Gel Medium + Glitter + Distress Stains = A Lot Of Fun!

Warning: Very Messy!

 I have a few techniques I want to try with Gel Medium. So I bought some Liquitex Gel Medium (my local spotlight just started carrying Liquitex!) and my first technique was with glitter. My friend walked into a thrift shop here and found a bunch of glossy photo paper someone had gotten rid of. I don't know why but I decided it would be perfect to try this on lol.

I taped the photo paper to my craft sheet with repositional tape and then taped the stencil in place with florist tape. I used a 12" Crafter's Workshop Daisy Cluster stencil used a blob of the gel medium. You can spread it with a craft trowel, an old credit card or any other scraper type thing you have. Make sure you get in all the small spaces and then remove stencil carefully and clean immediately with water., otherwise the gel stays there forever, then I sprinkled glitter all over the gel and set it aside to dry.

For the sentiment I used a KaiserCraft stencil I had gotten a long time ago called party time. This time I used regular card stock and repeated the steps above after die cutting a Lifestyle Crafts Nesting Oval to fit over the words.

 On another piece of photo paper I grabbed a bunch of colours of distress stains (from the new 12) and splattered them on the paper. I then used the movers and shapers butterflies as well as an ittty bitty Lifestyle Crafts Nesting Butterfly to die cut the splatter paper (I tried using normal paper but it was too washed out compared to the vibrant photo paper).

When the gel medium is dry I used a paintbrush to remove the excess glitter (if you don't do this your stains end up caked with glitter! (you will still have some but not as much as if you use the brush). At this point you have to work quickly because the photo paper absorbs the colour really fast so if you want the colours to blend a bit I recommend starting in one spot and doing adjacent gaps. I used distress stains to add the colour by gently dabbing over the area I wanted a particular colour.  Once I had coloured it all I began to dry it. It looks like a mess but once dry you can dampen some paper towel and remove the excess stain from the glitter.

I used a plain white cs base to best show off the colours and adhered the flowered photo paper with double sided tape. The butterflies are glued down with glossy accents and the oval with a combo of foam tape and glossy to help it adhere to the glitter. I  have to say the colours are even more vibrant in real life lol. Hard to get accurate pictures of it with all the sparkling! What little girl wouldn't love this :)
Happy Scrappin'
Purple

I am entering this at:
Crafting By Designs - Anything Goes
Love to Create Challenge - All That Glitters
One Stop Craft Challenge - For The Kids
Inspire Me Fridays - Anything Goes
Make It Monday - Anything Goes

12 Cards of Christmas T!m Holtz Style Card 6

Ok so here we are at the finish of the first half of the 12 cards for me. I will say right now I am not a fan of the ornament on this card so will be changing it at some point! lol. But firstly I want to finish the next 6 cards. cannot believe I am half way or that tonight is the last tag! Anyways, here is the inspiration behind this card, T!ms tag 6.

I had a few different ideas on how to do the background but nothing was working so with a lot of playing i think I ended up with something pretty cool :).

Card 6


I cut a coke can to give me a sheet of metal as I don't have any sticky back metal sheets or anything like that. If you are going to use a drink can be very careful as the edges are very sharp!

I grabbed my Ornaments Sizzix texture plate. I made my sandwich with a couple of extra shims for a deep emboss. To get a deeper emboss I have found it best to layer in this way. Texture plate, Silicon Shim, cardstock shim/s then top plate from sizzix start kit.

I grabbed paint dabbers in a vast array of colours. I started by adding a different colour on and slightly around each ornament. I was going to try and use cotton tips to remove the excess paint from around the ornaments. This was an epic fail because of how the die was designed. So I ended up covering the whole thing in colour. just blobs of the different colours from the ornaments til there was no silver showing through. Basically I made the colours of the ornaments reach out and touch.

After letting the paint dry I grabbed alcohol inks in Snow Cap, Cranberry and Bottle and covered the entire thing. I didn't use the gold... Not sure why I put it in the picture lol.

