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. 😉
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! 🙂
So yesterday I kicked off my new blog category, Mixed Media. Many of those will be blog exclusive, so no video. But, you will get clear pictures and descriptions of what I did and which products I used.
These two art backgrounds are Distress Tags by Tim Holtz (for Ranger), a mixed media heavy stock. For the first, I started with one of Tim Holtz’s stencils and gently dabbed some Distress Micro glaze through it in two spots, quite randomly. Micro glaze will work as a resist. So when I sprayed three colors of distress stain (the first three in the picture) over it, the stencil’s dotted pattern showed up white.
By the way, you may notice that there are hardly any actual spray bottles in the picture; that is because my main stash of Stains consists of the earlier Distress Stains, which were dabber bottles. So I removed the dabbers and poured some of the Stain in small empty spray bottles I had bought at the dollar store – turning them into Distress Spray Stains quite easily 🙂
So I went along and I placed a second stencil (the smaller one on the right) and sprayed the blue Distress Stain, some purple and the Distress Oxide spray through it. This gave a subtle floral effect. Micro Glaze will take a bit of color after you heat(-dry) it, which is why several of the dots in the end were colored after all.
For the second tag I used the same technique, but with only one stencil and with slightly different colors.
That concluded round 1, leaving me with two nice base tags. On to round 2 below!
Round 2, resist spray: To prepare for what I’m calling a ‘stencil reverse’ technique, I sprayed both tags with Distress Resist Spray entirely and let them dry.
Round 3, paints: for this ‘stencil reverse’ technique – which I learned by watching one of Tim Holtz’s demos – I covered an area of each tag with Distress Paint. I then placed a stencil over each (wet) area and removed thepaint through the stencil with a damp paper towel – leaving the thin blue lines you see on both tags. With a normal stencil technique these of course would have been masked on your project, but now they are the only lines showing. A great and unexpected technique which may resemble a monoprint but isn’t one!
To add an extra color accent I added some Maya Gold metallic paint in a gorgeous dark purple called Aubergine, using a different stencil for each tag.
I was now ready to declare my two backgrounds finished, but then I noticed a small uncolored spot on the right edge of the left tag, which bugged me to no end. It seemed I had apparently touched the tag there with some Micro Glaze still on my fingers – adding a resist.
So as kind of a PS, I took a Distress Ink pad and blended a whole lot of ink over it so as to force-cover it up. It only partially succeeded of course, because of the resist, but at least the spot didn’t bug me anymore 🙂
Now my backgrounds were truly finished – and ready to be used in some creative way in a future moment!
There are several ways of attaching metal decorative pieces to your projects. Depending on the size and weight of your element, you can use glue dots, Ranger’s Glossy Accents, or several kinds of adhesive pastes, used mainly in mixed media projects.
Or, you can use my way 🙂 Which is using jewelry glue!
Check it out in the short video tutorial below, and you’ll see the advantage when compared to glue dots, especially when you’re working with hollowed-out embellishments – like me in the video.
Enjoy! Let me know in the comment section below if you have any questions.
