LittleBirdyScraps

Sunday School - Acetate 101#2!

Hello and welcome to yet another nail-biting instalment of Sunday School.....will she or won't she manage to achieve anything useful?

I'm happy to report that, this week, things have gone much more smoothly.  You may remember that last time I was trying to die-cut acetate with variable results.  It's here, if you're interested.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

So this weekend I have had a go at altering some pre-cut acrylic shapes.  I think I probably referred to them as acetate last time; this is simply because I am losing my marbles.  Here are the shapes I started with - I thought some boy-orientated ones would be nice.

 

Love that robot!  (These are from an album/die cut set by Fancy Pants which I've had for rather a long time; similar products include Heidi Swapp's Ghost shapes.)

The first thing I tried was stamping.  Quite simply, I stamped up one of the frames using a stamp from the Ecogreen Steampunk set with Stazon.  And here it is:

 

I think that looks really nice, and so easy.  Normally I would stamp on the back of the acrylic but that would reverse the text so this is stamped on the front.  (There's no real reason to stamp on the back, it's just what I do.  Might offer a bit of protection, I suppose, on a page.)

Apologies at this point for any duff photos.  Yesterday I dropped my camera on the floor and the back cover dislodged itself a bit.  I put it back, but when I couldn't select 'macro' I knew I'd broken it....sob.  Except that I hadn't, I'd just put it on 'landscape' and forgotten.  Duh.

Next I got the alcohol inks out and did this frame using some Brights:

 

Again, I think that's very effective - particularly on a white background.  For this the inks were squirted onto a craft mat and the frame dragged through them.  I did a couple more passes after I'd added Blending Solution.

Another technique which I find works well with acrylic is using rub-ons.  This is really good for smaller shapes as you can use just part of a rub-on - maybe one that's damaged, or one you don't like much any more!  Look what happened to the robot!

He's had alcohol inks smooshed on his back, and then the rub-on added to the front.  I can see all my sentiment rub-ons being used up like this.  He's been stamped as well, with another stamp from the steampunk set.

I also went round the edges of the shape, and the eyes and mouth, with a black marker pen to add definition.

So far, so good!  Now it gets a bit experimental.  I bet you can all think of loads more stuff to do with acrylic shapes...maybe you'll see something here you like, or maybe I'll put you off some of these techniques completely, lol.

I had some arrows left, and since I rather fancied covering the backs in something, I got out the pearlised glue I bought recently, reduced in a local craft shop.  After some fiddling about I decided the best way to apply it was with a brush; it was difficult to hide the brush marks, but after I'd done this

(It's a beautiful summer day here and this morning at six thirty I was sitting in the middle of the lavender field with a cup of coffee and Craft Stamper....)

...I came home to find this:

The brush marks are much fainter and they have a really lovely sheen to them.  I also bought this glue - after much dithering - in gold and pearl, so I'm looking forward to using them too.

So, this is what I ended up with after I'd stamped and outlined the other frame:

I thought these would be good for a vintage LO

And here are the boy ones.

Now, if you're still with me (wake up at the back there!), next up were some girlie shapes

Sticking with the alcohol inks to start with, I thought I'd try dropping them onto the back of the acrylic. 

At this point I went and had a look on Google because I was a little concerned that the alcohol inks were remaining somewhat sticky on the acrylic.  Maybe you're not supposed to combine the two?  But no, there's a tutorial from Ali Edwards here, where she does just that.

So I carried on.

I'll tell you what doesn't work, though, and that's the Stazon cleaner technique I blogged here.  I tried it on the butterfly and it looked very nice, but the ink just wouldn't dry.  Maybe if I'd left it for a day or two before adding the cleaner, it would work.  I'll try that and let you know - but maybe the inks never dry as completely as they do on glossy card?

Anyway.  I did this:

It's the front you're looking at, with Sailboat and something Yellow and Silver Metallic Mixative dropped onto the back, in that order.  I blew them around with a straw.  I love the glossiness of this, which you can see even better on that bit of the scalloped frame showing at the top.

As you can see, I've added rub-ons to the bracket shapes. 

I thought I would see what happened if I also dripped some Silver Metallic Mixative onto the back of the brackets, and all I can say is...

Don't.

Probably.

It just looked like I'd dropped it in some metallic paint by accident.  However, the Stazon cleaner got it off very effectively - it was a very messy process, though!

Now, see that crown?  Well, this is the bit I got most excited about, and when you've read what I did, you're going to wonder why you bothered....lol.  No, not really, it's fabulous, honest!

