2016 #23 To Bleach or not To Bleach {by Lesley Ebdon}

2016 Topic 23: Bleach Techniques

Hi everyone, Lesley here this evening to share a couple of cards I made for the current topic of bleaching techniques, using the wonderful Sara Naumann stamps. I have used bleach in the past to ‘paint’ colour out of images and to stamp with but I find it takes a lot of testing of card, ink and even the bleach to some extent, to get the colour you want so I decided to go down the ‘faux bleach’ route to create the backgrounds for some cards. I have to say I’m not too keen on the smell of bleach either, lol!

I began by blending some Distress Inks and Adirondack Inks onto various papers and card and then I tried removing some of the inks by damping a piece of kitchen towel with bleach and using it as a pad to ‘ink’ up the stamp and also using a piece of Cut n Dry foam through a stencil. PS018 Next I used a wet wipe as a pad to ‘ink’ up the stamp and again through the stencil. The stamp is from ESN13

ESN13

The top row of samples were done solely with the wet wipes and I was really pleased with these especially on matte coated card. The bottom row were done with bleach and these were less than successful, either barely removing the ink or changing the colour to something I didn’t want. The old book pages didn’t work very well with bleach or water.

One of the poor samples was stamping bleach onto an old book page. Now this book is one I found when we were emptying Mum’s bungalow and it’s about 80+ yrs old and falling to bits. It’s extremely discoloured but boy, is the paper tough! It drank in the ink but didn’t hardly budge from the bleach so I used it to stamp the star using black Archival Ink.

I cut it out and stuck it to a piece of canvas I had covered with Vermillion Archival.

I then stuck the canvas to some thin cardboard and cut the star out again. Next I applied Prima Clear Crackle Paste and left it to cure. I then watered down some PaperArtsy Gold Metallic paint and brushed it over the crackle, working it into the tiny cracks before wiping it back with a wet wipe. When it was dry I lightly applied some Classic Treasure Gold.

I cut a square from one of the background pieces I liked, inked the edges with the Vermillion then ghost stamped the 3 stars (Hot Picks 1501) using first Vermillion then Black Archival and then the word Believe which I cut from a quote on ESN15. I can still match the word up with the rest of the quote when I want to stamp it all. I attached the square to a base card and finally adhered the canvas star with 3D foam.

ESN15

Card 2. 

I really loved the background that came from using Slate and Cloudy Blue Adirondack Inks on the matte coated card and decided it would look nice with a little sparkle as a Christmas card.

I began by stamping Sara’s star onto white card. I first inked up with Versamark and then again with the Slate Adirondack before stamping the image and then I heat embossed with some new embossing powder I bought last week. It’s clear with very fine glitter and course white granules which gives and nice snowy effect. I used the same powder on some little wooden stars.

I don’t have any of Sara’s lovely Christmas stamp sets so I found one of my favourite Hot Pick sentiments (Xmas 08) and stamped it onto my background piece with Versamark ink and embossed with white. I used a Versamark dabber to apply ink randomly round the edges and then embossed with the sparkly, snowy powder.

Xmas 08

I attached the piece to a card blank, then adhered Sara’s star with 3D foam and the wooden stars with matte gel to finish off.

Well that’s it from me for this year, lol! I hope you enjoyed my ‘cheat’ bleached cards and all the other fabulous inspiration from the rest of this topic’s contributors and that they encourage you to have a go yourself. 

Lesley

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Beautiful cards  Lesley, i love that you 'cheated' and showed us these great effects that don't use bleach at all. Fantastic for anyone who is sensitive to the smell of bleach. ~Darcy

All of our bloggers love to see your twist on their ideas, particularly if you were inspired directly by their post; so please spare a moment to comment or make your own creative item. They all love to see your feedback and what you can do more than you realise!

We would love to see how you interpret this Bleaching Techniques topic by linking what you make to our 2016 Challenge #23: Bleaching Techniques on this page HERE. The Bleaching Techniques link will close 17:00 (London Time) Sunday, Dec 11th 2016. The winner will be announced 2 hours later at 19:00.

