Perfect Pearls Class

Next up in my ATC Technique classes is Perfect Pearls. These have been around for years in the stamping community but clever people keep coming up with new ways of using them so they never get "old"! Here are a few samples of what the girls will be learning in my classes.

"Too Many Freaks"... Zetti stamps with the face, also by Zetti, done on shrink plastic.

"Invertebrate #1"... (Stampers Anonymous Dragonfly Legend stamp....again!!!)

It's a real pity that the beauty of Perfect Pearls just can't be appreciated on the computer, it's definitely a must-see in real life for their shimmery colours are just wonderful, especially on black card stock. You'll just have to trust me, or better yet, go buy some and try it out!

"Invertebrate #2"... (same Dragonfly Legend stamp - but the other side of it)

"Melancholy"... (Hero Arts (discontinued) Vintage Map Stamp). The Perfect Pearls is sprayed onto the background of this atc - I used a combination of Weathered Wood Distress Re-inker, Pewter Perfect Pearls and water in a mini-mister and spritzed the card. Also, down the bottom is the new colour of German Scrap we are selling at Scraptivate, Iridescent White. Very different from the normal plain white German Scrap we sell in the various styles, it looks like it's had pearlized paint applied to it, more creamy in real life compared to the starkness of the normal white. Something else to try? Yes, we do post all over the World and we have excellent prices on the German Scrap, probably the best you'll find across Australia!

"Captivating"... Not sure who's stamp this is? The Perfect Pearls are brushed onto a piece of acetate that's been run through the xyron first so it looks like a shimmery painted image.

"Royal"... (Another stamp I'm not sure of? The crackle effect over the top is Perfect Pearls in Pewter brushed over the top of the stamped card (after the face was stamped) using Versamark and the Perfect Pearls. If you tilt it to the light you see the shimmer effect of the Perfect Pearls rather than just a flat grey crackle as it shows here on the computer.

"Awaken"... Stamp by Cherry Pie, background sprayed as "Melancholy" was but using Brushed Corduoroy Distress Re-inker, Gold Perfect Pearls & water in a spritz bottle.

This next atc isn't anything to do with Perfect Pearls, it's a gel medium transfer atc that's for a Yahoo Group I'm in, Paperarts. One talented bunch of girls in this group! It's for the WTA - Winner Takes All - sort of a lottery that runs every month where one person gets to win all the wonderful atc's that are entered for that month.

More Perfect Pearls atc's to come....some are still happening in my studio - have to wait for that Texture Paste to dry!!! lol

ahhhh....Foil Tape!!!

I have been using Foil Tape in my artwork for several years now and there's nothing better than introducing it to someone who's not used it before! Hopefully I'll have that chance in my upcoming Foil Tape classes....though I think I show it to just about everyone who walks into Scraptivate, I love it that much! You can buy it from hardware stores like Bunnings here in Australia but the one they sell has thick black tar underneath the foil and is really too thick and yukky to use. I much prefer the one we sell at Scraptivate (for only $1 per metre!!!!!!!), it's self-adhesive and is perfect for several techniques.


Firstly, you can attach it to chipboard and run it through a cuttlebug to give a great silver background that can then be alcohol inked or, as I prefer, painted with acrylic paint then wipe it off to leave a little bit of paint behind to grunge it up.

I also like to use a metal letter stamping set (which we also sell at Scraptivate!) on either foil tape attached to chipboard and treated the same way as above, or, colour a piece of chipboard with a sharpie, then stamp the word with the metal letters, then rub some metallic wax over the top to make the impressed word stand out. "Silence" below has this technique. The "Metal Fatigue" wording is done using the foil tape.

Another way I use it is to stamp an image onto it after it's been attached to card stock, then using a stylus, trace over the image leaving an indentation, then paint over the whole thing and immediately wipe off the excess paint, but leaving some in the indentations so you can see the stamped image. When I first started doing it, I either used black or brown acrylic paint, but now I've started using other colours as well. I think it works.....do you?


"Silence"... (bamboo stamp by All Night Media. There's that black texture paste around the image too!)

"Metal Fatigue"... (this background is made using one of the new Cuttlebug embossing folders, looks like the bed of a truck! Great for male cards! Image by H.R. Geiger....I used to have a huge poster of this image on my bedroom wall when I was 19! lol)



"Sooner or later"... (tree stamp by Stampers Anonymous)

"Be still"...(this is an older atc showing the black acrylic paint on the foil tape. Stamp by Michelle Ward - Green Pepper Press - from the Juliet plate.)

That's it for the moment....Perfect Pearls are next in a couple of weeks. Thanks for the enquiries after my "lobe"! lol It's getting better though I did need a stronger antibiotic as the first one just didn't cut it.

More Spotlight Technique

Here are more of the Spotlight Technique that was mentioned in the last post. My first classes are tomorrow and I'm sure the girls will love the clean and structured style this technique has. Also another good excuse to just simply stamp! So drag out those Twinkling H2O's, the old Tombow markers with your blending pen or even the container of those cracked and broken stamping chalks and get colouring!!!