That crown has been pressed onto a Brilliance Galaxy Gold metallic ink pad.  You can't swipe it because nothing sticks, you have to Press!

But - the ink wouldn't dry.  I tried heating it, but the acrylic started to buckle so I stopped.  For a little while I sat there thinking, and then decided to add some clear embossing powder and heat set it.

Yes, you read right.  After deciding that heating the acrylic wasn't a good idea, I then set about using a technique that involves heating the acrylic.  *Sigh*.

But.....BUT.....look at this!

That's quite sweet, isn't it!  If you're wondering how I got from a gold-inked crown to an aqua flower, let me explain...

After heat embossing the crown, I discovered that making acylic hot and bendy doesn't cause one to be struck by lightning.  Nothing awful, or requiring a visit to A&E, occurred.  And whilst having a bendy crown wasn't particularly useful, I thought bendy flowers might be.

I inked these up with Pearlescent Jade Brilliance ink:

...And after I'd sprinkled on some embossing powder and heated them they were bendable.  Not sure that this would be a substitute for the modelling medium that's recently popped up in the shops, because what happens is that the acrylic becomes very bendy, and then, while you're manipulating it, it very suddenly goes rigid again.

On the plus side, however, the embossing powder (which has been mixed with some Cosmic Shimmer powder) didn't re-melt when I reheated, so it doesn't make a mess.  And it doesn't get too hot to handle.

A mould of some sort would have been useful; there is currently an egg on my desk, sitting in a discarded glass of (clean) painting water...it didn't work but an egg-cup might have!

So, there you go.  At this advanced hour on a Sunday afternoon, Sunday School.

I really hope that there's something of interest in here - I certainly had MUCH more fun doing this than I did with the die-cutting the other week, although I'm thinking of cutting up the packing from these shapes, which is made of the same stuff, just to extend my supplies.

Something else I'm thinking of, is using those shapes on some layouts.  And hopefully they'll be appearing on here some time soon!

Have a lovely day/evening, wherever you are.

 

Stamping on Saturday

Well.  That was an education. 

There are, I will have you know, many things I could choose to include in a post about stamping.  But of them all, in my wisdom, I decided to have a go at 'kiss stamping'.  Oh yes.

Now, some of you may use this technique regularly, and if so - please feel free to share!  Others may, like me, have seen it mentioned if not actually used very often.  And of course St Tim is bringing out some mirror-image text stamps specifically for kiss-stamping.  I've seen him using them on here somewhere and they look very effective.

And when our mate Timmy does stuff on here, it's always very slick, isn't it.  He may not be very good at cleaning his stamps, but all his techniques are bish, bash, bosh, as we sometimes say over here....job done!

However, I don't suppose it's like that the first two or three times he tries it.  He probably says some rude words, and puts stamps down on top of finished work, or finished work down on top of open ink pads.  There are probably inky finger marks everywhere and he may even be watching Doctors at the same time.

So with that in mind, prepare to be dazzled and informed by my venture into....kiss stamping!

For anyone who doesn't know what this is, it can be done in one of two ways:

• ink up your stamp, and use another stamp to remove part of the ink, so you get a sort of negative effect when you imprint it.
• OR, you can ink up a pattern stamp and press a solid or silhouette image stamp onto it so that your imprint will be patterned.

If you don't get it, read on!

First of all, I got some stamps together:

For the solid stamps I chose the pears from A Stamp In The Hand, a butterfly from Green Pepper Press, and this negative plate from Hampton Arts, which I won on ebay for a steal!

These are the pattern stamps I used:

Only two of these worked.  The St Tim ones on the right, didn't.  They both include text, anyway, so it would have come out back to front.  The Invoke Arts ATC background, top left, and the crackle background (can't remember who makes that one) were better.

However.  The first thing I discovered was that Distress Inks don't really work for this technique.  Again, someone else may know better.  But when I inked up the butterfly and removed some of the ink using those two stamps on the left, I got this

On the lower one I used the ATC background stamp and you can hardly see it.

I tried some other colours of Distress Ink and Adirondack dye inks as well  - black was the only one that worked at all!

You can just about see the crackle image on the top one; on the lower one I've used a St Tim ledger-type stamp - no sign of it!

So then I tried Memento:

Hmm...it's not getting any better, is it?!

But wait!  What's this? 

It's Versamagic chalk ink, and it works!  I think the trick is to find a denser, stickier ink, rather than those wishy-washy dye inks that are so fantastic for other things.

