Blue Moon... this week's TIO#25 Tag

Over on my challenge blog, I have reached a quarter of a century - 25 tags... would have been more but I did have a holiday and did have a major op!!! Glad to get to this though with people still joining in.

I made this tag using pale blue card, overprinted using Vivid ultramarine and distress ink in broken china, embossed in clear ep, as so often!! The stamps are basically from UMount, but the mon is my cloudy one from Judikins, via Stamp Addicts. Simple but quite effective... Thanks so much for looking - I am always so gratified to find your comments, and am sorry for those I lost... if I get any more spam, I shall have to relent and add a level of security...
Thanks and have a great week
xx

TIO #20 - Text it to me - make it purple!!

Here is my effort for this week's TIO challenge #20 - text it to me - make it purple!! I started it with a piece of semi gloss card, and printed it with some background text. I stamped in distress inks in worn lipstick and dusty concord with Lavinia and Dimension Fourth stamps. I also used UMount and Elusive images stamps, then overstamped with some of them in onyx black, with clear ep. Some of the images were blurred using a water spray, which has given a blotchy look to some parts. I really enjoyed this one and hope you like it too.
Thanks so much for looking, and making your comments...

TIO #19 - Up, Up and Away...

This was my inspiration piece for the TIO #19 tag challenge this week... up, up and away. I decided to do dragonflies, but the theme is very open to different interpretations... I began with shiny cardstock and the usual distress inks in blues and yellows. I printed a whispy bamboo from Stamp Addicts by Judikins, in weathered wood and shabby shutters, then various plants from Lavinia Stamps in the other distress blues. The agapanthus and flower swirl from Stampendous and UMount, respectively, were stamped in onyx black then all inks were embossed in clear ep. The dragonflies are from a clear stamp but don't know where from and the ep around the border is a fascinating one from Stamp Addicts called Blonde Moments in festive fern. It is gorgeous and thick and yummy, shot through with green, blue and gold.
Thanks so much for looking again this week...

New Stamps - another sample

Here is another sample made for the Hobby Arts show. Jenny should have them in her sticky mitt now, so I hope she likes and them, and wants to use them in her show... if not, I like them anyway, and enjoyed using the stamps!! This one is really lovely, but I wanted to use some of my other stamps with it... frustrating!! So I kept it so simple, printing it out and embossing it in different colours, as you can see. The top is the front, the lower image is the backer. A few peel-offs, a piece of ribbon and a circle punch complete this small piece.

InchyByInch Challenge - "Little Jewels" with triple embossing

Hi... welcome to this InchyByInch challenge. I do hope you all enjoy it. Get out your stuff and have a go - it's true alchemy, as far as I am concerned. OOOOO, I am so thrilled!! I have written a tutorial which might help you get started, if you have never done triple embossing before. It seems long but it's just me chattering on!!! Here goes :-


Triple Embossing to make “Little Jewels”

This technique is simple and so effective. if you have some embossing powders, a heat gun, a versamark pad and a stamp, you are in business! Always work on a heatproof surface, as the heated powders get very hot.

For my inchies here, I began with some thick card from Magenta, already cut into inch squares. Woodware do them too, or you can make your own. The thickness is important, so the finished article does not curl up and crack! You can use the backing from those stiffened envelopes you get paper and card products delivered in.

1) Prepare your surface and gather all your elements together, because you will need to be reasonably quick once the powders are heated.

2) Cover your card piece, liberally, with the embossing fluid from the versamark pad, or similar. I do so much of this that I bought a 2 fl oz bottle from Stamp Addicts, by Judikins. It has a dabber on top for application, but it’s not necessary, a pad will do.

3) For my inchies here, I covered the card with black ep and heated. I repeated this 3 times, in order to build up the depth. As each of the first 2 layers is heated, drop it back into the powder. If you are too slow, cover again with the embossing fluid.

4) As you are ready to heat for the third time, ink up your chosen stamp, using your colour of choice, (eg gold) and put it ready to use. Heat your piece until it is smooth, molten and shiny, then take up your stamp and press the image into the hot mixture. It will not damage the stamp! Leave it to set for a short time then remove the stamp. You will have the wonderful, “squigged” (my technical term!!!) image of the stamp indented into the ep. It may overflow the edges or be deeper in some places, that just adds to the magic. You can cut off the edges if you want, when the piece is cooler.

5) Instead of black, you can use any colour ep, or any mixture of colours. You only need them to be molten, in order to impress the image. Just sprinkle various colours on to your heating piece, and they will blend like alchemy!! I have some examples like this on my blog. Run a gold or silver pen round the edges to finish them off neatly.

6) When mine were cool, I brushed different Cosmic Shimmer powders onto them. You can use Perfect Pearls, or other similar mica powders. This technique works best on black ep, I find. I GENTLY reheated the piece to set the shimmers – if you reheat too much, you will melt the indentation away... this is handy if you did not like what you made, because you can stamp it all over again, once you reheat! If you had used gold ink, this will melt into the mix too, and can be SO effective!

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me at
Dragon@Dragonsweb.net or on my blog. ENJOY!!!

Here are a few more...