Faux Tin Type Technique & last of the Dominoes

I'll start off the with the last of the Domino atc's from the previous class.

"Flagrant Desire"...

"Mother Nature"...

The Faux Tin Type technique is trying to replicate the old tin type photo's using modern materials that most paper-crafters have...foil tape, transparency & a xyron machine. They are notoriously difficult to scan or photograph because of the reflective nature of the foil but you'll get the gist of it.

"Illusion"... (yes, I've used the black texture paste to create the border around this)

"Spectral"... (same image but with a cuttlebug frame made from chipboard)

"Liberation"... (another cuttlebug frame but with foil tape over the chipboard, thanks Ness for the great image, though I feel the word "Liberation" should have a question mark at the end of it! lol)

"Hex"...

"Twilight"...(yeah, I know....can't help it though, I've been a vampire fan since I was a kid with all those Bella Lugosi films & the original Nosferatu. Of course I've read Twilight, then went onto the more adult books of Laurell K Hamilton, the Anita Blake series. I've finished the series, 16 books in total and was reading 3 of them a week, just couldn't put them down! (Thanks Mandy for the loan but I've now ordered my own set). Now I have to wait for #17....darn it, I hate that! I do the same thing with Lee Child, he brings out only 1 book a year in April and I buy it and read it in a few days then have to wait another year for the next one.

More to come after I've done some demo's in my classes.

If you want to see a REALLY, REALLY, cool haunted house, take a look at my friend Julie's blog here. I think from memory she told me it was around two feet tall and she lists all the Collections chipboard products she's used to make this. Gorgeous!!! I told her I wanted to live in it. lol

Time for some Dominoes!

Dominoes are the focus of my next atc technique class.....and focus is the correct terminology for using dominoes on a small area like an atc. It's generally the first thing that hits you when you look at them in real life as they are so dimensional you can't help but be drawn to it, touch it and hopefully, it will marry itself nicely to what your particular story is in the atc. I'm always saying that the girls in my classes, let your atc's tell a story....it doesn't really matter if you are the only one that understands it, still tell it.


So here's my first domino atc, and it's my favourite one. A sheer heaven transfer (thanks Svetlana for the image!) with the beautiful bamboo stamp silver-embossed over the top and the same silver embossing on the domino.


"Delicate"...



This next one is a background made by spraying a perfect pearl/distress re-inker/water mix over canvas paper and then stamping with white embossing powder. I used my old stand-by, the Hero Arts Vintage Map (discontinued). Also had to include the black texture paste around the edge for a finishing touch!


"Escape"...



This is a close-up of a larger domino that I glued a picture onto, then wrapped with gold thread, then coated with Glossy Accents. A little machine stitching with the same gold thread holds the book paper onto card stock sprayed with the perfect pearls/distress re-inker/water mix again - different colours from before obviously!


"Radiate Life"...


Here's the full size atc...

Next is a simple little atc using glossy card stock coloured with alcohol inks, as well as the same colours of the alcohol inks on the domino that has been stamped with a flourish stamp and a key added with silver thread. The domino comes out a slightly different colour from the background, even though I've used the same colours because the gloss card base is white and the domino is cream.

"Dwelling"...

Finally, black on white with a touch of blue....created with Black Stazon on white gloss card and Twinkling H2O Mystic Blue for the eye-colour. The domino is coloured with some blue sharpie & blending solution with a touch of gold metallic mixative thrown in for good measure....and a stamp.

"Serene"...

More to come later...

More Crackle Paint & some Glass Bead Gel!

Continuing from the last post, here are more of the crackle atc's.

"Breathe"... Picket Fence (white) crackle paint with some Weathered Wood Distress Ink rubbed onto it to drop the starkness of the white back a bit. If you enlarge this picture by clicking on it, you'll see I also used Golden Glass Bead Gel over the image. This goes on opaque but when the medium dries, all you can see are the little spheres of glass and it also gives it a wonderfully textural feel! Love it!!!


"Transformation"... The fabulous H.R. Giger images will always work well with Black Soot Distress Crackle!

"Portal"... Scattered Straw Distress Crackle, rubbed with some Peeled Paint Distress Ink and Vintage Photo Distress Ink after the crackle had dried. The little brick stamp in the top right is by Cherry Pie.

"Reliquary"... Gothic silver embossed script in background is from Michelle Ward's Printed Matter rubber plate and the beautiful silver window is from Scraptivate - it's one of the many, MANY, styles of German Scrap that we sell at the store. These window arches also come in black and white. I love the silver as you can wipe paint over it and then wipe it off and it grunges it up nicely! The image has the Helmar Crackle 2 step used on it with Payne's Grey paint added and wiped off after the crackle had dried.