So I made this card.  Not sure how its other stages escaped photography, but I can tell you that I used a paler shade to stamp the butterfly as is, and then kiss-stamped the darker shade and overstamped it.  It seemed a bit plain, so the next thing I made was this:

This is a bit of 6x6 plain paper and I've stamped the sentiment from the pears set all over in Forest Moss Distress ink, and then one of the pears in the same ink.  I discovered that archival ink works quite well too, so I've overstamped another pear which I kiss-stamped with the crackle stamp.  There's more of the design on the back of this card - I didn't really want to make a card that huge, so I just folded it in half.

Finally, I used the archival ink again, to do this:

In fact, I tried this several times.  It's the negative plate stamp, and I've taken ink off with a little butterfly stamp.  The reason I tried it several times is because there is much scope for bits of paper/fluff etc getting involved - see the white spots on that imprint?

Finally I managed a reasonably unsullied one, and added some overstamping.  After fiddling around with it for a while, I decided to cut the panel from the middle, and stick it onto a card which I'd already stamped with the negative image in Vintage Photo distress ink.  I don't know why I did that - humour me...!  Then I overstamped with the steampunk lady from Stampington, and added a sentiment, both in black:

Absolutely everything on this card is wonky.....including the steampunk lady who is not straight on her wooden block - not what I would expect from Stampington!

If you're wondering about the other method, where you ink up the patterned stamp first and then press the solid stamp onto it, I tried this as well:

I think I used dye ink for these, and I didn't take it any further because those images didn't really inspire me.  With a different pattern, or a different ink, or even a different solid stamp, the effect would probably be better.  I wasn't really sure what I could do with them, to be honest - I considered cutting them out, but then I thought I could get a better result if I stamped a whole sheet of paper directly - which would give a clearer image - and then stamp the butterfly on the back and cut it out like that.  Maybe I'll muse on that for a bit!

I hope that's been useful - it's certainly not an expert tutorial, but now that I've tried this technique I might remember to use it again, and maybe even get the hang of it....:D

Have a lovely weekend.

 

Half way there

That is where I am now, having completed my Foundation Degree.  Two years for that, another year to do Honours and then a year of teacher training.  Already I'm feeling apprehensive about September.  Some of us are going back to Roehampton to do our Honours degrees, to face an autumn term of 12-hour days.

There are two options for us: one is that we follow the 'recommended pathway' which includes four modules chosen by the uni (such as the psychology of education or something similar - you can tell I've been paying attention), and a dissertation.  In the autumn term we do all the single modules over 8 12-hour days, and we have four evening training sessions for the dissertation.  Then after Christmas we just have another two training sessions and the opportunity to complete our dissertation free of all other studying.

The other alternative is to complete just two of the recommended modules, and choose two others, anything we like.  But we have to find two others which take place at a time convenient to us - ie, the uni hasn't arranged them for us to fall nicely together on the same day - and there is no guarantee of a place on those courses.

So it's twelve-hour days for me!  Woo hoo!

Here we are at the graduation the other day

This was one of several photos taken by Louise's man - that's Louise on the left - and most of them were rather dodgy.  But he's redeemed himself with this one.

Now hopefully I'll be back tomorrow with a Stamping On Saturday post!  Unless my back gives in completely after its encounter with some stubborn weeds yesterday which left me rolling around on the patio in agony....

And on Sunday I will be treating you to some more acetate adventures.  Hope it goes more smoothly than last time, although of course my aim is to remove all those nasty lumpy bumpy bits for you, lol!

WOYWW #1112

Ooh this is a quickie.  I'm off to my graduation ceremony today, hope it's all jolly good fun!

On my desk today there is the smash book I started making a few weeks ago.  I took the decision to get it assembled quick-smart, and have made my usual mess of the binding.  If anyone knows where I can buy pigs' ears, do let me know, and I can just cut out the middle man (ie, me).

I had the pages mostly done, and decided not to do any more stamping although I was very pleased with the ones I'd done.  I could see the thing hanging around for ever, with an accompanying pile of stuff-waiting-to-be-smashed.

So, here it is.  I did something fairly ingenious with the labels I downloaded a few weeks back (if there's no link, you can scroll down a bit, but I will come back and add a link, promise...).  I had the bright idea of creating my own smash stickers by punching out the labels after I'd stuck them to a sheet of double-sided, er, sheet.  Here you can see the little pockets I added at the back of the book to hold my stickers, the rest of which were cut from a book of American Crafts Remarks.  My smash book is nothing if not eclectic.

