Quote ATC

Little booklet

I have been playing with an idea for the pay it forward gifts. I have never made anything like this before so it's an experiment. I put here the photos of the prototype I've been making. It's an accordian book so there are photos of sections of it. Stamps are mainly from Catslife Press.





How it looks when it's untied.

Chalk and stamps

In preparation for a new swap on ccswaps I used a technique that I used a while ago where you stamp with versamark and then use chalks over the top. The chalk sticks to the ink and creates the picture. Played around with some samples - I have lots of new stamps since I last tried this out.

Waterspray and colour mists

I have been experimenting with using a waterspray with a stencil, removing the stencil then spraying colour over the top. I watched a demonstration using some colour sprays I don't have and decided to experiment with colours I do have. I used a stencil and various card types and colour spray types. The results above are using water colour paper and those below used glossy card. I used both a positive image by spraying water through the stencil and a negative image by placing the wet stencil on a different piece of card. Both seemed to work. They don't create a resist effect as described in the demonstration but it does change how the ink looks on the paper which produces the contrast. I had a problem with the glossy card when there was too much liquid and the card curled and caused the ink to run messing up my pattern. There was a lot of variation in the clarity of the image depending on which inks I used. The darker the better.

Another shining stone card

Folded ATC using shining stone

Front of the folded ATC using the shining stones background that I stamped on using an Invoke Arts stamp.


Half unfolded - Catslife Press dream stamp


Fully unfolded showing stamps by Catslife Press and Invoke Arts

Shining stone bird card

Bird stamp by Crafty Individuals

Stamped on shining stones

I have stamped on the shining stone background with different sorts of stamps and now they are cut out ready for projects. The leftover bits will go into my background noise book when I start it.

More little beauties

Stamps from Crafty Individuals, Invoke Arts, Heroarts, Stampers Anonymous.

Little Beauties for Instant Art swap

Stamps from Crafty Individuals, Catslife Press, Invoke Arts. Little picture from Scrap Girls.

Nebula Grunge

Autumn has come up with a new technique she has named Nebula Grunge and I had a play with it this morning.



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The instructions are to to paint your surface with white acrylic paint, leave to dry then spray with bright colour mists and then spray a dark colour mist over the top and heat set.

The first sample above uses white acrylic paint and bright color mist sprays. I didn't have a dark spray so I used some moon shadow spray which is the darkest spray I have. When you dry it with a heat gun you get a blooming effect that creates the nebula like look to this. I think this sample looks a little washed out and I wasn't too happy with it. I think it needs the darker top layer to be really effective.

I was feeling impatient today so I couldn't be bothered to paint with the acrylic and leave to dry again so I wondered if it would work with glossy card. I used bright color mists again and then the moon shadow over the top and heated and the same blooming effect occured giving me my nebula again. I did miss the more grungy look of the first piece and the brush strokes. The second and third samples use these sprays.






I was looking for other colours and tried the sticky fingers sprays on the gloss card. I found that they didn't bloom in the same way and so I ended up with something very like the shining stones technique I tried out last week and that is the fourth sample on this post. Pretty but not the same.

More Nebula Grunge

I had a brainwave and mixed my own black spray using some black watercolour paint from a tube and water. I had another go and the results are posted here. Again on glossy card. I had a problem with the card bending so much I had a coloured tube so I ended up taping it down until it was dry.

ATC backgrounds

Some ATC backgrounds

Tags

Gone a bit tag mad today

Slide mounts

The first stage for an instant art swap by Adrienne which consists of lots of little bits and pieces.

Shining stone background

Trish has issued a challenge on NGS to try out this background technique. She has rewritten instructions and it's based on the technique in Julia Andrus' Paper Transformed book. They have a lovely gold sheen but that hasn't come out in the scans at all. Much prettier in real life.


Took a photo to try and get the sheen on the surface - you get more of an idea of the gold sheen on this one.

Wrapping paper ATCs

Combined two challenges into one and used some leftover Christmas wrapping paper and Trish's Advent images.

Christmas wrapping collage

The finished ATCs. Following is the original step byustep scans.

Step one is to make a collage with scraps of wrapping paper. I then put a layer of gel medium over the top of it all. When dry I put a thin layer of gesso over everything. Dried it again. Then sponged on some distress inks in yellow, orange and red.


Cut into ATCs and added some stamped squares with Stazon ink. Now I just have to decide how to finish them off. Will post the results when I've done that.

Complementary ATCs

Two ATCs for a swap using only two complementary colours