DOTTED WATERCOLOUR TISSUE

 I love the effect of wrinkled tissue paper with any type of liquid colourant. For these samples, I used watercolours (Daniel Smith) but you could easily use Distress Re-inkers, Distress Sprays or any other type of liquid watercolour. The main thing is to not have anything too opaque as the translucency of the watercolours and the re-inkers and sprays I mentioned is that they are see-through enough for the little metallic dots that are already on this tissue paper to still show through in all their metallic glory.  It's much easier to use a paintbrush to get the colours to move if they are already in a liquid state which is why I wouldn't use watercolour pencils, markers or anything that needs to be put on first and then activated with water as the tissue is still pretty delicate and you risk tearing it. Stick with a liquid to start with and it's easy to get wonderful backgrounds.

"Apothecary"


"I create my reality"

"What the flock?"

"Not your job"

"AH! The element of surprise"
(I loved this little cat/bird die so much I had to
do one for my book and one as a raffle give-away.)

"Don't care"

Shrink Plastic & Steampunk!

This morning is the final Shrink Plastic atc class at Scraptivate that I'll be teaching in this fortnight's series of classes. So here are the last few SP atc's....for a little while at least. Though SP will show up in future atc's as it's such a great little embellishment for atc's as well as cards!

Here's the raffle atc that was won by Karen Beazley on Tuesday night.

"Double"... (stamp by Teesha Moore - Zettiology - same stamp I used on a previous SP atc)

These next 2 are earlier atc's featuring SP. The first one is stamped onto almond coloured SP, which I find wonderful for any face stamps as the colour is perfect for a light skin tone.

"Love Hate"... (yes, I know the "E" is backwards, first time it was a mistake on the Love but to make you all think I did it on purpose, I just repeated the mistake on Hate! Face stamp from Beeswax)

"Breathe"... (the main image on this piece of SP is not a stamp. I ran the sheet of white SP through my inkjet printer! The ink will never dry though, so you have to very carefully cut it out, then shrink it without getting your fingerprints anywhere near the image and when it's shrunk, the ink is set! Cool huh!!! Make sure the image you print though is extremely light as we all know how much colours intensify on SP!)

Finally, my Steampunk atc on Tissue Paper Background from a previous technique, also including black texture paste (natch!) and some wonderful little metal cogs. There ya go Julie!!! lol

"Steampunk"...

I'm working on something really, REALLY exciting but my lips are sealed for the moment....no, it's not the book. ;-) Stay tuned...

Shrink Plastic Class & Tissue Paper Background...again!

Today I had the first of my 3 Shrink Plastic Classses and I was thrilled to see how many of the ladies had never used this product before. It can be a thoroughly addictive little addition to atc's as quotes and small embellishment stamps created on shrink plastic are the perfect size for your atc's. I tend to use more of the white and frosted (ruff'n'ready) shrink plastic though it is also available in black, brown, clear and almond. Though the almond is tailor-made for any face stamps as the colour is perfect for "skin". Some samples...

"What you see"... (The Vision stamp is Stampers Anonymous, the eye-glasses stamp is one I'm not sure of....may also be Stampers Anonymous???) This shrink piece is mounted onto a piece of coloured gauze, which is in turn mounted onto a piece of foil tape adhered to a chipboard piece. It actually looks very mirror-like, which I thought was appropriate for the quote and stamps used in this piece.

"Live in the moment"... (Quote from one of Tim Holtz unmounted stamp sets - I think it's Nature's Moments)

"No distance"... (Hero Arts Vintage Map stamp - unfortunately discontinued)...PLUS black texture paste around the shrink piece.

"Odd"... (girl stamp on the shrink piece is Teesha Moore Zettiology, staples stamp is Tim Holtz Stampers Anonymous) I must also tell you I bought one of Tim's new Tiny Attachers with the mini staples. You can see that I've used them on this piece below to attach the watercolour background to the black surround. I like to colour them to match what I'm doing....I simply break one of the refill staples in half, then colour the whole thing with a coloured sharpie before inserting it into the stapler. Voila.....coloured staples!!!

Below are a couple more from my previous class on Tissue Paper Background, these are the ones that ended up in my book. For each class I make 2 atc's that go into my Technique Book with the instructions on the opposite page, also 1 atc for each of the classes I teach to be given away as a raffle, as well as some other samples. As I tend to do one-off original atc's rather than multiples, this can be rather time-consuming as I also type out the instructions for everyone so they can all make their own book. It means that in 6 months time (or 2 years!!!) they can dig the Technique Book out, flick through and repeat any technique they have learnt from the my classes and they will also have a couple of their own samples in their book.