I thought I'd show you what the page in the book looks like with the atc's attached to it. On the left hand side (where you can't see) there is another page the same size with the instructions attached so each page has instructions and samples for every technique. Click on it for a larger view. The size of each page in the book is 8" wide x 6" high.

"Mere Illusion"... (face stamp by Cherry Pie, scroll stamp by Joyce from Paper Forest)

"Nature"... (yep, here's that pesky dragonfly stamp again, Stampers Anonymous. After adding the colour I've also used the Frosted Lace Stickles over the wing and the blue circle area, nice & textural but without "in-your-face" glitter.)

"Clarity"... (Babs55 has corrected me on the maker of the stamp below (thank you!). I had originally said it was Zetti, though it is actually another Stampers Anonymnous stamp. The Diamond stamp down the left is another Stampers Anonymous.)

"Renew"...(Now this stamp IS by Lost Coast Designs. This is that reverse style of spotlighting I was talking about in the previous post where the colour is applied to the whole image, then the extra piece that is added over the top of the existing image has no colour on it at all.)

"Pause"...(Same stamp as above with just the face being coloured.)

If any of my students are checking my blog before class tomorrow, please be gentle with me....I'm suffering a huge, red, pulsating, throbbing.........ear-lobe!!! After having my ears pierced 35 years ago, NOW I get an infection! So it's antibiotics & antibiotic ointment for the offending lobe and that's obviously going to create a huge globby, oily mess on the right side of my head as the ointment won't possibly stay where it's supposed to. Maybe I should wear a hat? Nah.....I'll just complain loudly, they'll be "extra nice" to me. ;-) (Actually, they always are....but you didn't hear that from me!)

Spotlight Technique & Final Beeswax ATC's

Firstly, here are the last couple of Beeswax atc's that were started as demo's in the last Beeswax class.

"En-pointe"...
and "Remember"...

Coming up next is another good ol' fashioned stamping technique called Spotlight Technique, another very effective style for both atc's and cards. The idea is to take an image (in my classes we'll be using stamped images), have 2 copies of the image and then highlight a small portion of the image by colouring it, mounting it on black card, then raising it with foam tape. It looks very effective when seen in the flesh, much more so than on a flat scanner! It's also another excuse to get onto using all those stamps that we all collect. You'd be surprised how many people tell me that they just don't use their stamps enough! Well, here's the perfect excuse!

You can also reverse the spotlight effect by colouring all of the first image and then adding a piece of the same image over the top of a section and not colouring that added piece so it stays black and white! Another way I've used this technique for a printed image was to highlight a portion of an image with a small frame, then painted all over the image with Golden brand of gel medium in Soft Gel - Satin. The layer added was slightly thicker than normal and I used my finger to dab up and down into it to add texture immediately after it was applied. I then highlighted what was in the frame and as it didn't have any of the gel medium on it, it looked different than the rest of the image. You need to click on the image to enlarge it to see the effect. Here it is:

"Ornate"...

Some more samples, "Linked"... (not sure who is the maker of this stamp, I'll look into it.)

and "Moments"... (Paris Moments stamp by Hampton Arts)

More to come...

More Beeswax atc's

Saturday's Beeswax classes went really well. I was particularly pleased when two of the girls who had done beeswax with me before, and didn't really like it, changed their mind on Saturday and decided it was a fun technique and they COULD actually do it! Thanks for sticking it out Maureen & Karen, see....I told you it was easy!!! lol Though I think the iron has a lot to do with it, much easier than using it in a melt pot.

"Damaged"... (pretty cool looking steam-punk fish I thought! The steel cage stamp is from Lost Coast Designs and is stamped onto tissue paper and added at the end, along with the Damaged by Seawater stamp which is by Julie van Oosten. Not currently available though she is going to do some more stamps soon!)

"In fashion"... This one is a poke at myself as I am just SO not in fashion. Just liked the juxtaposition between the dressmaking tissue, Asian book paper, vintage image and my favourite cuttlebug diecut scroll.

"Dream"...no stamping on this one, but it does have a piece of cream cotton lace up the top embedded deeply with wax, over the top of dressmaking tissue again and a few microbeads in gold added as well. Isn't it great the colours that you can by using a little crayon with the wax! How boring if they were all the same colour.

"Life"...I scanned this one before I'd remembered to put some silver metallic wax over the embedded chipboard frame so please imagine that it's there, certainly makes it stand out more and blends better with the colouring too. The metallic waxes, like rub'n'buff, treasure gold and JW's dazzle waxes, all work wonderfully on the beeswax.

Jen Crossley's classes went really well last weekend at Scraptivate! Jen has since posted on her blog with some great photo's so if you want to check them out, please go here. I have some pics on my camera but haven't downloaded them yet, when I check them out and see what they're like, they might end up here. But if they don't it just means they were not great. ;-)

I'd like to thank Carol for this Fab Blog award. I have found that more bloggers aren't accepting awards any more, so I have contemplated long and hard about posting these any more. I'll just do it and if they don't want to accept, then that's fine too. I'm just letting them (and you!) know who I think is pretty darn special.

