Cool Crafting by Natalie

 

Christmas Crafting

In previous years, typically on the hottest day of the year is when I start making may Christmas cards. This year, it could be a bumper year if the predicted temperatures are correct. Here's my tips for staying cool while crafting...

1. Keep warm or strenuous activities to cooler times of the day or locations. These include heat embossing, laminating, drying prints artificially or gluing with glue guns. 
2. Adhesives can be affected by heat not only when using, but also when being stored. Move any sheet or tape adhesives into cooler storage and use at cooler times. You should also consider your pens, wax based crayons, inks and paints if they are in a warm spot.
3. Keep a bowl of iced water in your crafting area to help lower the local temperature. 
4. When the warmer temperatures can no longer be avoided, keep to more sedentary techniques. Die-cutting/embossing with an electric or electronic cutter, colouring, stamping with rubber stamps are all fabulous to do in batches.
5. Keep a drinks flask handy so you are kept refreshed during your crafting session. A cool flannel applied to your wrists can also help to lower your temperature.

The Card Project

For this project, any snowy landscape (or any landscape if you are confident adding snow) will do. This one is a retired stamp, so take a look at The Gift of Christmas as a great alternative design.

This card is painted using gouache paints which take very little water by comparison to watercolours. Making them ideal to use with water brushes. Squeeze a little water into the pan you want to use, then stir the paint with your brush. Whereas with watercolour we want a milky texture, with gouache we go a little thicker. These paints are opaque, so you want to carefully paint around your outlines, or conceal them beneath your paint for a no-line finish.

Choose a cardstock that can take water: a good watercolour paper or mixed media (for wet work) paper are both great choices.

Swap your black ink pad for a softer grey pad, but it needs to be permanent and non-water reactive. I used the Ranger Archival ink which is oil based and ideal. A softer outline will enable a more realistic result without going all the way to no-line colouring.

The finishing touch you can't see in the photo is a touch of sparkle. Use a clear shimmer pen over the top of your painting. It will soften your painting slightly while giving a festive sparkle without having to go all out bling.

A textured metallic or pearlescent card can be a more subtle mount than glitter card. However, the choice is yours.

Hocus Pocus - Halloween Tags By Florence

Hi everyone

I hope your week is going well.

Today I would like to share with you some easy tags made with the fabulous new Hocus Pocus Rubber Stamp Set.

I had so much fun making these. 
The more I use the stamps the more I love them.

Please click on the photos to enlarge and to see the detail.

This is such a fun creature.

 I did think it would also work for a little boys birthday card....I'm thinking dragons and castles.

This stamp set is so versatile. 

The cat, the spider and the trees in this set would work for other stamping projects other than Halloween.

The spider stamp I used to create the little spiders on the tag above are from the
 "Put A Spell On You" Set.

I made all of the tags in the same way.

To make the tags

Stamp the main images:  The creature, the cat and the Witch.

Make a circle mask and place it on the tag where you wish the moon to appear.
Mask off any parts of the image that you wish to colour.
Colour the tag with a light brown Distress Ink using a piece of Cut-n-Dry foam.
Take a stencil and place it over the tag and using a piece of foam apply a darker colour Distress Ink to create the pattern on the background.

Apply some more darker Distress Ink around the edges if necessary.

Stamp all of the remaining images ie., the bats, cobwebs, spiders, script and branches.
Remove any masks and colour the images.

Optional: Spray the tag with a fixative to fix the ink.

Just to share.  

On the second tag, and using a paint brush, I added some lemon juice around the edges of the tag and then heated it to create an old charred look.

Grab yourself and cuppa and check out all of the wonderful projects made by the team.

Thank you for looking.
Happy Stamping.
Florence x

Three Little Eggs (by Lesley and Glenda)

I am starting with a confession. The beautiful card you see here was not designed by me, I received it in the post a few days ago. So today is the first combined blog post from Glenda and myself and we want to show you how easily you can achieve the layered look with our clear stamps.

• On an A6 card, and using the solid image from the Natural Egg clear set, stamp each colour in turn with new Archival ink colours Tea Rose, Sky Blue and Buttercup. Allow to dry thoroughly.
• Next use the same ink colour and the small multi speckled image to stamp over the solid coloured eggs. Again allow to dry
• On the middle egg ink up the crackle pattern with Buttercup and stamp over the solid image. Repeat with the right hand egg using the second generation stamping technique and Jet Black Archival ink (second generation stamping means you ink up the stamp with your chosen ink, stamp lightly onto a piece of copy paper and then stamp your image again where you want it. This allows for a more subtle version of the image).
• Now add the same last layer to each egg with Jet Black ink using the larger speckle pattern.
• Stamp the sentiment from the Thinking of You Sentiments clear set with Buttercup.
• Finally, send it in the post to a friend!

I hope you have enjoyed our first joint DT post. Please come back again tomorrow for another inspiring project from one of our talented team.