Embossed Glitter Technique

The glitter is so hard to see on photos. *sigh* Ok let's talk glitter for a minute. My favorite cards when I was a kid were the ones that shimmered. Now I know that people hate to work with glitter because it gets everywhere. This technique is one way to use it without it getting all over the place.

Simply mix your glitter with embossing powder. My formula is one part glitter to three parts embossing powder. You just have to use really fine glitter for this to work.

Yes, you can buy embossing powder with glitter in it, but I tend to skip buying things that have a single purpose. I like to use the clear embossing powder over colored ink or mixed with other things to get the effect without investing in a huge variety of colors and types.

Thanks for looking!

Royal Blog Tour

The Tour is now closed! Thank you for visiting. Blog Candy Winner will be announced soon!

Welcome to the Dusty Durango Tour. If thou art just beginning the tour, thee will be better served by beginning thy travels at the home Castle. Thee may reach it from here simply by clicking on my CROWN!

Welcome to the Dusty Durango Path of the Royal Blog Tour.

Ye are currently at Castle Number 7.

****** Blog Candy ******

I'm offering blog candy too! Scroll to the bottom to find out how to register for your chance to win something sweet!

My featured stamp set is a new hostess only stamp set called - Wings of Friendship. It lends itself well to a new technique that I'll be sharing with you today. Now, I know you don't want to read a bunch of stuff so I promise to keep it short! Now on to the projects.

Color Rocks!

This is a solid image stamp, so coloring directly onto the stamp with markers gives you a lot of room to play with the colors and shading. This is Rich Razzleberry(bird), Crushed Curry, Summer Sun and Dusty Durango on the flowers with certainly celery on the leaves and vines. His wings have some Dazzling Diamonds. The swirls on the background are a direct transfer techniqe using Crushed Curry on So Saffron card stock.

Grunge is Grand

I just love this new In Color Soft Suede! It's delish! The image is stamped in Whisper White Craft Ink on the Soft Suede Card stock. Ripped and roughed up, wadded up a few times and stepped on for good measure. Did I mention this is a project to get out allllllll your frustrations? *smirk* Then the edges and creases were inked with the Soft Suede.

The background paper is faux handmade paper. I used tissue paper to dab on several ink colors from the reinkers. Isn't it just fun?

Pop Ups Make Me Happy!

Ok, this is a stamped image that I made for a project that didn't make the cut for the tour. After I'd finished the other three, I just couldn't throw this guy away. so I made a very quick popup card. The background behind the bird really makes it look like he's welcoming the morning sun! It's just all the shades of yellow sponged onto Whisper White card stock. (darker as it goes toward the edges) Give this a try and you'll love how it looks around your images.

Faux Etching All-Aglow

Faux Etching Tutorial

I know, I know... what IS that? I developed it a long time ago and recently shared it with my local Jacksonville Starz group. Stay tuned for more info and a tutorial that I'll post in the days following the tour. It's so simple, you'll wonder why you didn't try it sooner!

Get your supplies ready and join me next week for a project you'll love to give as gifts for any occasion. You'll need a glass container with a smooth side, solid image stamp(s), versamark ink and marker, embossing heat tool, clear embossing powder and an embossing buddy.

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I'm offering a custom blog banner to at least one lucky winner! Here's what you have to do:

1. Sign up as a follower on my design blog: Design ByTee
2. Sign up as a follower here
3. Leave a comment on this post

That's it! This candy is open to anyone and everyone who meets this criteria by July 28th at midnight! Good luck to you!

Once this path hath reached its end, thy royal coach will travel back to the Royal Blog Tour - Home Castle where more paths await thee!

The tour is now closed! Blog candy will be announced soon!

Flesh Tones with Classic Ink

I got this stamp in a dollar bin somewhere. It's labels had been removed so I don't know who made it. It's red rubber mounted on wood and the rubber stains badly. I also had to condition it to get a good stamp impression out of it. All that aside, the girl is cute! Plus, it's a perfect way to show you one hue of flesh tone that you can get out of the Stampin Up Classic ink (pads or reinkers).

