"Home" theme Postcards

Today Isa and I were emailing about ways to use Golden Glazes, and the inevitable happened and I ended up using them on some stuff.....as you do.

When I first started learning about Altered Books, there was a small series of book/ magazines published by Design Originals (actually it turned into a series) called AB101, 102, 103 and so on. The first 2 were pioneered by Beth Cote, and then they turned into a free for all with all kinds of contributors. She also did a DVD, and that's where I first saw the glazes being used.

Its very simple process: squeeze and spread. Glazes can be used over or under collage elements, and I have even used them to transfer ink-jet images into the 'paint'. On the left I used cut 'n' dry foam to apply the glaze (Yellow Ochre, Sea Foam Green) to watercolour paper. After each layer, dry well, and you can gradually build depth of colour along the way. Glazes blend really well, and they have a long 'open' time. [That means they take a while to dry]. These dry with a matte finish which is great because you can easily work on top of glaze to stamp, journal, collage etc as its not a plastic shiny finish.

Permanet dye inks work well over glazes for bold sharp images, but today I successfully used distress ink (antique linen, Frayed Burlap) up against a zig-zag mask at the top of this piece. I then over-stamped a flourish image (SM08) with distress. I did find the distress colour would get darker as I dried it with a heat gun.

To finish, I stamped an arch (Urban Snapshots - Arched Apertures 2) in Jet Black Archival ink on the toothy side of ink-jet transparency film..this is much easier than stamping onto slippery acetate. I then used Patina Green Glaze on the reverse shiny side of the acetate to create a little bit of contrast between the background. The doors are cut open and bent back, and a collage sheet image (tinted with distress inks) is placed behind for a focal point.

On the right the glaze background is much more Blue, however again I used Sea Foam Green, and Patina Green (which is more like a green/blue ...the BEST shade of the collection). This time 3 -4 layers gave a much stronger colour., But I did try to keep a couple of sections more green than others...it seems to appeal to the eye more.

You might recognise the swirly heart and numbers are grunge-board, the smaller of whcih was embossed in red, and held together with a brad. I then tried to imitate the font in the stamp (don't think I did too badly!) and the lines were stamped. The little house was stamped onto beige card, and masked and sponged with distress inks. The Stamp is from PaperArtsy Squiggly Ink Collection- Love & Kisses 1.

This glaze method is often how I start a canvas, because as the colours are soft, you gradually build. Starting with glazes isn't so scary as acrylics, and they are easy to move around, blend etc. You can also soften the harshness of acrylic with glazes, or create transcluscent, bespoke glazes to your own preference. And of course, they can be a way to seal your work.

A nice finishing touch to any type of mixed media project is to use a metallic or pearlescent glaze. These products can accent texture is a soft subtle way, and the pearlescent glaze mixed into any solid colour will add a really neat tint...particularly striking in darker paint shades.

Have you used glazes before? Let me know how you got on if you have time to drop a comment.

Squiggly Crazy

Ok so we all went a bit squiggly dizzy this weekend.

The squiggly stamps are featured on blogs all over the place. Check out Jo and Isa from our DT who dropped everything to do some awesome squiggling action with ink and paper. I'm sure you will be inspired to try out their colour combos and ideas!

On the right is my notebook cover that I made which has got the most oohs and ahhs so I thought you should get to see it too!. This is made with 5x5" manilla tags and bound with the zutter (I love that machine!)

Stamps from Squiggly ink ; Love and Kisses 1, Swirls anc Curls 1, 3&4.



And here'e the back cover

The inks are distress (Spiced Marmalade, Aged Mahogany and Broken China, Shabby Shutters)
The stamps are Squiggly ink -Swirls and Curls 4, Squiggly Mini #8.


Send me pics of your squiggly adventures - watch out, its addictive! In a squiggly kind of way.

Leandra

It's a squiggly life

This week i have pressed so much rubber! If you haven't heard already we just released a new collection called Squiggly Ink - it's a kind of swirly doodle style which is just SO useful! The new Squiggly Ink stamps look so much fun before you even start, and yesterday, after making them all week and itching to have a go, I finally got to sit down and play! YAY...

So many people are emailing with pics of what they have made too, i think these stamps really are causing a buzz, so I'm thrilled that people love this collection so much.

I always want to do soft and romantic style (maybe its a Valentines thing), but no matter what - it ends up full on colour, so this (left) is my closest to soft that i can do.

