For all of you who are anything like me and are in dire need of some quick, last-minute Christmas cards, I’m sharing four tips to create them!
In my previous post I already shared a step-by-step on how to make the cards in the above picture.
So to summarize: tip 1 is the regular papercraft way of card-making: create designs from cardstock, then mat each seperate part with design paper.
The next two pictures show tip 2: die-cut a sentiment or an image from specialty paper and stick it onto a mixed media background. Then mat on top of cardstock.
With holographic paperWith glitter paper
Here are the materials I used for both of the above backgrounds:
Tip 3: create a mixed media background, but don’t use it as a background. Instead, die-cut something from it and stick it onto some white cardstock. Clean. Simple. Elegant.
Tip 3: Mixed media die-cut on white cardstock
These are the sprays I used for these:
Tip 4 is of course a mixed media die-cut on a mixed media background. Add some glitter accents if you like.
Bonus tip: if you’re not a mixed media kind of crafter, you can use design paper instead! This will give you the same elegant and sophisticated effect, both on white cardstock and on design paper.
Now off you go, hurry up with those last-minute Christmas cards! 🙂
A relatively quick and easy way to create Christmas cards is using mixed media techniques. For this week’s card I first created an inked background, then I die-cut from other pieces of inked paper. This week I’m sharing step by step how to do it.
Keep in mind that although there are quite a few steps, it all takes very little time. For instance, to create the background, you simply spray some ink and let it dry. If you use a drying tool like Ranger’s heat tool, this will take you about 10 minutes. And so on, and so forth. So enjoy!
Step by step
Create some backgrounds. I used two A5-sized papers and two A6-sized papers, both mixed media cardstock. I used three different sprays in what I felt was a “Christmas color range”, two by Tim Holtz and one by Dylusions.
The technique I use for this is: I spray one piece of cardstock, then press it onto a second piece of cardstock of the same size. You now get a nice blend, get the most out of your inks (it’s used for double the surface area) and a fun bonus is that they are eachother’s mirror images.
A5 size: 15 x 21 cmA6 size: 10.5 x 15 cm
Intermezzo: You can now either go on with the step by step below, or you can layer the smaller cards on top of the larger ones and decorate:
2. Die-cut an image or a large sentiment from one of your inked backgrounds. I used the Layered Pine Trees by Tim Holtz. Play around with the placement of the dies, to get a nice colorplay.
3. Fussy-cut around the edges of one of the holes your die left, to get a bonus decoration.
4. Glue the first die-cut to one of your larger backgrounds to get the placement you like. Then die-cut a sentiment from the same piece of inked background, place it below the decoration (or wherever you like basically 😉 ).
The way I placed the elements, on the right, offers the possibility to now fold my card in half and have a beautifully inked double card.
5. In the end however I decided to simply cut it in half, doubling the number of inked backgrounds I had (I did the same with the other large background).
6. If applicable: layer your elements. Then add glitter to your liking.
7. Glue all elements to your background. You have now created a nice piece to mat onto any cardstock you like.
Done!
If you want to see how I used the other Christmas-colored backgrounds I showed above, check out my next post! 🙂
I already knew you could stamp over a painted or inked background. But what if you want to stamp a light color, like white or cream, and you don’t have opaque inks? You could stamp with paint of course, but what if you want that grungy blended color gradient effect? Stamping with (white) paint over an inked background would only give you clear and harsh boundaries between the stamped image and the background.
Fortunately there is a third way, which I’m sharing today in my blog. I got it from one of Tim Holtz’s demos by the way, so check out his blog if you want to see and hear him demo it.
Step by step
Apply a relatively thin acrylic paint to your stamp, like Distress Paint. Or, use some water to thin your regular acrylic paint. Now, be very quick to stamp it onto an empty background tag, because once the paint dries on your stamp, you won’t get the paint off any longer, for it will dry permanent…
Once the paint is dry, ink up your tag with some water-based inks and make an inked background. I picked the six colors of Ranger’s Distress ink you see in the picture above, and used a blending tool. Simply blend over the stamped parts: the paint will work as a resist for water-based inks, so your stamped image will appear through the ink! This works particularly well with darker colors of ink.
