Saturday, August 18, 2018

ALCOHOL INK SHIMMER FOIL

As if alcohol ink on Yupo paper isn't amazing enough, when you add foil, it takes it to another whole dimension!  You may have discovered yourself that sometimes the alcohol ink is still tacky on your Yupo for a while after spreading the inks around, this means it's perfect for transferring foil onto the tacky spots.  There is a "sweet spot" where the ink is tacky but not too wet and before it totally dries so no foil will stick.  I find it's about 1-1/2 minutes.  But this will depend on what colours of inks you use (weird I know but reds seem to stay tackier for longer) and also how much Blending Solution you use in the ratio to inks.  Blending Solution I found works better for this technique than just isopropyl alcohol but if you don't have Blending Solution or even if your inks have dried and no foil is sticking, you can always resort to the Zig fine tip two-way glue pen.  This is how I've added the gold foil lines in the very first example below as it had dried beyond where the foil would stick.  

"Fat crying"...

"Sparkle"...

"Dead leaves"...

"Life update"...

"Classy AF"...
(sorry, not sorry if it offends 😏)

Tuesday, August 7, 2018

BABY WIPE STAMPING

Baby Wipe Stamping is a technique that has been around forever and it's a great way to utilize those re-inkers that tend to just sit in their box gathering dust.  It's simply a matter of adding a few drops of 3 or so different coloured re-inker onto a folded baby wipe and then stamping onto it.  A nice effect without the cost of having those multi-coloured inked pads and the added bonus of you can choose whatever colours you want to put together!  With the addition of some other focal stamps that you can colour, or by adding some die-cut shapes, it makes for a nice change to plain old boring black stamping.  To keep continuity between all of your elements, I try to repeat the colours that have already been used in your multi-coloured stamping to help tie it all together.  This is most evident in the colours I've used to colour in the girl and her clothes on "Reality".

"Balance"...
(Die-cut bird shapes have been slightly raised with
black foam tape but the branch has been stapled
on with black staples so you can't see them.  Both birds
and rocks down the bottom have been coloured with
Wink of Stella glitter brush pens, very subtle touch of shimmer.)

"Reality"...
(I stamped the bugs with the baby-wipe stamping method
and then drew around the shapes with an extra-fine sharpie.) 

"Depth of Life"...
(The steampunk dragonfly has been cut from black card
stock, then embossed with 2 different colours of black
UTEE mixed with Perfect Pearl Powders that makes
a gorgeous extra-thick embossing powder with shine.
The German Scrap down the bottom was also coated with
the gold UTEE mixture.)

"Melancholy"...
(I love how gorgeous this stamp looks using this technique!
The seam binding tape was coloured using co-ordinating
colours from the Distress Ink range and then stapled on.
See the little dotty specks on the card?  If you put your stamp
back down over your stamped image when it's dry, you can
then flick some watered down ink in the same colours as your
stamped image and the stamp will protect your image.)

"Karma"...
(Spiderweb stamped with Barn Door/Hickory Smoke/Spiced Marmalade.
Die-cut spider cut from black cardstock then coated with a mix of Black 
Utee and Pewter Perfect Pearl.  I stopped heating it before it was all totally
melted to get that gritty texture that's happening on the spider's back).