I've been a busy bee....

Permission granted by Mark to have a play day...so here's what I did ...a few pieces with the new squiggly Ink minis and some dijon metal.....and I have fun making a bespoke background too.

Let's start with the background. It's made of several layers of all kinds of stuff, but once it was thoroughly dry I sanded it to grunge it up a little and to make it smoother for stamping onto. I used colourwash sprays, paint, ink sprays, stamps, old book and dictionary papers, tissue papers.....that's probably about it! LOL

Next I stamped onto some metal (mocha and dijon), and watercolour paper. I stamped each image once onto the metal, and twice onto the paper. I was thinking that I might colour some images with my coloursoft pencils, or layer stamped metal onto the background...so at this stage I was keeping the options open by working with just a few colours. In the end, my background worked better with the dijon, so I'll keep my stamped mocha for another day.

For Mini 25, the cat, make a tape sandwich of cardstock, humungo tape, and the stamped dijon metal. Next use a pointed teflon tool to outline the stamped design (stamped with stazOn ink).

You can see I don't stick to the lines exactly, it can look good if you work off the lines (look at the tail). You can also use the tool to add extra pattern likeI did on the stripes.

The nice thing about a metal-tape-card sandwich is that the combination is soft, so you can easily make embossing marks in the metal, but the metal is also supported , so it doesn't stretch, and this makes it easy to cut out too. You will need non-stick pointy scissors. I use the Red Handled Tim Holtz ones.




For the finished sample, I cut out the cat, even though it looks like metal from the front, as the back is cardstock, you can easily secure it to the project with your preferred tape or glue.

I stamped the words 'you know you love me' directly onto the background. Added a few mini tags, and layered to book page that had been painted lightly.

The little footprint makes a nice border edge, and I chose to grunge up the blue backing paper to match the style of the card.

The Lighthouse, Squiggly Mini 23, was stamped onto watercolour paper, and coloured with coloursoft and prismacolour pencils. Trim it out, and I layered it onto torn pieces of the background.

The tag behind was a nice idea that turned out better than I expected. I sprayed 2 mini misters of distress ink (broken china in one, and peeled paint mixed with vintage photo in the other) with mica powders through a tattered angels stencil. Dried this off, then rubber DTP over the top with scattered straw. Next I painted over the complet tag a layer of gesso which was thinned a bit with water, and dried it off. I then sanded the edges of the tag quite a lot, and rubbed Walnut distress ink into the sanded parts direct to paper. Last, I spraye the whole tag with water to soften the walnut stain ink, dabbed off the excess liquid with a paper towel, and dried with a heat tool. I really like this effect. The trim at the bottom was a left over bit of sketch book paper rubbed with walnut stain and sprayed with a distress ink spray. I like to stick everything together with Claudine Hellmuth matte gel medium. It is strong, and when it dries there are no marks left from where it night have smooched out.

Squiggly Mini 24 is the windmill.

I used the colouring pencils trying to pick out colours from the background paper. One way to blend the pencils is to use a dark colour, then colour over the top of it with white or a light shade. You get a lovely blended result, and you can do this over and over as you work to get the shade you like best.

The sails of the windmill were stamped onto dijon metal, and then made into a tape sandwich. I used the teflon tool to add texture. I also like to add bling to the spots, or you can punch out some. I couldn't find my tiny hole punch so I just cut it out and stuck it down. The sails behind are coloured green, so if I had found the punch, that would have been a nice surpise to see that peeking through.

I layered the windmill to a piece of painted book page, background, and a piece of card painted with cream and lavender, and stamped with SM08 in gold paint.

Here we have Squiggly Mini 26, the cute birdbox with some quirky little inhabitants!

First I stamped the stamp 3 times onto the background in Jet black archival ink. This is where you see how smooth your sanding was!

Next cut out all the pieces from a dijon tape sandwich, and do the same for a watercolour background.

Try different pieces in different positions until you are happy with the layout, and stick all the pieces down with matte gel medium. I layered this to book page and black card (not shown).

And finally a tag with the birds. This time, I stamped straight onto the background again, and used coloured pencils to change the tone of the birds. The trick to making this stand out on the background was that I mixed some plum colourise paint (Stewart Gill) with glazing liquid (Golden) and painted it with a fine paintbrush around the birdhouse. This transcluscent paint won't obliterate the background, but leaves a dark stain. I left this for a few seconds, then dabbed off the excess with a paper towel to soften the edges. You may need to repeat this a few times to get the shadow even all around the stamped image. Making the background darker this way helps the birdhouse pop out.


These samples turned out in a different colour palette than I normally use, but I think it's interesting and challenging to work with different colours to your 'safe' ones! I was generally thinking blue, purple, ochre...which is kind of odd I guess, but there is the odd dash of green (because blue and yellow mixed make green), just like a hint of pinnk emerges occasionally too.

Have a great weekend!

Leandra