Layering with VersaMark

I had ordered some stamps when I was visiting family in Minneapolis in June and my DIL brought them with her on the family's visit to me. As everyone was busy, I had to make SOMETHING with them. I can always use cards. I got out my VersaMark pad and stamped some flourishes on coated card stock, heat set it and ran a yellow Distress ink pad over the surface, and heat set it again.
Stamped the same flourish with the VersaMark pad over the same card stock, heat set it again. Ran the blue Distress pad over it, rubbed the surface with a paper towel to reveal the yellow flourishes and heat set. I love how well the colors of the Distress pads blend together.
For the next layer, I stamped the two ends of the same flourish with two shades of blue Distress inks. Love the dimensional look all down with ink.
I stamped the main image and saying with black Archival ink.

For an added dimension, I stamped some flying birds with white Brilliance ink.
I added a tiny yellow rhinestone for the eye, some white vine die cuts from the Cuttlebug and mounted it on green card stock.

Metallic Colored Pencils Part 2

Although I like the card I made yesterday, it looked nothing like what I saw demonstrated several years ago at a stamp convention. I couldn't remember what was done at the demo (my visual memory is very poor). So I went surfing the web, and over on Cloud 9 in the tips & techniques, there was a mention of what I had seen, it all started to come back, hooray! I stamped several open images onto coated card stock. In using the metallic colored pencils as a resist, the trick is to color heavily, to have lots of waxy build up.
Next, I covered all the images with black Archival ink.
Then I rubbed the card stock with a paper towel to reveal the coloring underneath. I like how these images look like carved stamps.
I trimmed the 3 images to make 3 different cards. For the first card, I trimmed a piece of one of the textured papers I colored last week, to be the background. Added a quote stamp from Wordsworth stamps, ribbon and paper flowers attached with a large brad and mounted on black card stock. For the second image, I choose this faux leather tissue paper background as it reminds me of water, perfect to set off the dragonflies.

Decided to play with some of the new Cuttlebug embossing folders to make the background for the third image. Started with a dark goldenrod card stock and ran through this folder and ran a lavender Distress pad over the raised areas.
Ran the same paper through with a different embossing folder and ran a green Distress ink over the top.

Trimmed the background, added black brads, stamped a saying, added the image and attached to black card stock.

I had fun playing with these metallic colored pencils, and have 3 more cards to use.

Metallic Colored Pencils

I saw ccswaps has a "Had to Have It, Haven't Used It" swap. I purchased these metallic colored pencils several years ago and never used them. I only bought these 5 colors. Remembered they were used to do a resist. Stamped an image with black Archival ink and used these pencils to add color.
Wanted a multicolored background, so I dropped several reinkers onto a craft sheet.
Spritzed water over the re-inkers and dropped the paper face down onto the ink. I tried to gently move the paper around, but must of moved it too much as the color became muddy.
Decided to add more color by doing Direct-to-paper with Distress inks.

Added a little glitz with homemade color spray with perfect pearls added.
Added words as part of background, by using water on the stamp, and randomly stamping parts of the saying over the paper.
Stamped saying onto paper with black Archival ink and mounted on black card stock.

I think this made a nice card.

Faces of Love Annie's "It" Gift

Annie is the "It" Girl this month in the Art-Venturers group. Her theme is "faces" so I asked her to send me photos of her grandchildren. These were altered in Photo Shop to adorn the cover of this small photo album I made for her.
I went for a conservative cover. I didn't want the paper and embellishment to distract for the photos of her beautiful grandchildren. I took a sheet of the silver textured paper Adrienne sent me. I wanted to blend gold with the silver paper, so I brushed on gold metallic acrylic paint mixed with the glazing liquid to thin it down.
To make the design stand out, I lightly rubbed this red brilliance ink over the top. The metal heart and brad used on the front were silver in color, I rubbed on black alcohol ink to color them.

I wanted the inside covers to be more vivid to contrast with the stamped "faces" tags I was adding. I had some old colored tissue paper. This was glued onto thin cardboard and then spritzed with my home made diluted Red Pepper Adirondak color wash & perfect pearls. I left some of the previous colors show.
After drying, I ran these through a Cuttlebug embossing folder and highlighted the raised areas with Brilliance ink. These were adhered to the front covers. And the book bound together with the Zutter Bind-it-all, after adding the stamp tags.
Inside front cover:
Inside back cover:

Karen's deco

I received Karen's deco in the mail today. She is in the Art-Venturer's group, so the word 'ART' mush appear somewhere on the page. Great opportunity to use on of the sprayed textured papers I made earlier today. I choose the one with silver Brilliance ink on the surface. To go with the page I picked out some flowers in my stash. I colored the tips and centers of the pink paper ones with red Brilliance ink. I colored the tips of the larger blue ones with blue brilliance ink. And sprayed pewter Shimmering Mist over all of them.

For the paper behind the letter "a" and the saying in the silver frame, I used leftover pieces of paper from a Luminous Paste Paper background similar to what was done here. I added an image and the flowers I colored with silver brads.
For the back, I wanted to do a resist with the color wash sprays. I chose to use antique white acrylic paint for a grungy look. [Remember to always wash acrylic paint off your stamps right away.]
I sprayed full strength butterscotch and a mixture of diluted red pepper with perfect pearls over the paper and wiped the surface to blend the colors and reveal the paint underneath the sprays.
I stamped some words in black Archival ink and added some fun foreign stamps.

Hope Karen enjoys the page as much as I did making it.

Textured papers from Adrienne

I received a package of fun papers from my friend Adrienne to play with today. Included in the package were some gorgeous textured papers. They are especially precious, because they are no longer available where she shops. I also received a package of Adirondak Color Wash sprays I ordered today. Sounds like they are meant to be tried out together. The first sheet I pulled out to play with was the silver embossed sheet you see pictured above. I sprayed the colors of color wash over the surface and heat set.
I wanted to add a bit more glimmer, so I sprayed over the whole surface with a home made color wash that had perfect pearls added.
I cut off two pieces to quarter size sheets. To bring out the texture in the paper, I ran Brilliance ink over the surface. I used starlite silver on the first sheet.
And pearlescent olive on the other one.

There were also the same type of textured paper in this terracotta color.

I sprayed 3 different color washes over the surface and heat set.
I cut off two quarter sheet pieces. On one, I ran a cosmic copper Brilliance ink pad over the surface.
On the other sheet, I ran a gold galaxy Brilliance ink pad over the surface
I leave the other sprayed sheets to continue to play with for another day.

Row House Photo Mat

So glad I was able to make it to my monthly stamp club meeting this month. Susie gave us all a pre-cut mat board row house 7" tall and 4" wide along with papers to choose from. We made whatever we wanted. I choose to make a Photo mat to hold a picture of my grandchildren. She had extra mat board to cut. I was surprised how easily I could cut this mat board with my scissors. I want to make more, as these will make great gifts for family and friends.

Faux Leather Tissue Paper

Happy day! Trish has another Background Technique on her blog. These are always fun to try. And I know I'll put them to use in some future project.

I covered card stock with glue and tapped down wrinkled tissue. I may have tapped down more than I was supposed to, as these look at lot different than Trish's samples. Once they dried, I trimmed off the extra tissue paper.

I colored the tissue with Distress inks. With the darker colors, I did the direct to paper (dtp) inking, then misted with water and redid the dtp to get a good coverage. For the antique linen, I found I need to use the re-inker to get good coverage.
For the first two, I ran brilliance ink over the surface to just give highlights to the paper. For the next two, I painted over the surface (using my finger) with Lumiere paint. While it was still wet, a misted the surface with water, to let the background color show through a bit.