POWDERED PIGMENTS & COFFEE FILTERS

 Powdered pigments are little jars of fabulous that have multiple colours in them that burst into life when spritzed with water. The assorted colours of tiny pigments in each container make up that particular colour if you mix them together in say a paint palette, but when they are just sprinkled and then spritzed, you get to see all the various colours that make up that specific colour. Black in particular is amazing with lots of shades of blues, oranges, deep purples and others that go together to make black in this format. The brands that I have and use are Brushos, Lindy's Stamp Gang Magicals, Cosmic Shimmer Pixie Powders and Nuvo Shimmer Powder. I sprinkled the powders onto a dry coffee filter, then spritzed to get the colours to show. You can then decide whether to pick up the wet coffee filter and place it onto your glossy photo paper or you can press the photo paper directly onto the wet coffee filter for a different effect. The photo paper absorbs the colour immediately so you can't spread the colour around as it grabs the colour. This is another of those techniques where you can't replicate anything, each individual atc is unique. Glossy photo paper is a great substrate and takes either black Stazon ink well if you choose to stamp or you can use Black Soot Distress Archival Ink, allow both inks to dry though so as not to smear them.

"Half spent"

"Too many tabs"

"So goth"
(The black bats in the background are black
opaque texture paste by Ranger through a
bat stencil.)

"Life is short"

"Grow with the flow"

"Furry"

MAGAZINE GESSO IMAGES (TAKE 2)

 This technique is one I'm revisiting and was last done by some of the girls way back in 2011. I used fashion magazines for the images.You used to be able to pick up these magazines in the op shops but they are quite hard to find now unless you're prepared to fork out big $$$ to buy them at the newsagent. In this class, we'll be dry-brushing gesso over a magazine image and then repainting whatever areas you want to alter using watercolours or acrylic paints. You don't have to stick to realism, they can be as weird as you want. 😉

"Be creepy"


"Your coffin or mine"


"Shine brightly"
(Adam never looked so sparkly!)

"Not what they seem"
(I'm not sure if anyone will 'get' this one...
do you know what B.O.B. is? 😏)


"Dieting"

"Stronger"

WATERCOLOUR STRIP PAINTING

 This title could be slightly confusing. The watercolour pictures were painted first, then cut into strips and attached to colour-coordinated Gelli prints that show through the gaps in the strips. I used some atc's that I had made in various other classes but if making them for this technique, you need to keep your main imagery towards the centre as the watercolour picture ends up only 5cm wide before you cut it down and you don't want to lose too much detail from your edges. This technique would also be great for a card and you can afford to be a bit more generous with your artwork as you're working on a larger area.

I used Daniel Smith watercolour paints for 3 of these samples, Distress Watercolour Pencils for 2 of them and finally, sparkly gel pens along with Pilot G-Tec C4 coloured gel pens that activate with water for the final one. The moth one with the gel pen colouring was the only one with a stamped image, all the rest were hand painted. 

"Every colour"
(The trees were painted with Distress
Watercolour Pencils then outlined with
a Pilot Black G-Tec C4 gel pen.)


"Collect Beautiful Moments"
(Painted with Daniel Smith watercolours.)


"Live gently"
(Painted with Sodalite Genuine and Hematite
Genuine Daniel Smith watercolour paints
which are both granulating colours.)

"Tomorrow"
(Painted with Daniel Smith watercolours.)


"Small beginnings"
(Painted with Distress Watercolour Pencils.)

"Attitude"
(Stamped image coloured with sparkle gel pens
and Pilot G-Tec C4 coloured gel pens which
bleed when activated with water.)

ACRYLIC INKS/DISTRESS RE-INKERS ON PHOTO PAPER

I have used acrylic inks before on photo paper and had forgotten just how vibrant these fluid inks can be on the shiny side of the photo paper. The contrast between the beautiful magenta one at the top and the next one with the black bird die-cuts shows you can also create a more subtle background. The one with the black birds is Winsor & Newton Silver Acrylic Ink and Liquitex Burnt Sienna, a gorgeous combination and silver in real life is stunning! 
Down the bottom of this post is an image of the backgrounds I made using my Distress Re-inkers. These work just as well but take a bit more time to dry. No heat gun was used to dry any of these as the photo paper will blister so you just need some patience and let them sit while you create more gorgeous backgrounds. Black Stazon is your best stamping ink if you want to stamp. Rub-ons also work perfectly on these backgrounds. I used rub-ons on both of the samples with the magenta.

