FOIL EMBOSSED HEART

This is a piece of thick cardboard with a thick die-cut heart .  stuck on top.  The whole thing is then wrapped in aluminium cooking foil, working gently around the heart so that the shape stands out clearly.  You could tape or glue it at the back of the card but if you fold it carefully it will generally stay in place long enough to secure it to your eventual background.  Next paint over the whole thing with acrylic paint, and while it is still wet, wipe the heart so that some of the original aluminium foil can be seen. You can try it with different coloured paints and different coloured foils (some supermarkets sell these now), and of course the shape doesn't have to be a heart.  The panel can be used "as is" or further decorated, before being used as a card, in a scrapbook or as an ATC.

HANDMADE PAPER BACKGROUND

This is a nice simple background technique that I stumbled upon by accident.  Apply a lot of glue stick to a soft handmade paper (in this case the green) and apply it to a similar paper in another colour (white).  Run the whole lot through an embossing machine (I used my trusty Cuttlebug) while the glue is still wet and the papers will meld together, and appear as one, rather than two layers.  I have just ripped the green paper into strips which works quite well as the torn edges assist the bonding.

COLOURING WITH WATER-BASED PENS

This is a Crafts Too embossing folder coloured with Tombow pens - only a few colours and a lot of blending pen.  Colouring is still not my strong point but I think I might practise a bit more with water-based markers as I've seen some really good results.  I'm quite keen to try colouring some photos as I've had a little play and found they seem to work quite well for this as well.

STAMPING WITH CORKS

Another simple background technique this week....and one you may well have tried as a little person.  As is sometimes the case, this looks more effective in reality that in the photo, as the metallic ink and embossing lose some of their shine "in translation".  The technique is simply to use cork as a stamp.  In this example I've used white and gold acrylic paint, and then added some round gold stamps.  Ink would give a more even result.  The edge of the circle has been rubbed roughlyy with versamark and then heat embossed with gold  powder.  the stamp on the red circle is also embossed.

STAMP PAD BACKGOUNDS

At this time of year there is no time for complicated techniques so this is about as simple as it can be.  I've just punched out some squares from textured card, pressed a little square pink stamp pad lightly onto the middle (not really trying to get the edges to print).  After a couple of moments drying time I've overstamped with little motifs, using black inks.

Use one to decorate a gift card, three for a standard "rectangular" card and all four for a square card.

STAMPING ON AIR DRY CLAY

I'm cheating again on the "new technique" front as I made this box top literally years ago.  The photo doesn't really do it justice so you'll have to take my word for it still looking as bright as the day it was made.  I've just stamped into DAS air-drying clay with a stamp (unfortunately I can't remember the brand but am happy to credit it if anyone does know).  I've then coloured in with a variety of Gel pens, edged with black permanent pen and added lots of glitter glue.  I can't remember what I used to attach it to the little paper mache box, (which is covered with handmade paper) but after more than six years its still attached!!

RUB-ONS ON SHELL

I have more than my share of moments when I buy something that I'm quite sure will come in useful one day, but don't quite know when that day will come.  As a consequence I have far too much "stuff".  Every now and then, I feel compelled to do a bit of sorting with "use it or lose it" in mind.  It never lasts very long but usually I end up giving one or two things away and actually using a couple of other things, before my attention span is exhausted and the rest of the craft room is safe for the next few months.
The orange shell disc in the middle of this card was one of a bag of six I bought thinking that perhaps I could make something in the jewelry line (its intended purpose) but in over two years nothing has sprung to mind.  I also have lots of little ends of ribbon that never seem to be quite long enough to use.  Add into the mix my rather sad rub-on collection, which I foolishly stored in a warm place with a couple of large books on top hence a sticky mainly unusable stack which I still haven't thrown out.
As you can see, I combined all of these elements, and sat them on top of a teabag motif made with pages from the book I mentioned last week,  I then mounted it onto some decorative paper, then onto a card and well....the result is slightly unusual but OK.  Plus of course, I can feel slightly smug about finally using some of my more obscure craft room "treasures".  The teabag fold is a variation of my favourite kite shape in which one side is opened and secured under the folded side of the next shape.  As this blog is supposed to show a different technique each week, I'll go with  " Rub-ons on shell" as the title!

ROLLED ROSE

I am one of the least likely people you would ever find to rip up a book however.......this one was well and truly falling apart, it was a cheap paperback AND I already had another copy so....I made an exception and now have a couple of hundred nice vintage printed pages to play with.  These little rolled flowers are everywhere at the moment.  You can buy dies to cut them but I prefer the roughly torn version, as shown in the picture.  For those that haven't tried these before: Start by tearing a roughly circular shape (don't be too upset if its not exact, that's the whole idea).  Beginning at the outside tear in a spiral shape towards the middle, being deliberately "wavy" and leaving a small area in the middle as a base.  Now start rolling from the outside until you get to the base, allow the rolled shape to "relax" a little, then glue it to the base.  If you're using light paper like this then double sided tape will do, otherwise use something like Pritt glue or a hot glue gun.  If the flower still looks a little tight, you can gently bend out the petals.

