Creating cards inch by inchies

 

 

Happy Friday!  Altered Pages is enjoying a month-long partnership with IMAGINE Crafts/Tsukineko.  Our team has been having fun with the inks and other crafting supplies they have provided and their team has been creating with Altered Pages images and ephemera.  Remember to leave comments on the Altered Pages Artsociates blog all during June to be entered into a drawing for a great prize package!  You can head over there now to see my project and try for the prize.  My feelings won't be hurt.  BUT, if you're still here...

My project today features IMAGINE Crafts/Tsukineko StazOn Spiced Chai ink and is highlighted with one of their cool metal tags.  At 1” square it is the perfect complement to these cool wood squares I found in the hardware bin at my local big box hardware store.

What do you do with 1” metal and wooden squares?  Inchies, of course!! 

I printed the Inchies Beauty collage sheet on matte photo paper and cut it into strips.  Once all of the strips were created, I ran them all through my Xyron sticker maker.  I picked out 8 of these tiny lovelies to use on my card and trimmed each one down leaving only the barest of white borders.

The Spiced Chai ink was sponged around each image and on the wood square using Ink Blushers craft sponges.  The StazOn is the perfect ink for this project because it covers the paper, metal, and wood equally well!

More ink was sponged onto the metal tag.  I heat set the ink on the tag so that I could work with it right away instead of setting it aside to dry.  Some Dew Drops from my stash were attached around the edges using 3D Crystal Lacquer. 

A gold-tone gemstone was set into the center of the tag.

To give each wood tile a more complete look, each one was dipped into the ink pad one side at a time. 

I chose a vintage looking pattern from one of my Glitz paper pads to back the tiles, which was highlighted with dark brown and black card stock.  The tiles aren’t very heavy, but I was worried about using regular double sided tape so each tile was also attached with the Crystal Lacquer.  The card has a very dimensional look and vintage feeling. 

I hope you'll stop by again real soon!  In the meantime, you can make my day and leave a comment below.  :-)   Happy Crafting!

 

ICAD 2014: Week three

Welcome back!  It's been three weeks since I accepted the Index-Card-A-Day challenge.  Some days have been a breeze and some have had me stumped.  This was a pretty good week!  I am really having fun with this.  It's not to late to join in the fun!  Visit the ICAD FAQ page.  You don't have to go back and do the first three weeks (unless you want to).  Just grab some index cards and go!

Here are this week's prompts:

And here are my cards:

Stickers - I just ran a couple of markers over the card first for the ground and sky.

Roll the Dice

Polka Dots - gelatos, stencil and baby wipe

 

Orange - images from AlteredPages.com

Harry Potter

  

Candy Wrapper - I didn't have one to use

 

Repeating Pattern

Thanks for stopping by and paying me a visit.  Drop me a line and let me know you've been here!  And let me know if you are playing along!  See you next time!

I.C.A.D. Week Two

I fell a little behind this week.  I got caught up in a prompt that just did not speak to me. I just got stuck for a couple of days on "toy camera" and then I shook it off and did my own thing to get back on track.  Here were the prompts for this week:

 

 

And here are my cards!

Mandala - I had no idea and had to look it up

1. Oriental art. a schematized representation of the cosmos, chiefly characterized by a concentric configuration of geometric shapes, each of which contains an image of a deity or an attribute of a deity.

2. (in Jungian psychology) a symbol representing the effort to reunify the self. 

Alphabet - clipped from coupons and advertisements

The Beatles-the sub is clip art

Toy Camera?  I don't think so.  ;-)

Paisley

Book Review

Magenta

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you're playing along with this fun challenge.  Nothing wrong with spending a few minutes being creative every day!!  Happy Crafting!

Washers, gears and whirly things

Greetings!  I recently joined my husband on a trip to the hardware store.  We went our separate ways at the door like we always do.  He heads for whatever he needs for the current Mr. Fix-It project he is doing and I go in search of crafting possibilities.  I've bought metal cogs, gears, washers and nuts before, but this trip I came across the rubber washers in the bulk drawers!!  My husband insists they are not stamps so I had to inform him that they are rubber so they qualify as rubber stamps!  Right?  Right!

My hardware store haul

Well, I brought these home and broke out the inks!  I thought these would really shine in neon!  So I got out my Tsukineko Radiant Neon ink pads.  I've been using these a lot since I got them.  I love the bright colors.  They remind me of my wardrobe in the 80s!  (Did I say that??)

