Tag Archives: mixed media

Making Arthur, a Colorize die-cut project

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In 2020 Tim Holtz started his so-called Colorize series of dies with Sizzix. These Colorize dies are meant for you to add layers of color to your diecut image, each layer being its own color.

It was quite the ingenious system, for each set of die parts comes with its own color code. For example, everything with code “1” should be dark brown, each “2” should be blue etc., helping you as a maker to put together the elaborately layered die-cut image designs.

I think the very first one of these was Arthur, the purple owl.

I have thus far crafted one owl-on-a-branch project, and I gave it my own twist of course: instead of using differently colored pieces of cardstock, I sprayed my own backgrounds on mixed media heavy stock and die-cut my pieces from those.

I actually made this project two years ago, in August 2020, but I just now realized I had never actually shared it on my blog! So, here we go, with a step-by-step semi-tutorial on how I made my card with Arthur, the purple marbled pink owl.

1. Made the building blocks: created enough inked/sprayed/painted backgrounds for the project, in the colors I wanted.

2. Embossed a wood pattern on the bark-colored one.

3. Die-cut the branches – which now also had some nice texture, thanks to the embossing.

4. Die-cut the owl pieces from the other papers, and sorted them according to the Sizzix color-coding. Although I made my own colors, the coding still helped me to know which pieces belonged together.

5. Chose some chipboard sentiment pieces and colored them.

6. Made a card background. It started as an abstract piece but then it became a moonlit landscape of sorts.

7. Following Sizzix’ color-coding, I glued each layer of the owl image to the background. Sizzix also has very clear video tutorial shorts on Youtube for each of their Colorize dies btw. I’ll embed the one for Arthur below these pictures.

8. Glued the piece to a black background, added the chipboard sentiment pieces and applied some liquid pearl along the edges.

Done!

I have to say it was a fun project, and the detail these dies provide by way of the ever-smaller layers is very cleverly designed. Look at those tiny claw pieces!

So yeah, I’ll have me some more of these Colorize dies by Tim Holtz for Sizzix and see what fun they’ll bring!

What about you, have you tried any of the Colorize die sets? Leave a comment and let me know!

Time saver! Using your own mixed media backgrounds

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I tend to compartimentalize my mixed media crafting: one day I do my spraying, inking and/or painting, one day I use my stamps, stencils & texture pastes, and lastly I turn it into a card or tag to send out or give away. This not only keeps it fun and practical, it also saves time when you actually need a quick card or tag.

Stash of art backgrounds

In this post I’m sharing several of these follow-up projects, starting with the finished background, followed by the final project. You can find the making of some of these backgrounds in previous blog posts btw, should you be interested.

1. Birthday tag

Just the art background
All dolled-up

2. Textured birthday tag

3. Alcohol ink on gesso birthday card

4. Black background cards

5. Printed close-up photo of above art project, matted on cardstock

6. Marbled Distress Paint on black card

Quick, easy and lovely: String-tied Layered Cards

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It doesn’t always have to take many long hours of work to create a beautiful card. In this week’s tutorial I’m sharing an idea for a quick & easy card design, for which you only need some pieces of paper, a piece of string and some tools.

You can use colored cardstock, design paper or a mixed media background to be the showstopper piece. I created my backgrounds with Distress inks by Tim Holtz.

A nice detail of this design is the piece of string, which you wrap around your card and tie into a bow on the inside of your card.

All in all I think you may actually create this card in under ten minutes – provided you already made your mixed media backgrounds at some time in the past, and have them at the ready (if you’re not opting for design paper or colored cardstock).

If you don’t have a die-cutting machine, you could also stamp a sentiment, or adhere a chipboard piece like in the picture below. In case you don’t own an embossing machine, you can easily skip the embossed layer entirely, also like the card below (shown in more detail in the video).

Enjoy the video tutorial! – which is, like this card design, short & sweet 🙂

New Home Card: a 3D (mailable!) House

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Here’s a fun idea for a New Home (or Welcome Home) card: send them a cute little home decor piece, by way of a 3D house which also functions as a tea light holder! 🙂

I’m sharing a video tutorial below, but first a photo tutorial with the steps to create this project. I used a die from AliExpress, but you could of course also imitate this by drawing a row of four houses yourself and fussy-cutting them.

Make a mixed media background (or take a piece of design paper, or cardstock)
Add some texture (like a brick pattern) with transparant texture paste and a stencil
Die-cut four houses in a row (or draw four little houses yourself and fussy-cut)
Fold, and glue together. Done!

And here’s the video tutorial, enjoy!

