covered.

For something that took two minutes it turned out exactly as I had hoped, and I'll be making some more.

I scanned it and used it to make up a title too.  (Just open another layer over the top of the scanned painted paper, type in your title, select it using the magic wand tool, then cut out the selection to reveal the painted "filling" underneath before collapsing the layers.

LEAF RUBBINGS

Original Leaf Rubbings

"Stamp"

Color Burn, Diffuse Glow

I thought I'd do a couple of leaf rubbings for this week's blogpost....so I did.  Unfortunately, as you can see from the picture, the results were a bit "ordinary".  I scanned them anyway, and had a little play, and am pleased to show you the results of the application of a couple of the filters in Photoshop Elements.  The original rubbings were just made with crayons onto thick paper but the results with the filters have made me think of all sorts of other ways in which this technique could be adapted for my digital pictures............

OVERSTAMPING

I'm doing a demo for work that involves ATC styled cards and made this one for that reason.  Its about as simple as you can get in this regard.  All the stamps came from a Stamp-It uncut sheet, and the technique was just to stamp them, each on top of the other, using a different colour of ink for each.  I did have to experiment a bit to get the colours in an order that I liked but all in all its a very quick technique that looks a lot better than I had anticipated i.e. I plan to do this more often.  The word "Free" was made with Kaiser alphabet stickers - I didn't have any that looked quite right so I just smeared some black ink over some cream ones.  As mentioned, I was doing this for a reason, and I think if I was just making something for myself I'd probably substitute a stamped word for the stickers

PAINT AND PRINT BACKGROUND

Hessian Print

Onion Bag Print

I've been printing with paint......nothing too difficult, basically just painting on some Kaiser acrylic paint straight from the tube and then pressing the object onto some light card.  The green sample is hessian, the red print was made with an onion bag.  Both were a bit hard to press down on "as is" so I covered the painted item with a piece of scrap card and lightly brayered over the top to apply the pressure to print.  The rose stamp is from Rubbadubbadoo and was stamped with Staz On onto acetate.  The image was then coloured in with a red Sharpie pen.

COVERED NOTEBOOK

Its a bit of a cheat to call this a technique, but I was pleased with the results of covering this discount store notebook with some lovely patterned paper, and so thought I'd share.  The blue is Bazzill, and the black strip is ribbon, which also doubles as a bookmark.  A few black adhesive pearls were used to finish.

BARGELLO BACKGROUND

Even although I've labelled this as a background, I think it could stand alone as a card topper.  Its the paper version of a well-known quilting technique and I've seen it in all sorts of other places so I make no claim to originality here.  I do, however, think its a great way to use up scraps of paper.  having said that I think I'll spend a bit longer chosing colours when I use it for a "real" project rather than just as a try-out technique for this blog, as I'm not totally convinced that these ones go particularly well together.
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LEAF PRINT

A very long time ago when I lived in PNG I made a little wall-hanging quilt from leaf prints from the garden.  I used fabric paint on calico, and did a few trial runs on paper first.  I found this one when I was sorting through some stuff in the craft room.  I think it might be a taro leaf, but so much time has passed I'm not sure.  I do know that lacking any equipment to speak of at the time, I just painted onto the leaf and pressed it with my hand onto the paper/calico.  I have scanned it for this example and turned it into a "pretend card" i.e. made on the computer.  I had rather forgotten about this very simple technique but think its time to rediscover it.  It would be a good way to embellish garden-themed scrapbook pages.

CUT UP YOUR STAMPS

I needed some words to go on this little panel  but couldn't find quite the right thing.  I saw a Kaiser (and no I don't work for them.....its just that they make some good stuff at a reasonable price so its a bit over-represented in my craft room) stamp that was almost right.  It had a religious text that was inappropriate for how I wanted to use this card, and in any case, it wouldn't have fitted in the small space with extra words.  A few snips with the scissors later and I had just what I needed.  Acrylic stamps (I have just found out) cut really easily, and if you need them as they were they can be somewhat reassembled on a clear block.  I'm now revisiting some of the unused text stamps from other sets I own to see how they can be made useful.  After all....."All things are possible".

MARKER PENS AND GESSO



I quite like the look of coloured embossed backgrounds, but these ones (a Cuttlebug folder  and a Couture Creations design), initially coloured with some cheap marker pens were a bit too bright for my liking.  Also some of the areas where I'd overcoloured the pen stood out from the rest.  A thinnish layer of white gesso saved them from the bin. It toned the colours down nicely and disguised the "dodgy" bits.  Unfortunately as I didn't think this would work very well I didn't do a "before and after" scan for comparison, so you'll have to take my word for it!  All in all a technique I'll use again - maybe even deliberately next time!!

KITE-FOLD CARDS

 The kite-fold is one of the easiest tea-bag/kaleidoscope folds.  Just turn a square on end and bend the sides in to meet in the middle.  Eight of them make a circle.  I was just using up some of my Kaiser paper left-overs when it struck me how much the choice of colour and pattern affected the end result of what is esentially three examples of the "same" card. 

I like the look of the split pin in the middle but if your middle is a bit messy, it doubles as a great disguise.

LEMON JUICE EMBOSSING

The picture doesn't really do justice to the results of this technique. All you need to do is rub a cut lemon over one side of your embossing folder. Emboss a fairly sturdy piece of paper or card (neutrals work best) and then apply heat with you papercrafting heatgun.

It will take some time, but eventually the lemon will start to burn and go brown. (It goes without saying that you need to be careful not to set the paper on fire!)

Soon the paper takes on a nice "aged" appearance - great for vintage effects or fun projects E.g. pirate treasure maps!

This is a variation of the old "secret writing" some of us used to do as kids. I can't see why it wouldn't work with stamps but I might leave that for another post.

SEWING ON STICKERS

There are lots of different ways to add stitching to cards and scrapbook pages.  This is a super simple one, as this bag sticker comes with pre-marked patterns.The stickers are transparent so you can chose your background.  A plain colour is probably a good choice if you want the sewing to show up.  I've cheated and made a digital "sticker" for the "Happy Birthday" greeting, and have used a silvery rainbow metallic thread to complete the design.

FINGERPRINT BIRDS

There's no reason little people should have all the fun!  There are endless critters and suchlike that can be created from finger prints!  I've made a couple of birds but you could try making the prints into petals, or add a tail and a couple of ears to make a mouse etc etc etc.  I've picked up a bit of paint on my index finger from the background whilst its still wet (underneath the eventual position of the white panel so it won't show) to make the print.

The background is just a combination of green, gold and white paint dabbed fairly randomly onto a piece of black card with a stiff brush for a faux marble effect.