All links go in the draw to win a £50 voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store.

2016 #19 Oriental Beauty {by Lesley Ebdon}

2016 Topic 19: Die Cuts

Hi Everyone, it's Lesley here tonight and I'm delighted to share with you a canvas I created using one of my favourite Lynne Perrella stamp sets. There are many different die cutting machines available, manual, electronic, programmable, etc., but I just have my trusty Big Shot and a tonne of dies that rarely get used these days so it was nice to put them to use for a change. 

I adore Lynne's Oriental images and I decided this was also the perfect opportunity to use some beautiful papers/card I bought about 10 yrs ago when I first started crafting. In fact you could say these papers and some Oriental wood backed stamps were what started me on my crafting journey (obsession?). I hope you enjoy my project.

I started with a deep sided 8” x 8” canvas and a selection of papers and card....I also pulled out a selection of dies.

Using the square and rectangle dies I die cut sections of the papers I wanted to feature on my canvas. A fair bit of juggling about ensued before I was happy with the placement and stuck everything down with gel medium. I didn't bother with the middle as I knew I was going to cover it up.

I used a beautiful leafy die and a piece of sturdy card to create a stencil, mixed a coordinating green from the Frescos using Chartreuse and French Roast, applied it with a stencil brush and followed this with a thin patchy wash of Nougat Fresco Finish. I wanted to mute the colours of the background slightly so the main feature would not be overpowered by them. I then applied a Versamark Ink pen to all the edges of the diecut pieces and heat embossed using gold embossing powder.

Next I stamped the Koi image from LPC25 all round the deep sides of the canvas using White Fire Metallic Fresco Finish.

LPC25

Now to concentrate on the main feature image. I used the cabinet dies to cut a large background piece from the red card, edged it with the Versamark and gold embossing and the smaller cabinet die to cut from a lighter coloured designer card. I stamped the beautiful image onto Tim Holtz tissue and painted it on the reverse with PaperArtsy Fresco Finish.

Leandra has a fab video on how to paint on tissue with the Frescos .......pity I didn't refresh my memory by watching it again because I forgot the final stage of painting the image with white which makes the colours pop more! Never mind, it didn't turn out too badly, lol! I tore round the image, having first 'drawn' round it with a wet brush and then applied it to the smaller die cut with matte gel medium. I have to say the TH tissue is very tough and even well soaked with water it doesn't want to tear. I finished this piece off with the gold embossed edge and then adhered it to the other layer before fixing it to the canvas.

I then created a masterboard by roughly brayering the Fresco Finish colours I wanted and using some of the smaller stamps from the set. Next I die cut loads of the teeny blossoms, delicately sponged the edges of them all, shaped them a bit and layered them together.

After die cutting the branches I positioned everything where I wanted them on the canvas and stuck them all down. The final touch was the little bird which was given the Treasure Gold treatment before being stuck to the canvas with heavy gel medium.

Well there you have it! I thoroughly enjoyed making use of just a few of my dies, especially the blossom and the leafy spray and although I was sad to finally cut up those gorgeous papers it does feel good to have put them to use at last, lol! I hope you like the final result and I can't wait to see what everyone creates for this limitless topic.

Lesley

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Thanks for joining us Lesley, this is so pretty, calm and restful. Your selection of papers make a beautiful backdrop to the die cut shapes. Well done for cutting and edging all those tiny flowers, such patience! ~Darcy

We would love to see how you interpret this Die Cuts topic by linking what you make to our 2016 Challenge #19: Die Cuts, on this page HERE.

All of our bloggers love to see your twist on their ideas, particularly if you were inspired directly by their post. 

All links go in the draw to win a £50 voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store. The Die Cuts link will close 17:00 (London Time) Sunday, Oct 16th 2016. The winner will be announced 2 hours later at 19:00.

2016 #13 Owlandish {by Lesley Ebdon}

2016 Topic 13: Paper Piecing

Hi everyone, it's Lesley here and tonight I would like to share a fun canvas board showing you the 'Owland' I have created using PaperArtsy's cute and quirky Squiggly Ink stamps and lots of paper piecing of tiny cut outs.