I grabbed my heidi swapp sand paper and got to work! I sanded over the ornaments to bring them to life and show the lovely colours underneath. I also sanded the paint and ink away to show the metal around the edges. Don't add too much pressure when sanding when you only want to take the top layer off, took me a few mins to get a nice pressure but better to start too soft than rip all the paint off on your first swipe!

I grabbed some dark purple cardstock and trimmed it to card matting size. I distress the edges with my distress tool.

Now if you are like me you rush ahead wwithout thinking what elements you are going to add to your card. So I used glossy accents to stick my metal sheet to my card matt then double sided tape to stick to my white card base, which I coloured the edges of with Purple Twilight paint dabber.

Now i decided to add a dangling ornament... Haha I already stuck everything down. I had to carefully peel up a little of the top edge of the metal and pierce it with my piercing tool.

I used my ecraft to cut another ornament out and my Sizzix Teturz Candy Cane plate and ran the ornament through the cuttlebug.

I grabbed a zig glue pen and followed the lines to fill every second line with purple glitter, I did the same again (rather impatiently oops!) and used blue glitter. If you are going to do this don't be like me! Wait til the first lot of glitter dries first lol.

I used two silver jump rings and some chain to add the ornament to the front of the card.

Another finished card. As I said though not happy with the finish of this one so I will make a new ornament in the dark purple of the matt and just add glitter to one set of stripes or maybe even Stickles to make life a little less messy. In less that 24 hours I spilt water, dropped a pot of Multi-Medium Matte and knocked over a tall tube of blue glitter! Stickles seem the way to go! lol Will update this blog when I re-finish the card :).

Hope you like the background technique as that's the star of the show!
Happy Scrappin'
Purple

Pretty Prima Like Flowers

I used some Puffy White Flowers and different colouring techniques and decorations to make some Prima Like Flowers of Spain Madeiros flowers. For the centres I used different I am roses roses. To colour my petals I used Distress Stains and Distress Inks. Any dye ink pads can be used to get the same effect or even re-inkers mixed with a little water.

The first method I used was to make sure the top of my Distress Stain was good and juicy and then touch the top of each petal to the top of the Distress Stain and let it soak up the colour to where I was happy with how much it had on the tip. I liked the idea of a bit more colour on the ends so let it soak up a bit.

The second method can be used with Distress Stains, Distress Ink Pads, Re-inkers, Watercolours, Pearls/Pearlex mixed into a paint even paint I would imagine. Add medium of choice to your craft mat and mix with water. Using a paintbrush or aqua brush I brushed the tips of my flowers with my colour choice.

The picture above shows the first flower made by distress stain alone, the next is distress stain, water and aqua brush the third is distress pad, water and aqua brush. The colour used is Dusty Concord.

The third method is as above but instead of using a brush, make sure you have a good amount of pooled colour and water on your craft mat or even in a dish. Dip the tips of the flower one at a time in the colour. be aware however that you need to remove the flower petal well before it gets to where you want the colour to stop as it will continue to travel down the petals some way. (I got caught out by this lol)

To colour my centre roses I used the same methods as above, using the Distress Stain or aqua brush.

Some I then misted with home made pearl mister. Make sure the flowers are dry first and that you only lightly mist as the colour will run if you spray too much. Others I used Glitter on and one has both glitter on the centre rose and Diamond Dust on the outer petals.

Not much effort to get a really lovely flower. Another think you can do when using the aqua brush if you only want shimmer on the coloured bits of your flower is to add pearl shimmer spray to your ink rather than plain water. I did this with some of my flowers as well. Hope you like my flowers. If anyone wants a youtube vid let me know in comments. if I get enough will do a tut and post a link.

 The colours used here in clockwise order are Spun sugar(behind the red), Barn Door, Tumbled Glass, Aged Mahohany, Milled Lavender and Wild Honey
Happy Scrappin'
Purple