The pockets are very fat at the moment, but I'm telling myself that this proves the book is capable of holding many more layers and will therefore take all my tat and toot.  I've already stuck something on the first page, something I found at the back of my desk, just to get the thing started.

Now, if you want to see lots of other, probably far more inspiring, workspaces, hop over to that mad woman Julia's blog and have a dekko at the many links therein.

Last week I got through quite a few blogs, and I'm going to repeat my plea to people not to neglect those towards the end of the list.  We can't all get up at the crack of dawn, or move to a different time zone, in order to post ours first, you know!  (Please note,  this lighthearted comment is in no way intended as a slight on those very clever girls who are up there at the top every week.  Much, lol.  I haven't been setting my alarm for 4am and then hovering over the laptop waiting to pounce when Julia's post appears, honest guv'nor.) (Well, not for a while, anyway ....;) 

No, seriously, folks......happy hopping!

Oops

Hello gentle reader.  Apologies for the lack of a 'Sunday School' post this week.  Daughter flew off on holiday with a friend this morning, and we've had to sort out all the last minute requirements by bus, after which I spent Sunday and today having a little break.  I suddenly remembered the Sunday School post yesterday...

Tempting though it is to give it a quick polish and publish it, I'm going to wait until next Sunday instead, as I don't want to overreach myself.

In the meantime, perhaps you'd like to see some photos of my little break?

Here's the first one

This is Mermaid Street in Rye, East Sussex.  I'm pretty sure I visited Rye many, many years ago, but nothing rang a bell.  It was in fact a mystery destination - my man told me he'd booked an hotel for the night and I was expecting something fairly basic.  Not that I had a problem with that.  So, imagine my surprise, dear reader, when we pitched up here

This is Jeake's House, which you can just see on the left of Mermaid Street in the first picture.  Years ago, if I'd stayed somewhere like this, I would have been in awe.  Not that we didn't, as soon as the suite door had closed behind us, start saying to each other in furious whispers; 'Isn't it posh!'.....but we managed to look quite casual about the whole thing whilst people were actually looking at us.

Here's the suite

and the entrance lobby with a view of the 'honesty bar'

The honesty bar is something that seems to get mentioned an awful lot in reviews - the idea being that it's not staffed, and you just hop over (oh all right then, walk round) and get yourself a drink, then write down what you've had on the pad so it can be added to your bill.  My man was quite impressed by this and had a bottle of beer just so he could try it out, I think!

On the wall to the left of this photo - you can't see them - are several 'good breakfast' certificates.  I can testify to their accuracy...this morning I went for the 'Rye Rarebit' which was absolutely scrummy and came with a perfect poached egg. Yum. 

The dining room is located in what used to be a Methodist chapel, with a gallery running round one side.  Outside our room we looked down on this:

That table in front of the fireplace is ours!

(I should point out here that despite how things are probably coming across, I have actually stayed in an hotel before...my man hasn't however, and indeed the last time I did so was about thirty five years ago.  Reassuringly, everyone else staying there was also quite ordinary, and some of them even came down to breakfast in sun-tops, which for some reason I felt was rather daring.  Just call me Jane Austen.)

The weather was absolutely gorgeous, and there are plenty of our favourite shops in Rye, ie those selling cake/coffee or antiques/junk. 

Interestingly, it is becoming much more difficult to uncover those little vintage 'finds' which I go into junk shops specifically to hunt down.  One very promising place was run by someone who made cards; she had some cardmaking bits on sale, and over the back I found some vintage (unused) labels for drink bottles, and some fabby little cards which are very difficult to describe.  They were shaped rather like sim cards but much bigger, and each one had a word on it.  Incredibly, they were priced at £1 each!  Needless to say, I didn't buy any - I can buy soda labels online at £1.20 for six.

Another shop which described itself as selling '50's, 60's and 70's collectibles' was basically full of junk.  Yes, a lot of it was the sort of stuff that makes you go 'Oooh, we used to have one of those' - but it was cheap toot when it was new and it's certainly not worth fourteen quid after someone's bashed it about for 30-odd years.

Next door was a charity shop where I picked up six books of sheet music, some of which contained really groovy vintage illustrations, for 20p each.  That's more like it.  I did wonder if perhaps the guy next door had been making periodic raids on the charity shop and buying all their 'collectibles' for 50p before shoving them on his shelves for a tenner.

Now, I'm going to show you some more photos whilst trying very hard not to bang on and on about them.

Okay, I really am going to have to say something about this one!