Poetic licence comes into play here because my little owls are out and about when the sun is high in the sky so for once they can enjoy seeing pretty colours through their googly eyes instead of shades of grey, lol!

Step One: I took two A4 sheets of decent quality copy paper and cut them in half so I had four A5 pieces. For two of them I used lots of green shades of PaperArtsy's Fresco Finish paints deliberately applied very randomly with my brayer. On the other two pieces I used shades of pink (yes PINK) on one and shades of orange and yellow on the other.

Step Two: I followed the painty layers with stamping lots of small Squiggly Ink images (plus a tiny flower from a Cat's Meow set) using different colours of Fresco paints and Archival Inks to create masterboards. I also applied a pinky orange mix of Fresco Finish paints to the top half of my canvas board by pouncing the paint on with a sponge but I was on a roll and forgot to take a pic, lol!

SI Swirls and Curls 5

SI Flora and Fauna 4

Step Three: The next step was to create the rolling hills from the two green masterboards. First I drew the shapes I wanted onto scrap paper, cut the pieces out and then drew round them onto the masterboards and cut them out again....two from the darker sheet and one from the lighter. I stamped out the sun, owls and the houses I wanted to use onto the pink and green sheets using Black Archival ink and cut them all out.

SI Flora and Fauna 3

Step Four: I painted a coat of Golden Matt Gel Medium over the bottom half of the board and also onto the back of the paper pieces for the hills and stuck them to the board marrying up the shapes so there were no gaps. I followed this with sponging some green Archival Ink along the tops of the hills to give them more definition. I then set about positioning the pieces on the board to see where I wanted them before stamping them again directly onto the board, with the exception of the owls, using Black Archival Ink. The two larger owls I stamped onto white card and cut them out.

SI Flora and Fauna 5

Step Five: I then cut the owls and houses up into pieces as dictated by the stamp lines and then swapped the pieces around to create houses and owls in two colours. I also stamped the images with the small leaves directly onto the board and coloured them with pencils. I carefully stuck all the little pieces on top of the houses and used a bit of white pen to add a little interest.

Step Six: I then used a paper stump with Black and Olive Archival Inks to create shadows round the houses.

Step Seven: I didn't take pics of the next process either, sorry, but in the previous 2 pics you can see them in position! I stamped the larger leafy branches onto more of my green masterboards, added colour with pencils and cut them all out. I arranged these on my board and stuck them on and then fixed the owls on top with 3D foam. At the last minute I decided to stamp the tiny owls from the Squiggly Mini 26 before stamping the phrase and cutting the words up.

Mini 26

Step Eight: The final touches were the gold nail heads on top of each house and the googly eyes for the big owls. I also used a piece of Cut n Dry foam to edge the board with Tree Branch Archival Ink which I should have done before I started sticking all the bits on.....would have been much easier!

I  ended up with quite a few pieces left over so created the gift tag and card. If you would like to see these in more detail they are over on my blog.

I hope you have enjoyed the creation of my cute project and feel like joining in with the topic using any of the inspiration shown on the blog over the past one and a half weeks. 

Thankyou for stopping by this evening.

Lesley Xx

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This is so much fun Lesley, the little birds and houses just look so great in the two colours and animated with the addition of the googly eyes. A fab gift, especially with the card and tag. ~ Darcy

We would love to see how you interpret this topic by linking what you make to our 2016 Challenge #13: Paper Piecing, on this page HERE.

All of our bloggers love to see your twist on their ideas,  particularly if you were directly inspired  by their post. 

All challenge links go in the draw to win a £50 voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store. The Paper Piecing link will close 17:00 (London Time) Sunday, July 10th 2016. The winner will be announced 1  hour later at 18:00.

2016 #6 My Grandmother's Doily {by Lesley Ebdon}

2016 Topic 6: Liquid Sculpting Medium

Hi everyone, Lesley here tonight to share a Powertex and Hot Picks project with you. I've been to a couple of lovely, messy workshops recently creating with Powertex products so jumped in when I saw this topic coming up as one of the challenge themes. PaperArtsy products and Powertex, Wow, what a combination! Add to that mix one of my treasured doilies crocheted by my Grandmother and I created a doily 'vase'.