Creating your own mixed media design paper

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There are of course hundreds (probably thousands even) of different design paper collections on the market. Still, sometimes you feel you’re in need of another sheet of a particular color scheme to really perfect your project. You could of course purchase (or shop your stash) for a sheet from another collection but: you did you realize you can also create your own? And I don’t mean by becoming a graphic designer yourself and printing some cool computer-generated design you came up with.

No, I mean by applying some very easy mixed media techniques. Here’s how.

  1. Ink, paint or spray a piece of white paper that is suitable for mixed media (so no printer or copy paper please; you can use actual mixed media paper, or paper meant for water painting). Spread several colors randomly; make sure the colors coordinate with the design paper collection you’re using for your project. A stencil can add some fun patterns to the mix.

2. If you want, you can even print an image – or in my case a graffiti-style initial – on your colored paper. Wait until everything is dry though, before you run it through your printer.

3. Add some stamping. You can choose actual images, or just some random patterns. Use an oil-based ink like Archival ink, to make sure your stamping ink does not react to the other mediums you’ve used so far.

4. Add some texture with texture paste. I used Tim Holtz’s Distress Grit paste because that is translucent (so the inking underneath will show through) plus it’s heat-stable so you can emboss it. Which is exactly what I did after I added the paste: I sprinkled it with different colors of Embossing Glaze (which is a translucent embossing powder), let the texture paste dry, and then embossed it.

5. I (of course) forgot that I needed more than one mat, so I had to repeat steps 1-4 to create a second mat. It would have been easier had I just taken a larger piece of paper, did the mixed media techniques, and only then cut it to size. Oh well.

6. Mat your mini album page! As you can see in the pictures below I made sure to choose colors that would coordinate with the rest of the design paper I used.

Same page, with left-page flap opened. The smaller mixed media strip has turned into a mat for the top pocket.

Want to see the entire album? Check the video in this blog post!

Mixed Media Tag with Embossed Gloss Accent

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Did you know that you can use Tim Holtz’s Distress Paint as a resist? To create a mixed media tag, I used this specific technique. I also used clear embossing powder to add a glossy accent – and here are all of the steps to do it!

Step by step

1. STAMP with Distress Paint and/or use a stencil, to add an image or some random patterns. I did both. Use a light color of paint, like white, cream or a very soft pink. Let the paint dry.

Btw, be careful and immediately clean your stamp, for this paint dries quickly and once it dries you won’t be able to get it off your stamp anymore…

2. Color your tag (or any other piece of mixed media cardstock) by blending with different colors of ink. I used both Distress Inks (translucent) and Distress Oxides (opaque). Simply blend right over your patterns – for the paint will act as a resist!

3. Optional: add some extra, subtle background effects by blending through a different stencil.

4. Spray some kind of metal spray to add some sparkle. I used Distress Mica Spray in the color Tarnished Brass.

5. Once everything has properly dried, add a different layer: time for some stamping. Choose one or more images and/or patterns and stamp on top of all the previous layers. First I used a background color of Distress Oxide to add still more interest to the background, this was a script stamp. You can see it on the right side of the tag, on the upper half.

I then stamped the main image in black Archival Ink. This is an oil-based ink, which therefore does not react with or bleed into all of the water-based inks underneath.

6. Pick one or more pieces of your main image that you want to highlight. Cover those fragments with embossing ink – ideally, if you can, use an embossing pen, which gives you maximum control of where you place the embossing ink.

Then take a clear embossing powder and emboss your accent of choice.

Glossy highlight

7. Take some chipboard sentiment pieces and use the same inks to colorize them. Then stick them to your tag.

8. Die-cut a decorative element from metallic paper and add it to the tag. I used Metallic Confections paper by Tim Holtz, but any metallic (or holographic!) paper would do.

Done! Now all that’s left is to tie a piece of string to your tag 🙂

Hope this little step-by-step was helpful! Now go, experiment to your heart’s desire and play with all of the stuff in your stash 🙂 Let me know in the comments if you’re going to try some of the techniques I used here!

If you want still more inspiration, here’s an earlier post where I also used Distress Paint as a resist.

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!

Four Tips for Last-Minute Christmas Cards

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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 paper
With 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! 🙂

Step by step: Mixed Media Christmas Card

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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

  1. 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 cm
A6 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! 🙂

Mixed Media Tag: Using Paint as a Resist

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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

  1. 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…
  2. 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!

Trying Ranger’s Alcohol Inks

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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:

Yupo A4 sheet (cut into 7 smaller pieces) – alcohol inks – blending solution – 99% isopropyl alcohol:

Yupo – alcohol inks – copper mixative – blending solution – 99% isopropyl alcohol:

Yupo – alcohol inks – pearl mixative – blending solution – 99% isopropyl alcohol:

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!

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!