Most of these stamps are from Squiggly Ink- Love & Kisses 1, but the background stamp is SM08 (a mini). I love the striped blue background too - I just sponged (with Cut 'n' Dry foam) Broken China Distress Ink (Ranger) onto the edge of an ATC sized card, then stamped the 'stripe' in Walnut Stain Distress ink.

You can't really see it in the photo, but I cut the door out from the front of the house, set it back and raised the rest of the house to the front, so it looks like an arch. The key is plain Grungeboard from my buddie Tim Holtz. You can see various ideas on how to use this product on his blog. The 12 Christmas tags are loaded with great ideas for those of you new to ranger products. Is there anyone new to ranger's cool stuff???



So back to my artwork, they were all made with Distress inks, and this one is my favourite...I think the colours are fab! The feature stamp is Squiggly Ink - Love & Kisses 5 and the Hearts on the red layer are from Squiggly Ink - Swirls and Curls 4 . I used mini SM05 for the tiny hearts in the middle. The wings are swirly grungeboard, the crown is plain grungeboard.







On the left I used Linen, Tattered Rose which were boosted for depth with Worn Lipstick and Vintage Photo, The brackets are in Aged Mahogany. Then stamps, stamps stamp. Loads of images from loads of stamps. This was fun, and the key was to try and keep the pinks and browns in their own zones which softly blend into each other. The background stamps act as a 'bridge' between the zones.








And now for the quirky. I love this kind of stamping, and this is the kind of Valentines Kind I'm most likely to give! Very cheeky . The stamps are from Love and Kisses 6.



Wishing you all a great New Year.

Leandra

A very international girl....

Even though I'm a British lass raised in New Zealand, and now living in England for the last 6 years, my summer seems to have been a blur of international travel and excitement, some business related, and some family time. It has been so much fun, and this has been the first opportunity to let you know about it!

We spent 3 wonderful weeks in July in the South of France on a family holiday. Well I did squeeze in some teaching at 2 stores (in Perigeaux and Bergerac) but for the most part we hung out by the pool at the very private and rural gite we rented. We also had a few magnificent days in Paris on the way back home. The hotel was literally opposite the Louvre. The children enjoyed the whole trip so much - as did we of course. It was our first family holiday in 3 years, and it felt like a real treat. To top it off the weather was perfect, hot but not too hot, so we came back with healthy tans to the dull, overcast, English summer-that-never-was.

Next up was Germany, and Stempel Mekka - a stamp specific show which I have wanted to go to for years. It was great and I demoed all show long for Scrappendoejezo, a store from Holland exhibiting at the show. I bumped into lots of English people, and met many German online friends also.

I arrived home to visitors from New Zealand staying with us while they did the London tourist trail for a few weeks. It was great - all the kids got on well, and Jenny and Pete got roped into the odd bit of rubber manufacturing as the need arose! They have a beautiful scrapping store in the South of New Zealand (Paper Worx), and the sample (right) was inspired by a project Jenny and her daughter Charlotte taught our girls. It's 2 'licence plate style' boards hanging together decorated with papers, bling and ribbon, with a Post-it note in the centre of the lower panel.

The sample shown is a more altered version of Jenny's idea using Ranger Paint Dabbers, distress inks, UTEE embossing powders, and some of the French stamps we make just for the French market which are distributed and available via ACICAM in France. I used corrugated card as a base to work on. I just love highlighting the rippled texture with paint.

The following week we went to France with our New Zealand friends and our kids for a week for more sightseeing, and Jenny and I taught at ACICAM for a day to some French retailers. It was a great day, and Jenny taught this wonderful Christmas Gift box (left). It's a really versatile project for many occasions, and the lid is made from a single piece of 12 x 12 card - all folded, not cutting or glue required! We released some new Xmas stamps this winter called Noel, and so this particular sample uses some of those. Can you see the small circles in red? That has been a really popular new mini this month. You can see the new Christmas minis (numbers 35-42) on our website here .