"The purpose of life"...

"Closely lie"...I do have one more tissue paper background atc to show but I'll save that for my next post. It's entitled "Steampunk" and is basically black, grey and silver......with little cogs!!! My current favourite atc!!!

Time for some shut-eye....alarm is set for 4am to take Jarred & Elice to the airport for their trip back home to Newcastle. I'm sorry to see them go as it has been wonderful to have them here but they will be back for good in a short 6 months. I'm sure it'll seem like a long time to them....5-1/2 years down, 6 months to go....not too shabby an effort I must say for a boy who left home at 18 and will return home at 24, most certainly a man! Do I hear "engagement" sounds in the background for next year?????

Tissue Paper Background & another card

The tissue paper background that I've been teaching in my current atc classes is proving really popular! The ease of use, non-messiness involved and the fact that it looks so darned great is impressing the girls so much that they are all chattering away about how they're going to use this technique to make cards, more atc's and even scrapbook pages! Here are some more samples.

"Nocturnal" (a favourite one of mine!) Yes Megan...that's Dimensional Magic on the lips! Private joke, when Megan first started in my atc classes her glue of choice was DM! I was horrified, all that shiny gluey stuff that could potentially ooze out and scream "look at me!!!!". One of the things I tell my students is that because atc's are so small, you have to pay particular attention to detail - like colouring the edge of your chipboard pieces AND having no glue showing! lol

"Perfection"...

"Dream"...

Here's a card I made using some of Julie van Oosten's new Collections range - the transparency is new, as are the hearts and wings. I painted the heart with Ranger Picket Fence (white) crackle paint, then a soft metallic pink over the top. I covered one set of wings with paper and dry-brushed white metallic paint over it and the bottom set of wings have just been painted with the white metallic paint. I stitched the transparency to the pink card using a platinum coloured metallic thread - this sure beats having to hide any glue that you may have used and negates the use of brads or eyelets to attach the transparency. A bit of white gauze, some white scallop German Scrap on the inside right of the card and it's a quick, easy and pretty (did I say that???) card.

The very lovely Di O'Cobhthaigh (weirder than my name!!! - pronounced O'Coffee!) presented me with the Renee Award, which I thank her for (you can read about this award on Di's page). I've not been passing awards on of late as quite a few people have gone all "no-awardy", which is their perogative of course. Do yourself a favour though, visit Di's page as she's new to atc's but is doing an outstanding job with them!

On a personal note for my family that read this blog who live overseas, my son Jarred and his girlfriend Elice are home with us for a 2 week holiday. We don't get to see them very often, usually only once a year as Jarred is stationed at Williamtown, an air-force base in Newcastle over East. But by December of this year he will have done his 6 years and will be trying to get a posting back here to Pearce Air Base in Perth. His chances are pretty slim of getting the posting as there is only 1 position available and 20 people have applied for it. Regardless, he'll be back in Perth though as he wants to be home with his family and Elice is also a West Aussie and is missing her relatives as well. It'll be wonderful to have us all together again as we are a pretty tight-knit bunch. I have a birthday coming up in a few weeks and of the 70 people who are coming, 44 are family!

Tissue Paper Background, Cards, Dichroic & other stuff...

My next set of atc classes is on Tissue Paper Background. I teach a few different ways of attaching the tissue paper to the card stock....xyron, jac paper, gesso, gel medium and I also use both black or white tissue paper, as well as dress pattern. The white tissue can be painted over with washes of paint - of course Golden paints work really well as they are so pigment intense and one drop on a brush with some water will give you plenty of coverage on an atc. When I use the black tissue I don't paint it, hmmmm....having said that I just had a brainwave about using interference colours dry-brushed over the black tissue, must try that! I generally use embossing powders on the black tissue as it stands out nicely against the black background.

I've not had a great deal of time to do lots of samples so here's one to start with...Wednesday I'll get more done and include them in the next post. If you have a look at my class list to the right you may notice I've updated it to include more classes. I'm all planned out right through 'til October this year, super-organised in some areas, super-slack in others! hahahaha


"Di-vin-ity"...





With Mother's Day just gone and a cousin's 21st party also on the same day I had reason to make few cards recently. As I've said before, I'm not a card-maker and I say this to myself so I don't have any expectations about how they will turn out....how slack is that! lol These 3 cards were all done using basically the same technique - cuttlebug a piece of chipboard, paint with metallic paints, some embossing on it, then some Treasure Gold or Dazzle Wax wiped on, a few other bits & pieces layered on top and that's it! Simple but effective....for a non-card-maker!


