Tag Archives: Archival ink

Stamping and Spraying on Coated Paper in Five Easy Steps

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Sometimes, when I order some of my card designs printed, the printing company adds one or two blanks. These are sturdy, completely white cards; they are also coated, for it is a form of photo paper. So it won’t react to mixed media like your usual assortment of craft papers.

I have created a card with such a blank before, using it as an easy base for design paper. You can check out my step-by-step video on that here.

This time however I decided to try out some mixed media techniques to create a card from one of these coated blank photo paper cards. Here’s what I did, and how it worked out.

1. Stamp and color an image

I chose StazOn ink for this, because that is suited especially for smooth, non-porous surfaces – like photo paper. I also colored the stamped image, using Tim Holtz Distress Markers.

In hindsight, that turned out not to be the best combination, for the StazOn ink reacted a little bit to the Distress Markers. So, my tip here is: IF you want to use water-based markers to color your image, then do NOT use an alcohol-based ink to stamp, but an oil-based ink like Archival Ink.

Stamp an image that speaks to you

2. Seal your image

If you’re going to spray a background, you’ll need to seal your colored image first, otherwise it will either run and wick, or it will be covered up by your sprays (depending on the mediums you choose).

I wanted to use Distress Spray Stains, which are water-based, and since I already used Distress Markers to color the image, I knew exactly how to seal it: with Distress Micro Glaze.

Simply dab your finger lightly in the jar, and rub it all over the colored image.

Side note: of course there are several other products on the market to seal your image. For instance, transparent gesso, or mod podge, to name a few. I’m simply mentioning the one I used. #nonspon

3. Spray your inks

Spray your entire card to your heart’s desire. Then remove all of the sprayed inks from your stamped image with a paper towel. Thanks to the Micro Glaze, none of the sprays will stick and will come off easily, without messing up the colors of your image.

Also, because my paper was coated, it didn’t really absorb the inks too well; there were several spots where the ink didn’t take, causing a great bonus effect!

The materials I used

4. Add special effects

I added some transparent medium to create a bit of a glass effect for the glasses: I used Nuvo Crystal Drops for this, but you could use several alternatives, like Glossy Accents, Paper Glaze or any other dimensional transparent medium.

5. Add a sentiment

Last but not least, I stamped a sentiment – this time with Archival Ink (having learned my lesson from step 1).

Alternatively, you could also go dimensional and use wooden or chipboard sentiment pieces.

And done!

Have you ever crafted with coated paper like this? Feel free to ask any questions, or to let me know what you think, below in the comment section!

Creating a Mixed Media Card

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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-step proces

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!

Dabbling in Backgrounds

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Sometimes one has to go and broaden one’s horizons. So, I decided to not only watch all of the Tim Holtz demos on his blog, sitting on my couch consuming content (and pork rind chips 🙂 ) but to treat them as an actual course. He has shared many hours of demo videos since the corona lockdown and I treated myself to them all, taking notes in a notebook – I even dug out my fountain pen for that 🙂 . Being locked down at least supplied me with those hours so I decided to take advantage of that…

And so I started to practice and play around with all of the mixed media art supplies I had collected the last couple of years, but simply hadn’t come round to using. And of course I added to said stash with a lot of new stuff too, but hey, we’re not just crafters, we’re also collectors right 😉😎

Anyway, I thought it might be nice to share my first batch of mixed media backgrounds. I mean, I have done some inking & stencilling when creating photo tags for my envelope folios, but not in all of these different ways. This blog post will share the whole batch, and also the card I created from one of those backgrounds. The coming days and weeks I’ll post each individual (set of) background(s) in a separate blog post, with pictures and descriptions on how I created them. And after those, there will be more!

Hope you’ll enjoy this new series of experiments, that will be added to (but not replacing) my other work. Who knows where this will end – there may even be an art journaller hidden somewhere inside me yet…🙃🤨