3. Now you can use regular ink, like some Archival ink, in a darker color to stamp other images over your background.
In the top right corner you can see I used cream-colored Distress paint, but this time not on a stamp but through a stencil. This gives the same resist effect when you ink over it with water-based inks. I even used water-based ink through an alphabet stencil over it, and the paint resisted that too.
The Archival ink I used for the large typewriter-script stamp on the other hand is oil-based, so it did cover the Distress Paint. This is a great and easy way to play around with layers of colors and patterns and add some extra dimension.
Alphabet stencil: water-based ink is resisted by the cream-colored paint, so diamond pattern still on top. Script stamp: oil-based ink covers everything, and is NOT resisted by paint, so diamond pattern is covered by the script pattern.
Below is the end result I reached – for now; some day I may add a sentiment or die-cut or some dimensional decorative element, should I decide I’m going to use it as a card and send it out. But for now I’m very pleased with it as is!
If you want to learn how to work with alcohol inks, I can highly recommend watching Tim Holtz’s demos on his blog. After which: start practising!
A great starter kit would be a pack of Yupo papers, at least 2 colors of alcohol ink, and a high percentage alcohol. If your budget allows it: add Ranger’s Blending Solution too, for it will offer you some more options when working with the inks.
I have to say these inks are fun to work with, the colors are vibrant and their fluidity is quite different from dye inks or spray inks; it seems a lot thinner and it ‘flows’ differently. You can use a hairdryer to move them around on your paper, or some kind of hand air pump like Ranger‘s Alcohol Ink Air Blower or JoyCrafts’ Ink Blower.
JoyCrafts Air blower for alcohol inks
Personally, I use Tim Holtz’s Distress Marker Spritzer Tool – remember that one? It was designed for something different but it’s also a great alcohol ink blower!
Lastly, you can even blow through a straw – but be careful, for you’ll get dizzy extra quickly due to the alcohol vapors…
Next to blowing your inks around, you can also use an ink blending tool (with a felt piece instead of a foam piece) and dab-dab-dab – either with inks, or blending solution, or a mixture of both. Add some high percentage alcohol to the mix to get even more effects.
Ink blending tools can be bought from several companies, Ranger among others.
Speaking of substrates: always use a non-porous surface. I used Yupo (a plastic ‘paper’) and also a gessoed craft tag. Ranger‘s Alcohol Ink papers are of course also very suitable. Whatever substrate you use, each will have its own unique properties so it’s useful – and fun – to experiment a lot!
Below you’ll find my first set of such experiments:
Craft tag (cardstock) – gesso – alcohol inks – pearl mixative – blending solution – 99% isopropyl alcohol:
What about you? Have you tried alcohol inks yet? Or perhaps you’re an advanced alcohol ink artist? Let me know and share your story in the comments below!
This week I wanted to show you how to create a mixed media card, using inks, grit paste and embossing glaze. So, I set out and created one on camera – or so I thought… As it turns out, my camera wasn’t recording at all during most of the proces! 🤬
So I started over and did another one, with the camera actually rolling this time.
Step-by-stepproces
Card 1 – This is the one I intended to film but didn’t. I painted a background in three shades of purple. Added ink through both stamping and stencilling, then took a second stencil and added a translucent texture paste (in this case Ranger’s Distress Grit Paste). Then I colored the grit paste while it was still wet, by covering it with a transparent embossing powder (in this case Ranger’s Distress Embossing Glaze). When the grit paste had dried, I heat-embossed it to melt the Glaze. Heat-embossing is a great way to color your texture pastes btw. You can check out one of my previous posts to see more of that technique.
Card 2 – same steps but with different colors. (This is the one I actually create in the video.) Some small differences: I used some ink sprays (from Ranger’s Dylusions line) instead of paint to color the background, and I used two colors of Embossing Glaze instead of just one. I also finished it as an actual card, so I added a decorative die-cut and a chipboard sentiment and sent it off as a birthday card 🎉.
Enjoy the process video, hope you’ll find it helpful!
This week I’m sharing a nice way to color your texture paste with Distress Embossing Glaze – or frankly, any set of colored embossing powders. This technique is demoed by Tim Holtz by the way, on his blog.