We went up the bell tower for the view from the top.  Already by this point my legs were getting wobbly, and it didn't help a great deal that things suddenly became rather narrow.  Claustrophobic AND high up, whoopee!

However, the view was very worth it:

I've got a bit of a thing about gravestones/trees/flowers as well....

...so I was rather disappointed that this one didn't come out very well.  Should have taken two...!

And then we found a windmill, so I'll inflict that on you as well:

Right, there you go then!  Believe me, I have spared you many more photos, including the one my man took of me in the bath!  (Didn't come out too badly, as it happens, apart from the horrid shower cap I was wearing, lol.)

What with it being the summer holidays, I'm hoping to get some serious crafting in over the next couple of weeks, before the camping season hits us full in the face.  So there might be something of interest on here soon!  Thank you for all your comments, and do call again!

Stamping on Saturday

I thought I would do a sort of occasional Saturday post about using stamps - partly because I love stamping but don't seem, recently, to have included any in my blog posts.

It's just going to be me rambling on about what I've done, under the guise of information sharing - ie, I'm going to pretend that I've got something interesting and useful to tell you!

So, first of all, I sat down at my desk this morning and started putting away the remains of the page kit I made for this week's blog hop post.  And there was a piece of paper lying there which I felt inclined to chuck out, as it's been well used

Since this is just the sort of paper I like to stamp on, I got out the stamps that arrived in the post yesterday...

...which I bought from the Marketplace on UKS, and used that big scroll heart to make this:

I stamped the scroll heart in Red Pepper dye ink and then overstamped it with the plain heart in Archival Sepia.  It's got Distress Stickles on the brown, and you can maybe just see the Pearl blobs on the swirly bits.  I thought it might make a nice addition to a card or a LO at some point - probably with another little heart or birdie layered on top.

Then I made these:

 

This is just the small filigree heart stamped in Red Pepper again, and everything outlined with a black fineliner. I cut them out leaving a very narrow border, and if you put four together they'll make a flower:

Yes, I can't count, there's only three there!

Now, the next thing I did was to make a card for Daughter's art teacher to say thank you, as Daughter is off to college in September.  I was really looking forward to doing this, as her art teacher is also a scrapbooker, apparently, and I'm hoping she'll appreciate the effort I've made...if not the result, lol.

I wanted to go to town a bit on the background, and I decided I'd use some of those hearts I made, so I found some  pink background paper and sprayed it with red and gold Cosmic Shimmer mists.  The red sprayed beautifully and the gold was a bit aggressive - rather like a water-based fire extinguisher, I thought...

At this point I would like to introduce you to some of my favourite background stamps.  This might be of interest, honest!  Here they are:

I wanted to show these because I didn't pay much for any of them!  The La Blanche swirl on the left cost me £2.99 on Ebay; I was really pleased when I saw it because Katy Fox used it in the last issue of Craft Stamper.  The middle one is from Personal Impressions; it cost me about 99p on Ebay, and as you'll see in a moment it makes a lovely imprint.  That one on the right is fab - it came as part of a set of three, also from Ebay.  I can't remember how much I paid but I was the only bidder.  Unusually, the other two stamps were also really useful.  This one has been to school recently, when the children were ageing some paper to do hieroglyphics on.  You can imagine how that was.....my stamps!  My inkpads!  Stop leaning on them!  You don't need to press quite so hard!  Etc etc.

Anyway, I also wanted to make the point that I find it much easier to have wood-mounted background stamps, as they're quicker to use.  Cheap and handy - how good is that?!

This is what I did with the checkerboard stamp

Some fairly random printing on one edge of the background paper - look at that lovely clear image on the scrap paper underneath.  I only part-inked the stamp for this.

 

Then I added a script stamp (the checkerboard's in Red Pepper and the script in Sepia Archival).  I don't know if you can see at the top there, but the fire-extinguisher gold spray has created some lovely textural effects when it dried, including a bit that looks like a coffee-cup stain.

On the right of this pic you can see where I've stamped the La Blanche swirl and heat-embossed it in gold.  The dress form stamp is one of a pair from Lost Coast Designs - I've had to edit that because I got it completely wrong last time!  They can be found here - thanks to Karen from Scrapz for the link. I stamped it straight onto the paper in Black Archival but it was a bit faint against all that palaver behind it, so I went over some of it with a cheap gold gel pen.

Earlier I'd picked out some wings to go on the dress form; these are Green Pepper Press ones which I bought as part of a huge set for a really good price - second hand again! 

I masked the dress form by stamping it onto a post-it note and cutting out.  I only cut precisely round the top half, where the wings were going.

