Paper Crafter at large

My sister gave me some Spectrumnoir Metallic markers for Christmas last year and I barley have played with them. Stamped the huge poinsettia then heat set in gold on black cs. Colored petals with markers and stamped sentiment in black but heat set that with gold.

Love this layout with its fun topper. The bow, tag and rounds are Silhouette cut. Heat embossed in gold are the sentiment and the top layer of the bow. Wreath and needles are stamped in green. PP is from stash and gold dots are hand made.

This was started weeks ago with the leaves stamped and blue bg painted in with water color for a color challenge. But then I was not liking it so it sat on the sidelines till it made since to make it one layer. I added the center stamp, heat embossed the sentiment in white then colored in the background with a copic. Used a hot dry iron and thin white paper layer to remove the ink that stuck to the embossing powder. Masked the center of the tag and splatter in black spray, gold spray and red from an ink pad. Added the liquid from the gold splatter to the centers of leaves with water-brush dipped into the puddle of liquid I sprayed onto glass work surface. Used a edge punch to create decoration at lower edge. Now I like it!

Tip: Saw in several places this technique to add splatter. Smear the ink pad color or drip any colored liquid on a stamping block then scrape and flick a wet brush off the edge. Hold the block several inches above your project and keep your elbows moving while you are holding the block steady and flicking with the other hand. With practice, it has turned into my favorite way to splatter. I use to never like adding splatter for fear of making a hot mess of my piece. Now I figure there is no such thing as too much, just more (maybe not better, but defiantly more).

Found a new challenge that looks quite fun. This week they are asking for the use of printed paper. I made this handy gift card holder using some very old printed paper. Cut the cs base into 4 1/2 x 11. Fold each end at 3″ and down the middle. This creates a middle page that get glued at the outside edges and the inside fold has been cut with a boarder punch. My front decorations are a half gold doily, die cut flourish and tag with sentiment stamped in black ink. I used the left over pp and the punch to decorate the hand made envelope.

I am pretty sure the festive they were thinking about was more around this holiday season. My situation was that my holiday cards are complete but I do need a birthday card. I sure feel for the folks that share their special day with so much else going on. This one was made with smacking white cs on light peach ink pad smeared on the mat and sprayed with alcohol. Then sponging several stencils with the darker peach and two different greens. Used small paint brush to smear thick embossing powder to edges and added silver embossing powder that got heat set. Bow and tags are cut on Silhouette and sentiment stamped with darker peach. Mat layered on blue then attached to a white cs base.

Tip: Spraying ink that is on glass mat with alcohol instead of water gives a dotted background. Once I had the dots where I wanted I added water to the ink (by then the alcohol had dried) and smacked some more for more general color. It was actually a discovery by accident. I keep small spray bottles of water and alcohol on my work surface and I picked up the alcohol instead of water and did not realize it till I saw how different the splatters were from what I was expecting.