I used the pads because a drop of the reinker would be way to much. Squeeze the lids to transfer some ink from the pad to the lid before you open them. For this light skin tone we are using Creamy Caramel and Cameo Coral. Yes, you can mix them to get the shade you want!

Using your water brush, pick up some of the Cameo Coral color and bring it over to the Creamy Caramel lid and mix the colors there. Squeeze the brush a little to add water and thin down the intensity of the ink. Test on a scrap of the paper you will be using. You want a fairly large pool of color to finish your project without having to remix. Mine was the size of a half dollar (spread thinly over the surface of the ink pad lid).

Watercolor as usual, remembering to let it dry before moving on to other colors. You can add additional layers for shadows and straight coral for rosy cheeks. When you finish, use a tissue to clean the remaining mixed color out of your lid to keep pure color in the ink pad.


Paper makes a difference. The first example was on Whisper White and this one is on Watercolor paper. Biggest difference, stamped image and the watercolor paper seemed to absorb more of the color than the Whisper White. Which makes sense.

Her hair uses Summer Sun, Crushed Curry (perfect mid tone) and More Mustard. The deepest shadows were added with Really Rust and I blended the yellow and red with Creamy Caramel.

Finally I added shadows to the white with Brocade Blue.

Ok, it's your turn. Show me your water colored images!

Faux Handmade Paper

I have something really fun to share today. It's a technique I did a something like 20 years ago and then abandoned because I started making my own paper and didn't need it anymore. Well, with the new and fun reinkers I have now, I thought I'd give it another go. You may have seen this before and that's ok. I'm going to push the envelope a bit and see what we get.

This technique calls for craft or pigment ink reinkers. I don't have a lot of these on hand... ok.. I have white and gold. But I did it with acrylic paint before so I know I'm not limited to what people today say to do.

Supplies:

• Classic Ink Reinkers in two coordinating colors*
• White Craft Ink Reinker
• Gold Craft Ink Reinker
• CHEAP Toilet Paper (TP). It's got to fall apart when it gets damp. (think: dollar store)
• Gloves, if you are squeamish about inky fingers
• Glossy Card Stock - mine is a 2 x 4" piece
• Plastic lid for a palate

*Coordinating means they are next to each other on the color wheel. Contrasting colors will work but you'll have brown real fast if you are not careful. I used blue and green.

Step by Step:

1. Ball up several squares of TP
2. Put a few drops of white ink in two different places on the palate
3. Put one or more drops of classic ink down over the white*
4. Use TP to mix one color and pounce onto card stock – leave spaces
5. Use another ball of TP to mix and pounce the other color in the spaces
6. Use third ball of TP to pounce gold ink sporadically over the whole project
7. Let it dry! This is a very wet technique on a resistant paper. It’s going to take time to dry. Patience is good grasshopper.

During each step the TP should be falling apart and leaving small bits behind. This is good! When it happens, pounce over that area again to flatten the bits and cover it in ink

* The more ink you use the darker your color will be – I used one drop for a soft look

Troubleshooting:

• TP is not falling apart – mist it with alcohol and rub it on scrap paper before you ink up to tear it up first
• Colors too dark – you can go over it again with white to soften the look

Here’s the project I did with mine. The stamps are from Eastern Blooms, Circle Circus and a hand carved phrase. The scalloped circle motif was created using three of the Circle Circus stamps, punched and layered. Then I punched a scalloped circle through the card front and mounted the motif through the hole for perfect alignment.

The background circle, flower and doodles are done in Dusty Durango (another of the new colors) and the phrase and two of the stamps for the motif are in Rich Razzleberry. Yep, the doodle is done in the new color too. They come in markers and if you have not tried these: They leave Marvy’s in the dust and they are… *insert glorious angelic choir here* … refillable! *doing the happy dance

Ok, enough of my silliness. Come play with me and I’ll be happy to show you this and a billion other things floating around in the old noodle.