 

I bought two different thicknesses of washer so I put 5 of the same thickness on an acrylic block and stamped them over and over again with Electric Coral.  When I had covered a space large enough for a background I stopped and heat embossed them using clear detail embossing powder.  Some of the ink was already starting to dry and didn't take the powder but that was fine with me.  I knew I had more layers of ink on the way!  After the coral, I used a solo washer and stamped it several times in Electric Blue, then heat embossed again.

My husband was going to throw this away!!!

At this point I decided that I was only going to use non-traditional items on the card.  Isn't that orange gear wheel delicious looking?  It is the empty wheel that held the cutting line on our weed whacker.  I rescued it!  My husband handed it to me and asked if I thought it could be recycled.  YOU BET!  I took it right down to my studio table where it has been recycled into an art tool!  I also used a pencil eraser, a square of spacer foam that came in my Tim Holtz embossing folders, the little wheel from an empty dental floss container and a metal pop bottle cap.  Each shape was assigned its own color from the Radiant rainbow.  Each layer was heat embossed before moving on to the next color to avoid blending.

And then I grabbed my black dye ink pad.  This technique works best with a really wet ink pad.  I placed the pad directly on the paper until the entire surface was covered.  Then I used a paper towel to clean off the embossed areas.  Don't use a baby wipe unless you want a muted look because it removes too much of the black.

 

I trimmed it down to panel size and reserved two whole shapes to be used on the final layer.

I used two different gear cutting dies on white paper and then gave them the same treatment as the stamped images.  Neon ink, heat emboss, black ink, wipe.

Next, the sentiment.  And yep...it got the same treatment.

Finally, I had the pieces all completed.  I attached the birthday banner at the top of the card and placed the two reserved gears next to the words.  After playing around with several different colors of paper, I decided that I really liked the yellow background.

Not your typical color for a card of gears, but it's totally me!  Like, totally!  (Yeah, it's an 80s reference.)  I hope you like it.  Make my day and drop me a note!  It's like getting happy mail.  Until next time, Happy stamping!

Inks used:
IMAGINE Crafts/Tsukineko Radiant Neon:

• Electric Coral
• Electric Blue
• Electric Orange
• Electric Yellow
• Electric Green
• Electric Pink
• Electric Purple

Dreamy Neon Dragonflies in Flight

 

 

Don’t you love fresh, new ink pads?  They are full of new possibilities.  These IMAGINE Craft / Tsukineko Radian Neon ink pads come in a bright rainbow of colors and they are fun!  We're partnering with this wonderful company in June.  I was playing around with these colors and wanted to see how they looked on black paper.  Most inks soak into the black and are difficult to see.  I sponged a little yellow on the scrap and an idea was born!

Using a card-sized panel of plain white cardstock, I tore V-shaped area out of the bottom to act like a template.  Then I sponged in layers of Electric Yellow, Electric Orange and Electric blue in an arc pattern.  A spiral foam stamp from my collection was used to stamp the sun and more yellow was sponged in to it  to make it a solid shape.  After removing the paper template, I sponged some Electric Purple around the bottom edges for the ground.  Then I heat set the panel.

 

 

I chose to work with the Altered Pages Muse Dragonfly stamp set.  I love this set of stamps!  The dragonflies come in several different sizes.  The small cluster of dragonflies was stamped with Memento Tuxedo Black and more black ink was sponged very lightly around the edges of the card.  I tried stamping the words “Dragonfly Dreams” in purple but the stamp wasn’t wet enough and did didn’t show up as well as I wanted.  So, plan B…I re-inked the stamp with IMAGINE Craft / Tsukineko Delicata Silvery Shimmer used my stamp positioner to re-stamp the words.  (You can see the purple shadow in the scan).  And the whole thing was again heat set.

On a scrap of the same black paper, I stamped the largest dragonfly a couple of times.  He’s very detailed and I wanted to be sure to get all of the pattern on his wings.  These were heat set, fussy cut and set aside until the last step.

It's a very soft colored card.

To highlight how the Radiant Neon inks colored the black paper, I mounted the panel on a slightly larger piece of the same paper using double sided adhesive.  It took several tries to find the right card stock to accent the pale colors without washing them out.  In the end, I chose a sky blue piece from my collection.  The two panels were mounted on the blue base.  To add the large dragonflies, I used Nori Paste along their head and body and attached their wing tips with foam squares cut down to fit.

Wow, the colors scanned really bright!

Quick and easy to make and I love the muted color I was able to achieve from these wonderfully bright inks.  Now I need to go experiment on white paper!  Until next time, Happy Stamping!