Step 1 : I started with a plain black glass vase and after making sure it was clean of any greasy finger marks, etc., and well dusted with an antistatic bag I stamped images from HP1008, HP1010 and a sentiment from HP1102 using Versamark ink and heat embossed them with WOW Vanilla White embossing powder.

HP1008, 

HP1010 

HP1102 

Step 2 : Once it had cooled down I covered the vase with cling film, turned it upside down with a kitchen roll middle inside it to raise it from the surface a little. I soaked the doily in Ivory Powertex, working it into the cotton yarn with my fingers (unless you like getting your hands extremely messy and sticky then latex gloves are a must, lol) draped it over the vase and then used my hairdryer to start the curing process whilst coaxing the doily into the shape I wanted. Once it was stiff enough to hold the shape I left it overnight to cure. (Apologies for shadowed photo but it was late at night when I took this one). 

Step 3 : Next I set about creating a butterfly. I drew the basic shape I wanted and cut it out as a template then dug out a wire working pin board that hasn't seen the light of day for years. I pinned around the template keeping the shape as much as possible and then wrapped wire round the pins twice for strength. I covered the wire with masking tape.

Step 4 : Time to get messy with Powertex again! First I removed the glass vase from the doily and using some old gauze dressing I had in my 'might come in handy' box and I cut a piece into strips about 2” wide then kept dipping a finger into the Powertex and very gently covering the gauze which I wrapped around the butterfly shape leaving a few tattered ends here and there. I used the same gauze to drape pieces onto the doily 'vase' and a tip for this is to use a wooden kebab skewer to tease the fragile gauze into the shapes you want. I again used a hairdryer to speed up the curing which didn't take long as the gauze was so fine. I then applied Sapphire, Classic and White Fire Treasure Gold to all the gauzy areas on the doily vase and the wavy folds around the top together with the butterfly.

Step 5: Now I turned to the flowers. I took a 12” x 12” sheet of good quality blue scrapbook paper, roughly brayered Buff (discontinued) and Snowflake Fresco Finish paints and then stamped the same 'bubbles' all over which I had embossed onto the vase, this time using Snowflake paint. I used a die to cut out the large spiral flowers.

Step 6 : I created wire stems covered with florists sticky tape which I glued to the back of the flowers with a glue gun and also added some stamens to the middles with the hot glue. To finish them off I edged the petals with White Fire Treasure Gold.

Step 7 : Finally, I removed the cling film and put the glass vase back into the doily, added the flowers and then glued the butterfly, with which I was inordinately pleased (it doesn't take much, lol), to the rim with hot glue.

I chose to keep my Treasure Gold colours very subtle but you could make them much stronger or you could dry brush your choice of Fresco colours. The finished doily vase reminded me very much of the little stiffened crochet baskets my Gran used to make which I think were starched. Powertex is a lot more fun and much more permanent, lol! There are quite a few similar ways doilies and lace can be used, for example you could shape them around blown up balloons to make light/lamp shades or over nicely shaped bowls to create lacy ones as tea light holders. Another tip is to remember Powertex only works with natural fibres not synthetic apparently although I haven't tried it myself. I hope this has given you a few ideas for using a permanent fabric stiffener.
Lesley

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Wow Lesley what a wonderful way to use a treasured piece from your Grandmother, practical and beautiful and so much better than being stored in a drawer. Well done for taking the plunge and using it. ~Darcy

We would love to see how you interpret this topic by linking what you make to our 2016 Challenge #6: Liquid Sculpting Medium, on this page HERE.

All of our bloggers love to see your twist on their ideas, particularly if you were inspired directly by their post. 

All links go in the draw to win a £50 voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store. The Liquid Sculpting Medium link will close 17:00 (London Time) Sunday, April 3rd. The winner will be announced 2 hours later at 19:00.