So accept this award I'm supposed to list five "obsessions" and mention five other blogs. Am I an "obsessive" person??? Possibly!

#1 Art Techniques - I'm definitely a technique whore (and I mean that in a nice, wholesome way...lol)

#2 Crime & Investigation channel on Foxtel - gotta have my true crime fix every day, throw in an autopsy or two and I'm in heaven!

#3 Chocolate - ditto.

#4 Teaching - I get such satisfaction and pleasure from watching my student's obsessions developing as they learn new things in my classes. What good's an obsession if you can't pass it on I say!

#5 Friends & Family - Having lost 2 extremely important people to me within a few short months late in 2008, I am more aware than ever of the importance of just picking up the phone to say hi, or emailing and catching up for a "just because" lunch. Try it, you might like it!

So please visit the following blogs:

Svetlana My Time Out of the World

Davinia Deez News

The Creative Junkie

Julie Is There a Shadow

Debbi Baker

Beeswax atc's

Beeswax is the technique for this fortnight's classes. I prefer the natural beeswax with it's warm honey colour and beautiful smell. You can also get bleached beeswax but you can't go past the natural stuff, my personal preference anyway. I like to add extra colour with children's wax crayons, as can be seen in the following atc's.

My homage to organ donation...
"Salvage"... (The salvage word was added by stamping the word onto white tissue paper with red Stazon, then melting it on with extra beeswax at the end. A perfect way to add wording that really blends in.)



This next one was a vintage McCalls dress pattern picture which I then added a piece of dressmaking tissue over the top giving it a vintage colour. Blue crayon was added to pick up the colour of the main dress. I also put some blue seed beads in extra wax down the bottom and rubbed the edges of the card and over the seed beads with Treasure Gold (a metallic wax like Rub'n'buff).
"Flair"...

This is an image added over the top of scrapbook paper, extra crayon for colour and a chipboard circle to highlight her face.
"My nose itched"...

As I didn't add a word to this one it's simply "Untitled"...

I have some more beeswax atc's to do as there's not enough here for samples as well as raffle atc's to give away at my classes.

This one below is my last Soot one from the previous technique. Loved this stamp from the Cherry Pie plate that I got for my birthday from good friends. ;-)

"Life is an Island"...

At Scraptivate this past weekend we've had 3 wonderful classes taught by the uber-talented Jenny Crossley. The girls made an altered "Swallow" book on Saturday, then on Sunday and Monday there was 2 separate classes where a metal etched booklet necklace was made. Photo's of these classes will be coming up in a future post. It was great to have Jen staying with me, a wonderful guest and an awesome teacher and friend. I could make some comments about something she took to bed each night...but I won't, I could also say something about Dawnie's gift to her and what she was doing with it...but I won't. Your secrets are safe with me Jen.....just deposit $1000 into my bank account, I'll send the details! hahahahaha

Soot Technique ATC's

Soot technique is an old favourite of many stampers. It's quick, simple but gives spectacular results. The original technique simply used white gloss card stock but I wondered how they'd look with some colour put onto the gloss card first so I have coloured some of the gloss card with alcohol inks or glimmer mists. How to make a great technique even more wonderful.....add some colour first!

All of the following atc's have colour added to them. To find more on soot (including non-colour ones) on my blog, simply type in "soot" in the search box on the right. Handy little widget that one!!!

These first 2 are the samples in my atc technique book that the girls in my classes are making. Of course, they are doing their own style to put into their books.

"Black Bird Fly"... (stamps by Cherry Pie and yes, that's a bit of flyscreen down the bottom!)

"Fragile"... (Tim Holtz tree stamp, Green Pepper Press fragile stamp. Fragile stamp embossed with Ranger Queen's Gold embossing powder, a beautiful colour.)

Samples for the classes:

"Damaged"... (Zetti face stamp, circle stamps by ??? - an old cheapie I've had for years!)

"Line"... (Green Pepper Press building stamp)

"Fear Not"... (Zetti main stamp, splotch by ??? and Fear Not by Cherry Pie. Love the colour of the embossing powder too, it's Liquid Platinum by Ranger!)

"Odonata"... (Dragonfly stamp by Stampers Anonymous with some Antique Linen Distress Stickles down the left and Golden brand Bronze paint splattered over the surface)

I recently took part in a yahoo group atc swap using Twinkling H2O's so I made some bleach & H2O atc's and posted them off. As I had made one extra, I included this in a monthly WTA (Winner Takes All) on another yahoo group. This is about the most trading/swapping I've done for ages! The stamp is a discontinued Hero Arts Vintage Map stamp, pity they don't make this any more....I could've sold heaps of them!!!

"Traverse"...

I do have more soot ones in various stages of production in my studio and will post them when they are done.