Two Mother's Day cards... (absolutely shocking picture, sorry 'bout that)

Casey's 21st Card...

There's another Mother's Day card I made earlier using Julie's Collections bits & pieces but that's at work and I'll have to remember to take my camera with me to get a shot of it. It's all pale pink and pretty, not really my style but I CAN do pale pink, just don't get along that well with bright, hot pink!

I bought a dichroic pendant recently and loved it so much I bought one for my cousin's 21st as well! Here's a picture of mine.....absolutely beautiful colour in real life....and here's where I bought it from.

On another note....(excuse the pun!), I'm not into reality tv programs but I have made an enormous exception for the last few episodes of American Idol....purely for the chance to catch Adam Lambert on the show! Oh dear.....has this boy affected quite a few grown women or what!!! So Jen, this next atc is for you....no, I mean this IS for you....come to the shop and collect it.....you Adam Whore you!!! This is meant in a non-judgemental, friendly way.....lol....I'm one too!!!

Lastly, here's the last of the Sheer Heaven atc's I made, this was the raffle one.

"Traverse"...

Lastly, lastly...my friend Barb T recently bestowed on me a Kreativ Blogger Award and I thank her very much for that. I've had this one before, (it's the bright pink & green one in the list on the right) so I won't pass it on again but I'd urge you to check out Barb's blog. She may be all isolated in Wagga Wagga, but it certainly doesn't show in her work!

Colourwash Background Technique & help!!!

First off, I have a favour to ask, if any of you know the company that makes the stamp on this first atc, please let me know. Even better, if you have one and you want to sell it, let me know that too! I have a girl in my atc class who is desperate to own it....she'll probably sell you (or at least loan) her first-born she is that enamoured by it! It's a wood mounted one, it's called "Girl with a purse" but it doesn't have a company on the wood so I couldn't tell her where I got it from!

The background on it is the next technique that's coming up in about 9 days time - Colourwash Background Technique. Not saying too much more about it at the moment as you know my girls....they like to practice BEFORE the class and that is simply not allowed! lol I have stamped the image onto gloss and coloured it with Twinkling H2O's before cutting out and attaching to the background. Yeah....I know.....kinda bright for me but as I've said before, I'm a Gemini so I'm allowed to be changeable!

Next one is the same technique....

Now for another Tissue Paper background one from last Saturday's atc class, love the colours in this one!

Last one...this is the raffle atc from Tuesday's class - Canvas Paper Rinse Aid Resist.

Comments are always welcome, even from my friends who I see!!!! hint...hint...hint....lol

more Tissue Paper Background

Here is another of the Tissue Paper Background atc's for today's atc class, black tissue paper again with silver embossing powder. It has more embossing powder on it as I pushed the black tissue paper down too flat, not really incorrect, just more embossing powder on it than I wanted so the next one I did I pressed the tissue paper down more softly. That picture is in the previous post below. Thanks must go to the awesome Michelle Ward for sending me the HIM stamp in a previous package I received from her! I stamped it with white Stazon onto transparency and cut a section out of the tissue paper and stuck the transparency behind so you could see the plain black background of the black mat board my atc's are always mounted on. The heart is stamped onto white shrink plastic, then shrunk and attached, Ruby Treasure Jewels are rubbed around the edge to give the crimson (blood!) colour.

I decided instead of doing more tissue paper atc's, I should be finishing off my 27 atc's for a technique book swap that's due next week. There are 27 of us are taking part in this, so we'll all end up with a fantastic book of atc's, each showcasing a wonderful technique with instructions listed at the back of the book.

I had taken part in another technique book through Stampgropers (a local Western Australian stamp group) and absolutely loved it! This particular technique book lives at Scraptivate where I work and every customer who looks at it just falls in love with it......AND wants to know when I'm teaching the class so they can make their own! Well, if you have a spare couple of MONTHS!!! lol

Anyway....back to the 27 technique atc's.....I did finish them off, they just needed a word on them. I coloured a piece of chipboard with a brown sharpie and then punched the letters with a metal alphabet punch into the chipboard. Then rubbed Classic Gold Treasure Gold lightly over the top followed by Silver Treasure Gold to give it a metallic look. My technique is Gel Medium Transfer, using Golden Soft Gel (matte) onto book pages.