HEAT EMBOSSED INK JET PRINTING .......OR NOT!

Tempted as I am to pretend that everything I try always turns out beautifully, I have to be honest and say that quite often it doesn't.  Not that I mind too much.....its all part of the process.  this is an example of something I really want to be able to do, but just haven't quite managed to master - heat embossing ink-jet printing.  I have seen lots of references in magazines etc. to other folk that have clearly had more success than me, and suspect it may have something to do with paper branding and/or weight.  In this example, I printed out the word "July" on gloss photo paper (as advised by one article), applied copper embossing powder and was happy to see it melting as it should when the top coating of the paper swelled up like a piece of bubblegum (quite impressive), and popped (also kind of funny), leaving the end result rather sad and sorry.  Perhaps if someone out there has tried this with greater success, they might like to offer advice.  Otherwise, I'll keep working on it when time allows until I get it right!!

GIFT CARD SET

I wanted to make a little gift card set for a demo I did some time ago, but didn't want to spend a week of evenings making it, so I came up with this set.  I started with the envelopes as its always easier to make a card to fit an envelope than try to find an envelope to suit an unusually-sized card.  As luck would have it I also found a pre-made box which was just the right size.  The base cards were made of  Bazzill as was the background. the squares were punched from two sorts of Kaiser patterns using my 35mm square hole punch, and the motif was finished with a little red Kaiser pearl.  The whole lot were put together in a sort of "assembly line" once all the squares were folded.  The whole production only took a couple of hours, including the decoration of the box, and I'm quite pleased with the result.

PLAYING WITH PENCILS

ORIGINAL SCAN

PATTERN FILL

2CM SQUARE 

PALETTE KNIFE

STAINED GLASS

I was looking at these pencils lying on the desk and decided to scan them rather than colour in an image as planned (I'm easily sidetracked).  For folks who aren't overly familiar with elements I just thought I'd do a couple of samples of background papers with the result.  If you want to have a try.......Scan something from your craft room.  Remove the background using the magic want tool (using a black paper behind the scanned objects would have made this easier).  Edit the image to 2cm x 2cm then define as a brush (under "Edit").  Open a new A6 document then use pattern fill to "fill in" with your new pencil pattern.  You can then play around with the filters to gain different effects.  In addition to the ones I've included try Bas relief for an "industrial" effect and camera distortion for a nice smudgy look!.

ORIGAMI BOXES

I've fiddled around with origami since I was about 8 (which was a very long time ago) and was delighted to come across a site (www.origami-instructions.com) that had quite a few models I hadn't encountered before. These boxes are both pretty, and practical for holding those little bits and pieces like paperclips and split pins etc.  There were instructions for lots of different folded flowers too (which I'll be trying as soon as I have some spare time) and lots of other fun things.

TUNNEL 3D

This technique was inspired by the little piece of Kaiser paper at the bottom.  I began with a white card with a circle cut-out then mounted a piece of red lightweight card with an extra-large star cut out with a hole punch behind it, using double-sided foam tape to add dimension.  a yellow layer with a circular cut out was added in the same way.  This was repeated using smaller punches, and finally the scrapbook paper with the yellow star on the red circle was mounted under a final red star cut out.
To make this fairly thick 3d fit into a regular aperture card, second fold lines need to be scored a few mm away from the existing ones to make a thin "box" enclosure.
This will work with any shapes as long as you have punches or dies in several sizes.

PEN ON EMBOSSED DIE CUT

I've combined a few leftovers from previous posts in this little ATC sized card - the left side is printed with paint on hessian, the leaf is a crayon rubbing from an actual leaf and the middle of the paper flower is a stamp pressed into paper clay.  The "new" technique is a bit of a no-brainer but I honestly haven't bothered to do it before.  The scrabble tile letters are from a set of Spellbinders dies by Donna Salazar.  I wanted a very distinctly black colour on the letters so instead of chalking or inking the embossing I just coloured them with a fine black pen whilst they were still in the die with exactly the result I wanted.  I'm going to try some more with a permanant pen on an ivory card and then add a thin layer of dimensional magic - hopefully to achieve the effect of a real scrabble tile.
As I was using left-overs, the colours were a bit um....yes, well......, so after I scanned the card I converted it to black and white and the "colourised it" with Elements.

EMBOSSED FAN

Another result of playing with embossing powders is my post for this week.  This fan stamp is from Rubbadubbadoo and is another example of why the simplest stamps are often the most useful.  It can be dressed up in all sorts of ways.  I've used Kaiser paper to "fill" every second panel, then "coloured" the in-between panels with Versamark and added copper embossing powder before setting with my heat gun.  I applied a little heat after each application to hold it in place, before heating all over when all of the embossing powder was in place to melt it properly.  I wanted to avoid over-heating any of the sections.
The supports (actually I don't know what the long skinny bits are called but this will do) were coloured with a gold pen.
Finally I cut out the "in-between" bits at the bottom.  I'd like to experiment a bit more with colouring using embossing powders so there may be some multi-coloured efforts coming up in the future.