Daisy Blue

I have been playing with watercoloring to develop a tutorial for an upcoming event. It’s a super fast way to create dimension and texture on a stamped image. This image is not a stamp. I don’t have an outline stamp like this so I did a fast sketch on scrap Whisper White card stock.

Water coloring is one of my favorite things to do. It's very versatile and can give you different looks depending on the paper that you use and the watercolor medium. Wait. Isn't all watercolor the same? I'm glad you asked that. It's not really. There are various ways to achieve a watercolor effect. Watercolor pencils and crayons are applied directly to the paper then the color is moved with water and a brush. The look achieved is different than when you apply wet pigments to paper.

Today I am showing you wet on dry. (wet pigment on dry paper). Stamp or sketch your image onto white card stock with permanent ink. Then set up a palette. There are a couple of ways to do this. You can use the Classic Stampin Up ink pads and squeeze the closed pad to put some ink on the lids. I use an acrylic block or recycle a plastic lid from a food container. (when we are finished it can go back to it’s original purpose with no waste) and drop some ink from the re-inkers. This gives me deep rich color.

Aqua brushes make this easy and fast because they are self cleaning. Get the bristles wet, but don’t add water to the palate. Pick up the color you are using and sweep it across the image. I used Bashful Blue, Summer Sun and Certainly Celery.

I tilted my image so the color would run to the bottom of the petals and settle there - making it darker. Then I did a second sweep on each petal to deepen the color more. The leaves and the center of the flower were done the same way. After I brushed on the Summer Sun (yellow), I swept the brush over the inside edges of the petals. I love it when colors blend and run together. The results are always a surprise.


I honestly intended to throw this away when I finished, but the colors called to me and I couldn't do it. So I cut it out and popped it up on a card. The base and second mat are Bashful Blue card stock. Don't you just love how the colors match so well? The tab is a punch (yummo) and is inked with Summer Sun on the edges. Ribbon and other papers used are scraps from the bin.

Tee's Tip
Everybody is always blending blending blending. Color in life is not always blended so well. We have harsh edges and softer ones. So try including some harsh edges in your watercolor pieces.

Honor Roll

This layout is so fun. It's got a lot going on for an 8 x 8 page. Did I mention that before? I was gifted with an 8 x 8 album and I really like the size.

The picture is from a couple of years ago, but Morgan just loved the hat and wanted to use this picture. We played with it in photoshop and both agreed that with so many elements and colors on the page, the picture should be black and white. She's not competing with everything else... she stands out this way.

Then we scanned and shrunk Morgan's report card and included the ribbon given at the Honors Assembly. (I have a LOT of these ribbons in my Mementos box!) The embellishments are cute little things that I've had for ages.

Did you notice the wood grain on the left. That was made by scoring the card stock then sweeping the stamp pads over to roughly transfer color. I used More Mustard, Close to Cocoa and Really Rust Classic ink. It's a super fast technique and you can get a lot of different looks with different colored card stock for a base and different inks. Give it a try!

Chalkboard Technique

Ok boys and girls.  This one is fun and will work for hand carved or store bought stamps!  You are going to need a few supplies, but you probably have most of them on hand.

First you stamp the image in white pigment ink (or another color for a funky effect) and then while it's wet, you dab on chalks or artists pastels with a cotton ball or sponge daubbers.  The stamps I used are a two step process so you lay down the background and then stamp the outline on top of that.

Tee Tip

If you are doing this on something that is meant to last (like and LTC/ATC) then you need to seal the chalk before you stamp the outline or send off the project.  Artist fixative is a convenient way to do this.  Dick Blick has a wide range available, but you can find it at your local craft store as well.

So get out your chalks and pastels and play!

Here's the project I did for Easter.