2016 #4 Flowers At The Abbey {by Lesley Ebdon}

2016 Topic #4: Image Transfer

Hi Everyone, Lesley here to share a project for the Image Transfer theme using Elizabeth Borer's beautiful new stamp set EEB07 which features the Morning Glory flowers.
I chose to offer a contribution to this topic because I had only ever once done an image transfer quite a few years ago and I wanted to try something out of my usual comfort zone. I also love the less than pristine, sometimes 'ethereal' images you get with transfer techniques. The method I used previously (in a workshop) was burnishing the chosen image onto the sticky side of sticky back canvas and I did try this first but I think the adhesive is degrading on my old adhesive canvas and it didn't work very well, unlike the fab result I got in the workshop, lol! Next, I tried Leandra's method of printing onto a transparency and transfering with Satin Glaze (as in her YouTube video) but I think I need more practice at that one, lol! It worked and is a quick method too but not the right results for what I wanted. This was probably more to do with the image I chose and my inexpertise so I'm sharing my third reasonably successful attempt.

Step 1: I began with 2 pieces of white/greyboard 15cm x 21cm (5.5” x 8”) and from one I cut an arched aperture using a diecut as a template. I had to do this by hand with a craft knife to get the arch where I wanted it.

Step 2: I gave the aperture piece (top layer) a coate of gesso then applied Grunge Paste tinted with Buff Fresco Finish paint through a brick/stonework stencil. When it was dry I gave the whole thing a coat of Buff and followed this with gently patting touches of Taupe, Caramel and Wintergreen Frescos over the stonework using the back side of a piece of Cut n Dry foam. I didn't use the soft sponge side as I didn't want the colours to sink into the 'grouting' between the stone blocks.

Step 3: I did a little light random stencilling using Taupe Fresco and the 'Wild flowers' quote using Caramel Fresco and followed this with stencilling the ivy using Wintergreen and Caramel and the quote bottom left with Black Archival Ink. To finish the board preparation I edged both top and bottom layers and the aperture edges with Gold Fresco Finish (my new favourite gold paint).

Step 4: Now for the image transfer! I printed my chosen photo (taken at Fountains Abbey) onto copy paper, applied a good coat of Golden Matte Gel and placed it face down onto a piece of cotton fabric. I made sure there was nice even contact (no lumps of glue or bubbles) between the fabric and paper and left it overnight to dry. I then began spritzing with water and gently rubbing with my fingers until I'd removed (most of) the paper and revealed the photo again.

Step 5: I now had the 'misty' look I was after and to finish the image I stamped part of the flourish from EEB07 along the bottom to look like creepers. I glued the image transfer to the back of the aperture using gel medium and then adhered the back layer of greyboard.

Step 6: Next I turned to creating the embellishments. I stamped out several of the Morning Glory images onto Smoothy Card, painted them with Fresco Finish Chalk Wintergreen and a little Pumpkin Soup and Plum and then fussy cut them all. I also gave the leaves 3 coats of Fresco Gloss Glaze.

Step 7: I arranged all the elements and adhered them with Heavy Gel to create some dimension and also added some tendrils of wired paper string. 

Here's a final detail close up.

I hope you enjoyed my foray into incorporating an image tranfer into a project. I certainly did and I want to practice more with Leandra's technique using transparencies and Satin Glaze. It's definitely quicker than the method I used, lol! If, like me you haven't tried this before, do have a go. There's a nice sense of satisfaction seeing the image emerge when you get it (more or less) right!
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Lesley this is beautiful, you certainly have an affinity with these stamps, you always make such classy projects with them. As a huge fan of Fountain's abbey it is a treat to see it brought to life in this way, the stamps are just perfect for this stunning architecture. The arch and the touches of Grunge Paste add just enough rugged texture to balance the delicate flowers. ~Darcy 
We would love to see how you interpret this Image Transfers  topic by linking what you make to our 2016 Challenge #4: Image Transfers, on this page HERE.

All of our bloggers love to see your twist on their ideas,  particularly if you were inspired directly by their post. 

All links go in the draw to win a £50 voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store. The Image Transfers link will close 17:00 (London Time) Sunday, March 6th. The winner will be announced 2 hours later at 19:00.