Then I laid the wings face-down on the image, where I wanted them to stamp, and pressed the acrylic block on top to pick them up.  This is a good way of getting stamps - clear or unmounted - just where you want them on the block.  It also works for long stamps such as borders or sentiments: it often seems easier to get them straight if you first lay them on the piece they'll be stamped on, before picking them up with the block.

After I'd stamped the wings and embossed with white glitter powder they looked like this:

Hmmm....I quite like it with the mask still on, lol!

I added some tissue tape to the bottom of the panel and some lace, and then stuck the hearts on and added some dimensional glue

And here's the sentiment - I've used the 'splodge' stamp again:

Now of course normal procedure at this point would be to show you the whole card.  But since I forgot to take a picture of it before it went off to Daughter's teacher, I can't do that.  I don't think it matters that much because I really just wanted to show some details - I always love seeing details of other people's projects; there's usually something I fancy trying myself.

This is such a long post!  Before I go, you may remember the backgrounds I made on glossy card a couple of weeks ago using alcohol inks and Lindsay Mason's technique.....well, I thought I'd use these for two male teacher cards, and just stamped a Katzelkraft image on each one:

I think they look very effective, and sooooo simple to do!

So, that's what I've been doing this Saturday.  I hope that some of it has been instructional and even a little interesting!

 

 

End of.

For me, today was the end of term.  I do have to go in tomorrow bearing some little gifts for the children (notepads that I've decorated) and some chocolate brownies for them to sink their little teeth into.  And I also have to go to Daughter's school bearing yet more brownies and a couple of cakes for teachers.

Here's what I attached to the gift I bought for my teacher, the one I work with and who I'm really going to miss:

I cut a thick chipboard tag with the Tim Holtz die, and had a pleasant ten minutes using the scraps to cut some of those lovely bookplates that go with it.  The paint is Ecogreen in two shades of teal, and I used some crackle medium in between.  Interestingly, I realised that the crackles come out shiny from the medium.  I remembered, when I did the back of the tag, not to keep going over the brush strokes, which is why it's the back of the tag because it's not covered up! 

No doubt you can see what I've done from then on; the microbeads are stuck on with some Glossy Accents; I was mildly excited by this as it gives quite good definition and dries quickly so I will probably be using this technique again!

This used up a few scraps.  I've been dipping into my scraps basket quite a lot this week, which pleases me.

I got some pressies, too!  One of them was from the child I've been supporting this year - not an easy job, I can tell you.  Suffice to say that I have to make sure, should I decide to wear heels to work, that I have a pair of child-catching shoes to change into!  But this is what his mum gave me

This is soooo tactile!  AND it makes a lovely chiming sound, I couldn't think what it might be before I opened it!  It's the sort of thing I want to take away on holiday with me, just so that I can hold it and stroke it and polish it and listen to it bonging away when I move it!

I got a lovely bracelet too, from my teacher:

Not the best view, but it's very  nice.  It's from a shop called Alligator Pear which you may have visited.  I haven't; I like to be very amusing and refer to it as Crocodile Banana.  No doubt I will continue to find that highly amusing until someone gives me a slap...

Now, I have decided to entertain you with some of my stamping adventures.  Yes, hold on to your horses, folks.  If you feel like popping back tomorrow, I'm planning on posting a little something that might tickle your fancy!  And on Sunday there just might be something on here as a continuation of my acetate shennanigans last week.  You never know.....:D

 

WOYWW #111

Hehe, look at me, keeping up with the numbers!

I've just added to a thread on UK Stampers about ink pad storage, so I thought I'd show you mine.

This is one of the baskets in the Antonius storage unit I showed you last week; they're fairly inexpensive and I'm finding them most useful.

Prior to this, I had the Distress ink pads on an Ikea spice rack which I got from Freecycle, but now they've been ousted by those little glass spice jars they're selling to fit the shelves, which are perfect for little oddments like beads and findings, bulldog clips and all that stuff.

As you can see, the Distress Ink pads are now on their sides.  I took St Tim at his word when he said that it didn't matter which way they were stored, and indeed it doesn't seem to have made any difference.  They're also easier to get out than when they were stacked on top of each other, and they do fit rather perfectly in that compartment!  Underneath them is some rug-stop stuff so that they don't all fall over when the compartment is less than full. 

(ETA:  That thing that Tim Holtz said, came from someone else on here, you may recognise your own reportage, lol.  Apparently the ink in the pads forms a 'suspension' and won't drip out or move around.  So storing them upside down doesn't make the surface any juicier, and there is no 'right way up'.)

