Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Christmas ATC's

The last class of the year we generally do some Christmas ATC's.  This year that's all I've done!  I have half a page of quotes that I have collected with a Christmas theme so all of the girls will have something witty (and some naughty ones too!) to use on their atc's.  The background is a simple one using Distress Ink Pads and Embossing Folders.  I love the cat and dog cubes from Stampotique stamps!

I hope everyone has a wonderful Festive Season and see you in 2017!

"Ornaments"... 

"Fleas Navidog"... (these words come as a stamp 
from the Stampotique website!)

"Ho Ho Ho"...

"On Dasher"...

These next two are from the Chalkboard & Alcohol Class.
 "Mood Swing"...

"Nightmare"...

Finally, this is one from the last class Shimmering Alcohol.
"FURniture"...

Thursday, November 17, 2016

SHIMMERING ALCOHOL

We'll be using alcohol inks once again in this class and one of the girls (thanks Jenny Jongste!) showed me her rubber puffer thing to blow the alcohol inks around instead of having to buy and use the pressurised cans of air.  These little puffer things are used for cleaning out cameras and keyboards etc and are really cheap through ebay!  They look a little like a light bulb but have a really fine nozzle on one end so when you squeeze the rubber bulb, a short sharp blast of air comes out.  Great tool!!!
So it creates these gorgeous backgrounds with the alcohol inks but on a base of silver ink and pearl white to start with, it gives the whole card a real shimmer to it, which of course you can't see on the computer screen.  You'll just have to try it for yourself.  Most people get the joke that's on the Sodium card, do you?  

"Sodium"...

"Keep still slave"... (loved the new feral kitty
stamp cube from Stampotique... it goes
perfectly with the doggy cube)

"Another world"...

So these 4 are just the backgrounds unadorned and they are in the same order as the above 3 pictures.  The last one with just the blues is incomplete as an atc so it will be on my next update.





Tuesday, November 1, 2016

CHALKBOARD & ALCOHOL

This technique is one I read about in a book about alcohol inks & yupo.  It's using a different surface for the alcohol inks to work on - chalkboard contact paper.  Like the technique where we worked on the corrugated card that had been painted black, you need to apply a white alcohol ink before applying the colours of alcohol ink as the white allows the colours to show up.  A similar technique I've used before is applying gesso over foil tape before applying alcohol inks, particularly the lighter colours of inks as the white base makes the colours pop much brighter than on just the plain foil.  The 5 samples down the bottom are the atc sized pieces without any adornment on them so you can see how the colours actually are.   Sometimes it can be quite difficult working on atc sized pieces of work for some techniques, but you just have to learn to scale everything back, in this case, the amount of product you use.... less is best!

"Wild"...

"Tangled"...

"Eyebrows"...

"Planet B"

Planet B sample.

Eyebrows sample

This is one I haven't turned into an atc yet... love the colours though!

Tangled sample

Wild sample