Tissue Paper Background Technique

Tissue paper background has been around for a while....it has various permutations but these are the ones I'll be showing the girls on Saturday at the next atc class. We'll be using black tissue paper, dress-making tissue paper and plain ol' white tissue paper. Three different ways of attaching it too.... Xyron 250, glue-stick and jac paper. The idea behind having a great background is to show it off...so don't cover it all up too much, you still want to see what all the effort was for!

First up, "Certified", this is dress-making tissue with the oh so fabulous colour, Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold (Golden Paints of course).




Next up is "Ray". This is black tissue paper with Gold embossing powder. The sun up the top is a piece of mat board that has had 4 layers of Gold embossing powder melted onto it, one layer after the other, before adding the final layer, ink up a stamp with embossing ink and quickly before the final layer of embossing cools, stamp into it to get a great embossed image!






Okay, this next one had me stumped for a while, I used a combination of a yellow and a yellow/green paint onto plain white tissue and realised this is just SO not my colour combo!!! So I had to add some interference green and some Jenkins Green to darken it slightly before I was happy with it. I've used the scratches stamp from Stampers Anonymous (a Tim Holtz one....great stamp!) and embossed this with Patina Gold embossing powder...a gorgeous combination of black and gold embossing powders mixed together for a great antique look. Go ahead! Try mixing your own embossing powders to get some fantastic combinations like this one! I used this same embossing powder on the remaining exposed double sided tape above the words that I attached to a piece of chipboard. Does that make sense?



I do have another one finished and another one almost finished, so I will endeavour to post pics tomorrow.

Oh, almost forgot! In the last post I made a cryptic note about what I used to colour some of the shrink plastic, it looked like this ********! Give up? None of the girls in the atc class guessed what I used....though they should have, I use these ALL the time! SHARPIES!!! Scribble some sharpies on to the shrink plastic, coloured ones of course, you don't have to completely cover it as too much will make it too dark. Then take some blending solution (Ranger - from the alcohol ink line) on your felt pad and blend it like you would alcohol inks.....FABULOUS colour!!! Stamp, then shrink and if you want, coat with Dimensional Magic, Papier Glass or Diamond Glaze - all are a similar type of dimensional coating.

Wonderful gifts & play-day with the girls

How lucky we are to have wonderful friends who bestow gifts upon us....here are a few that I have received lately.

This is one from France, a polymer queen from SAJ's (a local stamp group)....I was going to say something about her being the "moldy queen" but figured that was taking it a bit too far....'sides, she might not give me any more RAK's!!! lol

This is an atc that is just so beautiful and textural irl (geek-speak....in real life). Just lovely France, thankyou ;-) Check out France's blog for a great little tutorial on post-it books!

What an absolute feast for the eyes this atc from Dawn is!!! The background is actual tin with a torso mold on top that has been painted in the most fabulous metallic colours and gorgeous gold metal wings and the brads look just like little rivets holding it all together...this whole atc just screams "metal". Love it, love it, love it!

The very talented Jane Pisan gave me this atc that is ingeniously suspended from some old jewellery so it's actually a miniature piece of wall art! I really love the imagery on this atc, Jane told me when she made it she thought "hmmm, looks like Kelsey"....what Jane???...."old & relicy (not a real word) with a slight green tinge about the gills"? lol

A truly beautiful piece which I am thrilled to own ;-)






On Friday I had a catch-up with girls from our Art Tarts Club. Every month we try to take turns teaching each other a new technique, or at least an old one that's been re-vamped! Friday was Michelle's turn, we used black tissue paper, dress-making tissue, jac paper, embossing powders and paint to make fabulous crinkly backgrounds. We also did some stamping into fun-foam then attached this to an atc, coated the whole shebang with gesso and then painted over the top....this is a la Bernie Berlin's wonderful Artist Trading Card Workshop book that I'm sure most of the people in the atc world know all about and own their own copy!!! If you're in Perth and you don't have a copy, the store where I work has it!

So here are a couple of atc's that I finished this weekend from the backgrounds that I made on Friday. The blue one on the left is crinkled tissue paper attached to jac paper on an atc background, then painted all over with Titan Buff, then dry-brushed with Payne's Gray...love that Payne's Gray colour! The 2nd one is dress-making tissue crinkled, attached to jac paper, painted with Golden's Quinacridone Burnt Orange and then dry-brushed in a few areas with Golden's Interference Oxide Green (blue shade).




Another couple.....first one on left is another gel medium transfer using the Jet Print Photo Paper, love this stuff! The one on the right is a technique I learnt from Jen Jones, another very talented girl from Perth, made using some of that thick acetate that's on office reports, comes up much better irl - trust me! lol