There are only two ink applicators in that other bit - I swear I haven't put them on top, lol.  Lots of cut'n'dry foam, though, and it's easy enough to find the right bit.

So I'm very happy with this system at the moment; I thought it might be a compromise but it hasn't turned out that way at all.

If you'd like to see some more crafty corners, there's a lovely long list on Julia's blog here.  If you're on that list, please know that I don't actually aim to visit everyone on the same day, and I don't expect an apology if you visit my blog 'late' - any visit at all is most welcome and appreciated.

Lately I've taken to visiting in blocks of ten - the first ten after my own, the first ten from number 1, the first ten before my own.....whatever takes my fancy!  I think it's a shame that the people who post first seem to get far more visitors than those at the end.  So let's mix it up a bit! :D

Sunday School - Acetate 101 (and lots of Stuff)

Oh. My. Goodness.  The things I do....:D

This post isn't called 'Acetate 101' because I'm going to give you the complete low-down on acetate.  Oh no.  It's because, should I find myself in George Orwell's Room 101 with all the things I hate most, acetate will be there after today.

This might be a very long post, and it might not tell you much, but really I feel I should share my disasters and triumphs, lol.

I just thought it would be a good idea to look at various ways of using acetate on projects, as I've got a fair bit of it languishing in a drawer.  The other week I went to Daughter's art exhibition and there was one display which made lots of use of acetate, layered onto collages.  It added a brilliant extra dimension to the work and I thought I'd come home and dig my own bits of acetate out.

So here's what I have:

These are pre-cut shapes from Fancy Pants which came in a pack with some album pages.  I've used one of the albums without including any of the shapes, so most of the shapes are still in the packet.  I've got two packs actually.

These are the pages I used.  Lots of shapes there, as you can see.  I did use a boat and a couple of other bits a while ago, but the rest are still there.

This is something I got as part of a prize package, very pretty stuff (although it's the same design in six different colours, they might have mixed it up a bit more!)

This is the remains of a packet of Papermania acetate.

I've got a couple of other bits too, but I'll leave them for now because to start with I thought I'd focus on cutting the acetate into shapes....

This is where it got interesting, and not a little frustrating.

Straight away I had problems when Youngest, who was practising a little Extreme DIY upstairs - cutting the legs off his loftbed without taking it apart first - wanted me to go and help him.  I don't know where to start criticising his efforts, lol.  Firstly he was using my pruning saw.  'It's really good at cutting wood', he said enthusiastically.  I didn't say anything.

Second, he didn't seem to have thought through what he was doing.  Not unusual for a 14 year old boy, or indeed anyone of the male persuasion.  Personally I would have taken the bed apart, measured and cut the legs and then put it back together.  He didn't seem to understand why I was getting so exasperated.  'But what's going to HAPPEN' - I kept saying - 'when you try and lift the bed down to the floor?'  He couldn't seem to grasp the fact that underneath the bed was something of exactly the same size, ie the bit of the frame he'd detached it from.  Sigh...

Third (we'll get back to the acetate in a mo, I promise), he hadn't tidied anything up.  The bedroom was still full of furniture, most of which was preventing him, the bed or me from moving anywhere.  There was stuff underfoot, crunching and sticking to my feet and jabbing my ankles.  And there was stuff in front of the door, too, so that I couldn't get out of the flippin room.

After about 15 minutes he'd had enough of me haranguing him and let me escape.  About an hour later he invited me to go and have another look, and lo and behold he had smallened the bed and very nearly tidied up the room.  It's so much better when I don't have to watch.

Right.  Acetate.  By the time I got back to my desk I was a little frazzled, and what happened next didn't improve matters.

I thought I'd die-cut some of the pretty Slice acetate, so I got out a Cuttlebug Cut'n'Emboss butterfly die.  I'll show you what I ended up with:

There - ain't that purdy!  Well, not entirely.  See that butterfly at the top left without its antennae?  There's a story behind that.

I sandwiched everything up as per usual, and it all went through as I would expect it to - but when it came out, several bits of the butterfly had failed to cut properly.  So I added a shim (the first effort got chucked out) and tried again.  This time it worked better but the die had a distinct warp to it, as did one of my cutting plates. Veritably, dear reader, it began to resemble a banana.  And I still had to cut some of the antennae away using a pair of Squizzers.  The top left butterfly wouldn't play so it's got none.

Next up was the Tattered Florals die.  No problems with that one, which was as I expected.