Next up is Dominoes! So over the next few days I'll be slaving away in my studio with these little cream plastic toys, trying to come up with interesting looking atc's! We'll see.....

Crackle Technique & a Canvas

Several years ago I posted about a "poppet" style canvas (a la Claudine Hellmuth style) I had made for a friend's daughter who had lost her Dad to cancer when she was only 4. Her baby sister was born only a couple of weeks after Steve died so she has no memories of her Dad. Little Ava is now 5 so it's time that she had her own canvas with her Dad and her in it. Aisha, her big sister is probably going to be more excited about this when she sees it as it's the same picture of her Dad that I used in her canvas. Here's a link to the previous one for Aisha. These are both 8" x 10" canvases. Not my usual dark & gloomy style but I'm a Gemini and I can chop and change at whim. ;-)

This fortnight's round of classes at Scraptivate is Crackle Technique. We sell several types of crackle including the brand new Rock Candy Distress Crackle. This first atc is the Helmar Crackle which is a 2 step crackle...a base coat, let dry for 20 minutes, then the top coat. As you can see it's a clear crackle so over pictures it's great as you can add some paint when it's dry and wipe it off and the paint settles in the cracks.

"Fragment"...

"Betroth"...this is also using the Helmar Crackle.

Ranger also make the Distress Crackle in 24 colours + some metallic colours.

"Rock and Roll"... (Black Soot Distress Crackle. Yep, yummy Ville Valo, lead singer for HIM....my favourite band!)

"Live it"...also using Distress Crackle in Old Paper colour.

"Angel's Art"... Milled Lavender Distress Crackle.

"Temptation"... Aged Mahogany Distress Crackle.

"Icon"...this is the new Rock Candy Crackle from Ranger. I've put some red paint over the top part of it and used Fired Brick Distress Ink rubbed onto the bottom part. You can see the difference that the paint makes...much more seeps into the cracks. Probably would've been better with a less detailed picture underneath. Live and learn.

"The first rule"... This is the Ranger Crackle Accents. It comes in a bottle like Glossy Accents or Dimensional Magic and goes on the same way... through a small tip that you just squeeze on and spread it around. Very easy!

Guess I'll have some more when I do some samples for the classes over the next week.

Last of the Perfect Pearls

I went a bit overboard with the Perfect Pearls samples this time....love that there are so many ways to use it and they all look very different! Here are the final samples.


"Words are alive"... (thanks for putting me onto the little "cross punch" Michelle!)


"Forbidden"...

"Stone Monuments"... (the ubiquitous texture paste, this time in white, around the picture. If you click on the image to enlarge it you'll see I used a set of Angel wings to stamp and emboss on the background. I used the Antiquities Cement embossing powder so it's very subtle)

Next class is using crackle products...and there are several of them. Golden Crackle Paste, Ranger Crackle Accents, Helmar 2 step crackle, Jo Sonja crackle, Ranger Distress Crackle and probably even more that I haven't used!

More Perfect Pearls

There are so many different ways of using Perfect Pearls and I've been playing with them for several days now, so I have a few more to show.


I also made a card using the overspray background that I was spraying the Perfect Pearls, Distress Re-inker & water combo onto the card stock....can't let anything go to waste!!! It's a pity that the Perfect Pearls are not done justice by the flatness of the computer screens, the shimmer when you tilt them to catch the light is unbelievable! First up, more samples of atc's.


"Showy"... (Lost Coast Designs stamp. Cuttlebug "Ironworks" chipboard shape)

"Preoccupied"... (Green Pepper Press stamp from the Curvature plate)

"Twilight"... (Cherry Pie stamp - moon & clouds, Green Pepper Press building stamp from Printed Matter plate)

"Aim for the moon"... (Same stamps as above but a different portion of the building stamp, the whole stamp is about 10 inches long!)

"Go confidently"... (This is the card, quote stamp and flourish stamp from one of Tim Holtz range from Stampers Anonymous. Embossed section up the top is one of the new Cuttlebug embossing range of 5 borders in 1 pack)

I still have another couple to post but they can wait until my next post.

On another note, it's been one year today since my Dad passed away. I really don't like the term "passed away"....it's too soft for the sharp impact of the actuality of the event. Died is much more blunt, real and to the point. Though I think Dad would've preferred "shuffled off this mortal coil"!!! That's the Monty Python humour he always had, right to the end! Remember this photo? It still makes me laugh....yes, that's the sick bag on his head while he was in ICU (it was empty!). That's my friend Joan with him, 2-1/2 short months later she was gone too. I'm not as sad as I was, as they say...time heals, and it does. ;-)

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