Soot technique & 1 more transparency transfer

As I have new people that are becoming regulars in my atc classes at Scraptivate, I have decided to revisit some of the earlier techniques from when I started teaching the classes. For those of you in Perth who might be interested in learning some techniques, I teach every 2nd Saturday and every 2nd Tuesday night. The Tuesday night class is a repeat of the Saturday, one but runs about 3 lessons behind.

I often get asked, why atc's? For me it's the technique that is first and fore-most. The reason I use atc's to teach it is this.... the girls will learn a technique and actually get it "down" onto a format that will look complete, 99% of most people get at least 1 atc completed and many get 3 done. I get card-makers and scrapbookers in the classes as well as atc girls as they are all techniques that can be applied to many different artforms. Some of the girls have even started their own little technique book using an atc that was made in the class, then writing up the notes in their own words and putting it all into one book! Great idea!!! My memory is shocking for lots of things but I don't seem to have any trouble at all remembering all the different techniques that I've learnt over the years!

On to the next atc class....Soot re-visited!!! I won't be listing the technique yet until after the Saturday class so they don't set fire to themselves or their houses!

"Follow your own star"...

"Portrait"...

"Delusional"...

(the stripey looking thing on either side of this one is the small corrugated black cardstock with a bit of Silver Treasure rubbed over it, looks like stripes but it's actually very bumpy and raised)

The next one is an atc made using the Inkjet Transparency Film and gel medium (Golden soft gel in semi-gloss). It's the blue gravestone image that is the transfer...

"Two graves"...

Lastly, an atc using Helmar 2 step crackle medium for a crackle class that I have coming up soon using various crackling mediums. Our Altered Book Club chunky swap that is on-going had a Gods & Goddesses theme recently and I chose to do "Anubis, god of mummification"....yep, sounds like me doesn't it! lol So I had a spare pic of Anubis left over which I made into an atc using the crackle medium on the image.

Transparency transfers

While I love new technology, sometimes in the art world it can be a pain in the a**! Particularly when you find that a product that you used to use is becoming redundant because of newer technology. Case in point - inkjet transparency film. This was used for overhead projection units and is a dying product because of Powerpoint presentations on computers. A particular brand of transparency film that I've always used was the Apollo Inkjet Transparency Film for Inkjet Printers. I've since found out that it's being phased out. You can still buy the transparency film but they seem to have changed formulation which means that the film that's on the side that you print on is much thicker....meaning it's more difficult to get it to release when you want to do an inkjet transparency transfer using rubbing alcohol!

These newer ones will still work with gel medium as the transfer medium, but I particularly like the ease with which rubbing alcohol spritzed onto the printed image and then burnished onto a page will work. The 3M brand of inkjet transparency film is also supposed to be as good as the previously readily available Apollo....I have yet to track it down but will try to do so before my Apollo stocks run out!

These atc's are made using the alcohol and transparency transfer technique... (I coloured the silver German Scrap using "Bottle" alcohol ink....lovely!)

Also, you don't always have to do transfers onto printed or patterned paper. These next 2 are done straight onto plain coloured cardstock. Though the first one I did attach a dictionary quote onto the cardstock first, then did the transfer over the top of it...worked a treat! "Menopause Mauve" is not a usual colour for me to use, but it suited this pic of ol' Liz!

warning: a bit of vintage nudity in this next one.... love the distressed look that you can get with transfers...without even trying!!!!

I thought I had some using the gel medium/transparency method of transfers but I think they are half-done. I'll get them finished and up for viewing, though you won't really be able to tell the difference on the computer screen. It's something that you can see more clearly irl (in real life). The gel medium I use is Golden Soft Gel in matte or Golden Soft Gel in semi-gloss.

On another note, my son, his girlfriend and their puppy leave us tonight to fly back to the East Coast for another year, he has 2 more years in the air-force but is going to try to get posted back here before then. AND we only had one testosterone-fuelled argument between my two grown "boys" in the 4 weeks he's been here!!! Bargain!!! (Jarred, the one who's leaving is 22 and my other son Cort is 19 - still 'boys' to me though!)

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

Gel Medium Transfer atc's

At my atc class this Tuesday night I'm teaching the girls gel medium transfers. This is probably the most difficult thing to do for atc's as it's usually a very hit & miss affair but the results, when they work, can be spectacular! The most consistent type of transfer for me is the Sheer Heaven/alcohol transfer, closely followed by a transparency transfer using gel medium.

A very kind girl from the US sent me some sheets of the Great White matte photo paper (now known as Jet Print) to have a go with as it's what is used for the most consistent type of gel medium transfers using paper. It has something to do with the clay coating formulation on the paper that makes the transfer so predictable. I must admit after trying one of these today, I'm convinced! It was extremely easy to rub off the white bloom and I didn't have to use any of my Dorland's wax medium to make the bloom invisible, which I usually have to do using normal copy paper. Here's the atc that I made using this fantastic paper.....thank you to Cathy Wegner for the paper ;-)

For the raffle atc for Tuesday night I made this one using the Matisse gel medium that's available in Australia, as it's what the girls will be using on the night. It's made using the Jonathan Talbot method of transfer where you coat the receiving surface, also coat the picture, let them both dry, then coat the receiving surface again and while still wet, stick the image face down, burnish well and let it all dry. When it's dry, wet the white surface that's showing of the image and start to rub off the backing paper, keep rubbing until you can see the image and the underneath showing through. This is the trickiest bit, you have to know how hard to rub and when to stop, too vigorous rubbing or rub for too long and you'll lose part of (or all!) of your image. The streaky bits on this atc are gold iridescent paint that's been dry-brushed on after it's completed and this one definitely needed the Dorland's wax medium as it still had a bloom and I didn't want to keep rubbing away in case I lost her face!....not a good look! lol

Disclaimer: I'm not a man-hater, I just like the quote...in fact those of you who know my hubby will KNOW this quote is so far from the truth.....he does GREAT housework! hehehe

Lastly, another transparency atc, once again if you hold it up to the light you can see straight through it as it's a stamped image (zetti) on one piece of transparency with another piece of transparency coloured with alcohol inks. I put silver tape around the edge and coloured this with alcohol inks too!

Transfer Technique

I recently read about another transfer method that I had to try as I'd like to teach transfer techniques at Scraptivate and as we sell the Matisse Gel Medium, I'd like to use that. The technique is by Jonathan Talbot (another transfer technique guru, along with Lesley Riley), here's what I did....

Covered a piece of script scrapbook paper with Matisse Gel Medium (gloss), cut out an image of a girl and coated that also with the Matisse medium - taking care not to get any of the gel medium onto the back of this picture. Let both of these pieces dry. Then I coated the dry script paper receiving surface with the medium again, pressed the image face-down and burnished them together. Let this piece dry. Then using a wetted-finger started to gently rub off the white backing of the image, it rolled and balled up, kept doing this until the image became clearer. You may not get all of the "bloom" (the white stuff) off but most will come off, I then coated it again with the gel medium and this seems to get rid of most of the bloom. That's it! Works a treat! Though you do need an image with some light coloured parts to it - as you can see you can't see the script through her hair as it's black. Try it - nothing to lose - it's only a bit of paper!

Speaking of paper, I use normal copy paper for printing the images but I do prefer using the Nopa paper (from Officeworks) for printing my images. It's around $20 for a ream but it's beautiful paper - very satin-like feel to it and a little thicker than normal reflex copy paper.