I will just say here, that I had a great deal of trouble getting this acetate clean.  The green sheet I used first, had obviously had a stint on the Slice cutting mat and was covered with dried-on adhesive.  I had to scrub it several times in soapy water to get the stuff off...

Next up, nesting dies:

That wasn't much fun, either!  Initially I cut a piece of acetate to fit the cutting mat and arranged several dies on it before putting it through the machine.  I'd already tried one little circle die on a scrap left over from the Tattered Florals, and it didn't cut very well at all.  So I added a shim.  Half way through the Big Shot, there was a hell of a lot of noise going on and I was very much afraid that my cutting mat - which was bending upwards at one end in an even more banana-esque way - might snap.  So I took the shim off (it was in two halves).

Well, the bit with the shim had cut okay.  The bit without the shim hadn't and again I had to get the squizzers out.   The shapes are definitely  useable, but I wasn't enjoying myself very much!

These are the dies I used, by the way.  Top ones are Spellbinders and the bottom ones are Go Kreate.

So, on to the Papermania acetate.

This is an old pack and I can't find it anywhere online now.  The fact that I've looked might give you a clue as to how my acetate-cutting experience changed at this point!

The Papermania acetate is MUCH thicker than the Slice stuff.  My favourite, the blue check, didn't have much of the sheet left, but I put it through with a scalloped circle die and straight away I got this

There's a sheet with birds on which I won't show you because you can't buy it any more (!), but here's what I did with it:

I also cut out some of the little birds with scissors - the ones that hadn't been obliterated by my die-cutting, and tried the butterfly thing again:

And it all worked much better with the thicker acetate.  So then I had a brainwave and put some pink Slice acetate through in a double layer!

It cut much better like this.

So, there you go!  I had intended to do stuff with the acetate once I'd cut it out, but I feel quite drained by all the drama!  I did, however, make a layout using the flower shapes and one butterfly:

And here I've tucked a label shape under the photo at the bottom, and added a rub-on to it, which is something I'll be testing out next time as well!

So, next time I'll be looking at the ready-cut acetate and doing stuff with that.  Although the patterned Papermania acetate is no longer available, they do clear 12x12 sheets which are of the same thickness.  Having had this stuff in the drawer for ages without using it all, I've suddenly become rather fond of it and I've got plans to buy some of the plain stuff! 

I should point out, of course, that the Slice stuff is thin because it needs to be - the Slice wouldn't cut through the thicker stuff.

I hope this has been of interest, even though it's not very exciting!  Do come back and have another look next week - I'm really looking forward to doing pretty things with my plain acetate.

NB:  I decided to highlight all the stuffs I've typed, rather than find a better word, because I'm not afraid to expose my shortcomings, and also because I've now drunk quite a lot of Peach Schnapps in an effort to sleep despite my sciatic twinges :D

 

 

Scrap Whispers Blog Hop

Hi and welcome to this month's Scrap Whispers  Blog Hop!  If you nip over to the blog now, you'll see Rosey's fab tutorial on how to make up your own page kit.  Here's what I came up with:

I started off with a dig through the Basic Grey/American Crafts drawer (my categories are a bit random!) and found some Sultry papers that need using up.  The two solid pink sheets are the reverse of some AC papers, and at the back there's a sheet of self-adhesive pink foil paper which is very useful for making little butterflies and things.  The stickers are also BG Sultry, and there are some Glitz mini alphas, some Anna Griffin flocked stickers and some AC Flair badges that I found in TK Maxx for a pound.  A couple of flowers, some scraps of ribbon and lace - the thin pink ribbon is from a top - some buttons and some acetate shapes which will be featuring in my Sunday School post this week!

Looking at this later, I decided to add another piece of plain paper and a die-cut I found lurking, along with a few clay buttons and some stamped tickets left over from a magazine article:

Here's the first page I produced:

(...which makes it sound like there's another one too, but there isn't yet, lol.)

Sadly, another addition fell by the wayside when my printhead packed up and I couldn't print out some sheets of ads from a fabby book I have.  I'm supposed to wait for them to send me a new printhead, but if I take my printer back to Curry's they'll give me an entire new machine so I might do that later, or tomorrow when I have a big strong man to help me, lol.

So, have a rummage through your stash and see what you can come up with - it's a great way of using up all those goodies lurking at the backs of drawers!

To see what the rest of the DT did, hop over to their blogs which are listed here in no particular order:

Georgina

Nilsa

Kelly

Rosey

 

And don't forget to link your own page-kit photos when you've finished rummaging!