First, I created a background with Distress (Spray) Stains and added some splatters with a Distress Oxide spray.
Then I used a stencil to add some texture paste. While the texture paste was still wet, I sprinkled several colors of Distress Embossing Glaze over the tag, and gently tapped underneath to get rid of the excess and at the same time prevent all of the colors mixing together.
The texture paste I used dried opaque white; you’d get even greater effects if you use a translucent paste, together with the Embossing Glaze, because this way your tag would still show some of the background colors through the layer of paste & glaze.
The final step: melt the embossing powders with a heat gun. You now have colored your texture paste!
This week I’m sharing something I learned about Ranger’s Distress Micro Glaze, in combination with Distress inks, gesso and Glimmer Mist: they don’t go well together. 🙃
So this was my process: I stamped with Archival ink on a card, but some ink accidentally landed on the lady’s face. I could have started over of course but I always like to try and fix things, for you learn way more this way. So I ended up putting some gesso on her face in an attempt to cover up the spilt ink. Perhaps not my best idea ever, but: “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit” (quoting Tim Holtz).
That didn’t look too great of course, so I then decided to cover all skin parts in gesso, to get consistent texture at least. I then proceeded to watercolor the image and background with Distress Reinkers and added some embellishments.
So far so good, except I didn’t like the background at all, I felt it needed more interest. I used Distress Micro Glaze to seal the inked image, roughly covered the blings with some kitchen towels and sprayed the card with a Glimmer Mist by Tattered Angels (remember those? I must have had this in my stash for at least 5-6 years…)
The reason I sealed the image was of course to prevent it from being glimmermisted. I only roughly covered the blings because I expected the image to be sealed anyway so I thought it didn’t matter I wasn’t too precise.
However, as it turns out, the Glimmer Mist took hold everwhere I had used the gesso and the image was not covered! Since that was only parts of her skin, she now looked, well, bruised…😱ðŸ¤
So I decided to spray the entire image with Glimmer Mist, turning the lady completely purple – in what I’d now like to call an Artsy Way.😎 A less than perfect solution no doubt, but it was the only one I could come up with. Besides: “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!” (quoting Steve Jobs).
To finish up, I added a die-cut in metallic purple, and I sprayed the back of the card as well – mostly as an afterthought, but I’m glad I did it.
So now we know either one of two things (I’m not sure which at the moment): a. either Micro Glaze does NOT seal Distress Ink on gesso, or b. Distress Micro Glaze only seals surfaces from other Distress products, and not other kinds (like Glimmer mist). More experimentation will be needed to find out which… 🤓
And of course I’m curious: what would have been your solution, either to deal with the spilt Archival ink, or the partly purple, quasi-bruised lady? Let me know in the comment section!
In my previous video I shared a card with a very large handmade 3D butterfly on the front. Today I’m sharing the steps to create such a decorative element.
First, create a background with any color mediums you like. I used Distress Stains and a Distress Spray Stain by Tim Holtz, in three colors.
Next, enhance the background with some stencil art. I used a Distress Oxide in the same color as one of my sprayed inks, through a mini stencil by Tim Holtz.
Stamp your image onto the background (after it has completely dried) with Archival Ink.
Fussy cut the stamped image.
Don’t forget to color the (still white) back of your butterfly, since we will be folding its wings up! I simply inked it with one color and stencilled over it with another, again using the Distress line.
To add some extra interest I also sprayed the back of the butterfly with some silver, using Distress Mica Spray in Brushed Pewter.
Now your image is ready to be used as a great eyecatcher on your card or art project!
Hope this was useful to you, if so, let me know in the comments!
My friend told me her 13-year old daughter (hi Mia!) was on the lookout for papercraft projects to create herself, especially since the lockdown measures have been keeping all of us mostly at home the past months. So I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be fun if she had not only an idea offered to her, but also the materials to create it, together with an actual project example to learn from.
So I chose one of my card designs that would be fairly simple to imitate, and set out to make one. After which came another fun part: rummaging through my (quite elaborate) stash and finding all kinds of bits, pieces and ephemera for her to use to create her card.
There were some things she would not be able to imitate, like the stamps and die-cuts I had used, so I stamped and die-cut several elements for her and added them to her gift box.