As well as other teaching gigs in the UK during September and early October, I also managed to get back over to the Netherlands 2 weeks ago to teach at Scrappendoejezo. Dennis and Dorenda have a gorgeous shop. They carry a huge range of papers and all our stamps, and they teach wonderful workshops in their superb new warehouse area. Many of the classes I taught used the ranger meltpot, and so most of the participants learned how to use either UTEE or beeswax. One of my favourite classes was making this charm bracelet (right). It's kind of like a fondue system! So if you're into dipping stuff into chocolate or cheese then I think you'll be able to do this too! I will be going up to Blackpool to Cucumber Cottage for the first weekend in November to teach at the Altered Perceptions weekend, and this is one of the four classes I shall be doing there too. And yes those are Artgirlz felt balls and flowers that i dunked into UTEE you can see on the bracelet.....its full of lots of quirky bits and bobs!

Blue and Orange

Today I just had to make something using blue and orange. I guess its not a 'normal' combo, but it's so vibrant and I love it.

In February at SMAC (the Paris trade show) I met Mona from Creative Imaginations who was doing the most fabulous make n takes with their Bare Essentials line. At the end of the show she gave me a gorgeous goodie bag of bits and bobs, and a cropadile (to lighten her load home). So today I learned how to set eyelets with the cropadile into the tags. I guess that's kind of basic for those of you who know how to use these babies, but I must say, the tag thingy is really fat, and the eyelets (soft aluminium) seemed to set perfectly and evenly...a feat I have not achieved before with the other cazillion setters I own! So big thanks to Mona!

To make the tag I started with Ranger Acrylic dabbers (Sail Boat Blue/ Sunset Orange) and dabbed onto cut and dry foam, then smooched all over the tag back. This gave a scratchy covering. Over that I stamped a PaperArtsy Mini (MN#20) in Red Pepper/Sunshine Yellow, and stapled randomly blue and orange ribbons around the edge top make an arch. German Scrap (Fancy Border) got rubbed with Archival Black ink (Ranger) and glued over the staples. The image is Mini #10. I set blue star eyelets at the foot and gave her a party hat from a background I made with the blue and orange dabbers.

On the front window panel I inked up the mini #20 in blue/ orange and randomly stamped around the acetate frame. Then softly sponged blue and orange over the top. I set eyelets (metallic blue and orange) around the edge, attached book corners, and hand drew dashed lines to make the frame more 'finished'.

I just found out that Wednesday stamper is doing a ''door" challenge this week, I figured my Ribbon Arch could maybe fit that brief too. Blow me down, Belinda has got a gorgeous Blue and Orange (and pink) door! Go take a look the work there is so inspirational.

Leandra

Pink and Sparkly.....who me??

Today was one of those days where I really know I should be doing a whole lot of mundane stuff, but I was itching to do something more exciting. I'm kind of on top of admin (and ironing BTW...woke at 5.20 this am!!...too weird that never happens), and so when i get to a point where I'm almost organised I feel like i deserve a reward.

Right on cue, in comes an email enquiring how I like to use the new PaperArtsy mini backgrounds. (only available to buy from shops we supply at this point. Katy's Corner has all of the newbies in stock, call her if they aren't online yet.)

Here's the result...more pinky sparkly than my usual, but this is exactly what minis are designed for..to make your own BG's to co-ordinate with whatever (papers) you wish them to. Small or large areas and everything in between.

Still lovin those Ranger acrylic dabbers, this time 'peri' and 'aqua' got to feature. Used frayed burlap distress ink and transferred the PaperArtsy Picture Pack image with glazing medium onto white card. The embellishment is using opals EP's with a (probably discontinued) hero stamp to make a faux wax seal kind of effect.

This week's Wednesday Stamper Challenge is Fleur de Lys, so i get to play with those cool gals too. Satisfying day, did something different to my usual and had a total blast. And i didn't have to pick up kids till 4.30pm. Ahh the artistic lifestyle....

TIP: the 'light' dabbers are thicker consistency than other colours, and take longer to prime. Unscrew the lid and drop a couple of teaspoons of water in. Shake and it will be more fluid, but the colour isnt compromised. Also a good trick when your paint is starting to run out.

New Stamps for May

Hiya, we have a bunch of new stamps released this month. We are adding a new group of 4 plates to the Urban Snapshots range called Wrought Iron. Here they are...
We have also redesigned Urban Snapshots Stage Lights 2 ...We are also introducing a new range of stamps called PaperArtsy Minis. These are credit card size stamps on EZ Mount. They are ideal for kinds of altered art and craft applications especially ATCs, card making, inchies and more. The images are mainly taken from our Ink and the Dog collection. This you can see 15 designs and next month we will release another 17...

Here are a couple of examples...
Click here to go see the rest.

Get going and collect the set.