"State of mind"


"Scenic route"


"Fearless"


"Field notes"


"Make today count"


"Keep moving forward"

These backgrounds were made in the same way as the ones above 
but they were created with Distress Re-inkers instead of Acrylic
Inks. They took longer to dry but they still are very cool backgrounds.

WATERCOLOUR QUIRKY BIRDS & STENCILS

 I've been seeing an abundance of gorgeous whimsical and quirky watercolour birds appearing all over Pinterest and Google and I love the imperfect and naive style of this type of watercolouring. Virtually anything goes with these funny little birds and you can add their wings, beaks, legs & plumage however you want. I thought I'd step it up a bit by adding some stencilling in the background. Covering the birds with a mask made from paper towels protects them from the inking when stencilling. Of course, I had to do a mini-sheet of quotes to go with these birds for the girls as well as a page of some ideas for various birds and how to draw/decorate them too. I hope they all have fun painting these, I sure did!

"Eat local"


"Foraging"

"No worm"


"Shenanigan enthusiast"


"Fuster cluck"


"Winging it"

TEXTURED WEB BACKGROUNDS

 This class is a revisit of a previously used product that isn't intended for the papercraft world and it's surprising how many cross-over items from one art/craft style transfer quite easily into another. The last time I did this in a class was in 2017 but I had used it many years before myself but hadn't singled it out as a stand-alone technique. I'm using it differently this time by applying acrylic paint over the top as well as embossing powder, which I used in 2017. The acrylic paint just adds another way to add texture and colour. You can still get the shine you would if you just use the embossing powder by swiping over metallic waxes if the paint dulls it. 

What am I talking about? Hemming web tape, or double-sided fusible interfacing. It has to be applied with a heat gun and you need to work fast while it is still hot enough for the embossing powder to attach itself. No need to stick it down with glue or anything, just work quickly to apply the heat from a heat gun and immediately dump on the embossing powder, then re-heat it to melt the powder. It creates beautiful lacey-looking backgrounds that add texture and interest to your surface. If you click on each image and scroll through them, you will see how much texture and depth you can get from this product. 

"Foreboding"


"Enjoy the little things"

"Flabbers be gasted"


"Beautiful self"

"Time moves slowly"

"Beauty"

OXIDES & PHOTO PAPER TECHNIQUES

 Photo paper is such a versatile product and depending on what other items you are using, both sides of the photo paper have specific properties that will work for various techniques. For this particular one, we'll be using the shiny side of the glossy photo paper.
When Oxide Inks come into contact with the gloss side of the photo paper they absorb immediately into the coating on the paper and when the ink has dried after a few seconds, you can usually see the chalky residue of the Oxide ink sitting on top of the photo paper. You can use a damp paper towel or a baby wipe and remove this chalkiness revealing a much deeper colour, and often a surprisingly different colour, has adhered to the emulsion on the photo paper. For some of my samples, I used a stencil to apply the first layer of Oxide ink, then applied another layer of a different colour over the top of the stencilled section. When you remove it, the first stencilled layer remains vibrant and if you've used a contrasting colour, it can look really amazing.
You can also use a white crayon to scribble first on the photo paper to create a resist effect before applying the Oxide ink. This leaves the white of the photo paper showing through after removing the chalky residue as before.

"Wild mind"
(The blue leaf is an actual leaf that was left over
from a previous Gelli printing class that I coated
with a matte medium before attaching it to the 
background. The blue colour of the leaf is from
the paint that was used on the Gelli plate. I 
loved the colour and the residual brown on it
just worked so well with the background.)

"Life is short"
(I used a die-cut to cut the jagged rectangular
section and raised it with foam tape before
slightly off-setting it back into position to
create a nice focal position for the vase &

floral arrangement.)


"Old"
(The white lines are the white crayon that was
drawn onto the photo paper before colouring
with the Distress Oxide which creates this
resist effect.)

"Make it work"
(I've used a scoreboard to mark the back of the
photo paper after colouring to create the 
scorelines, then swiped over some metallic
wax to show them up even more.)

"Light is fleeting"
(Vellum is notoriously difficult to stick down
without the adhesive showing but these ghosts
have had double-sided adhesive paper stuck to
the vellum before die-cutting.Consequently, the
whole of the ghost has adhesive on it so
doesn't stand out like it would if it was just a
a couple of bits of adhesive tape.)

"A busy life"
(A honeycomb stencil was used with Rusty Hinge
Oxide Ink before going over the whole background

with Fossilized Amber Oxide Ink. The bees were
stamped with Black Stazon Ink as that sticks
really well on the photo paper with no smudging).