Finally I decided that she could use some extra supplies, since she might want to create even more cards on her own.
I had a lot of fun with this ‘reverse haul’ – giving gifts always makes me happy, it’s so much fun to think about little details that capture what you know about someone, even if that isn’t very much 🙂 So I hope this video inspires you to go look for that same kind of happiness, by creating your own gift box for someone you know (or their teen).
By the way, stay tuned for my next blog post, in which I will show you my step-by-step proces of creating the large butterfly. 😉
Stamps are of course great adornments on almost any background, but you can also go the other way around: start with a stamped image on a white background, then coloring it in yourself – Including the background.
I started with a nice image of a rustic window, its shutters open, some vines and flowers growing around it. I stamped with black archival ink on a piece of sturdy matte-coated paper I had laying around and didn’t know any properties of – but thought, oh well, we’ll see, this will probably work at least somewhat (and it did 🙂 ).
I then took out my Distress ink Reinkers, put a couple of drops of each color in a Tim Holtz Ink Palette, and went to work with a watercolor brush pen.
I colored the entire surface, paying special attention to the window panes (how does one color glass…?)
When the ink was sufficiently dry, I covered each window with Glossy Accents, to give them a nice ‘window-like’ reflection.
To finish it off I die-cut a sentiment (Congrats) from rose gold (almost copper) metallic paper and attached it to the lower right corner.
All in all it was a nice, meditatively calm kind of project. The reinkers worked wonderfully as watercolors, and the ink palette came in handy. But note that you can’t really travel with the ink palette because the ink drops will not remain in their pans – which to me was a disappointment.
Continuing with my experiment of spraying Color Bloom mica sprays on black, I took a different stencil, cut a large tag in half and sprayed with three colors on the first half.
This left a lot of ink on the stencil of course, so I turned the stencil upside down and laid it onto the other (clean) half of my tag. Then pressed firmly with a piece of paper towel to immediately catch all of the ink leaking through, and lifted the stencil.
Top: monoprinting; Bottom: regular stencilling
The effects were different when I tried a different stencil! With the first, the stencilled half was clear, and the monoprinted half more murky. With the second, it was the other way around! I think the type of pattern had something to do with it; the second was more intricate than the first.
Top: monoprinting; Bottom: regular stencilling
These are still only backgrounds of course, we’ll find out what use I’ll find for them in some future moment. 🙂
The difference between a mask and a stencil is, in my own words, that one is the ‘negative’ of the other. What is blocked by one, is open in the other. Both have their merits and advantages of course, and since I had never tried a mask before, I was curious about its effects.
I only have one large masking stencil in my possession at the moment, and it is one by Studiolight. It is large enough for an A4 (or US Letter) size, which also makes it perfect for the giant #12 craft tags by Ranger.
My craft tags were black, and I already knew from an earlier experiment that the Distress Oxide colors by Tim Holtz were not my preferred sprays when used on black. They show up quite clearly, but they seem to loose much of their actual colors and everything turns a very pale pastel.
So, I dove into my stash to see what else I might use, and rediscovered my Color Bloom sprays by Prima Marketing. These are inks with mica-based dye, so they not only show up on black, but add some nice shimmer as well. And although there was some loss of color here as well, it didn’t bother me as much, thanks to the nice metal sparkle the mica brings.
For my masked tag I chose the most industrial colors I could find in my stash; which weren’t many for I only have about 7 or 8 sprays. So I chose three shades of purple and one bronze. The effect was stunning, better than I had thought! And on a black substrate an industrial-themed mask is of course perfect, since its pattern will show up in black.
The most important disadvantage to the Color Bloom sprays is their price – as far as I have seen these are the most expensive on the (craft) market. A second, minor issue I have with them is their enormous nozzle, which makes them ridiculously difficult to store in any kind of efficient way. They just take up too much room. However, this is only a small point, I would definitely buy some more – except they’re not being produced anymore! I don’t know why but Prima Marketing seems to have quit this product line; perhaps they didn’t sell as well as they hoped.
However, I’ll definitely keep using the Color Blooms I already have, every time I want to spray something onto a black base!
In fact, I’ll show you another Color Bloom experiment next time, when I try my hand at some monoprinting! 🙂
