I’ve Been Norty…

…and indulged in a teeny weeny bit of online retail therapy! After months of turning a bright shade of green every time I saw what people were doing with the utterly mouthwatering Dylusions ink sprays (no, don’t worry, I haven’t been drinking them!) I have finally succumbed, and treated myself to the complete set of 12. They have all still got their seals on and I can’t wait to open them up and get started, but I’ve got things I’ve got to do this week (getting ready for our accountant’s appointment next week – I hadn’t even started till this afternoon… really, really boring stuff and I’d much rather be doing art!!) so they are going to have to wait a bit. Aren’t they just juicy-gorgeous?

When the parcel arrived, the inks were all taped together into a block, and wrapped with red tissue paper and tied with some gorgeous brown jute string (which of course I have kept!) and tied into the bow was this lovely little wooden heart charm! Such a nice touch.

I have also got a whole lot of new Perfect Pearls, including some of the Interference range. One slight problem is that the newer ones have the label on the top, whereas the older ones have it on the bottom. This means that every time I use them I’m going to have to look at them to make sure I don’t open them upside down… Perhaps the labels will be peelable and I can stick them all on the lids instead of the bottoms!

I had about 6 pots and have wanted to expand the range for a while now. What made me finally get down to it was this incredible tutorial from Christie – if you haven’t seen any of her work or tutorials, do visit her blog because it’s awesome.

I just had to get two of the Tim Holtz Ink Palettes to do this with – Christie has also done a palette with her alcohol inks, and I am going to do this too.

You then end up with a palette of colours which you can use like watercolours, with a wet brush (water for Perfect Pearls, alcohol blending solution for alcohol inks) and use both these materials with a lot more control, and no waste, and with a lot less effort too. I have often used Perfect Pearls as watercolours, dipping a wet brush into the pot and mixing the powder with water on my craft sheet, but sometimes you end up mixing up too much and wasting it, and it’s not always easy to get the consistency just right. With the palette, though, I think this is going to be a lot better. I think I may invest in the Adirondack Alcohol Ink Fillable Pen which might be easier to use and lose less blending solution through evaporation than just dipping a brush in. Much as I love the effect of alcohol inks on the applicator felt, I’ve often thought it would be nice to have a bit more control, and use them to paint with, and this seems to be the answer.

Since the craft show just over a week ago, I haven’t been able to find my Tim Holtz design ruler – for a whole week after the event I wasn’t doing anything in my ARTHaven anyway because I wasn’t well enough, but when I got back in there and was looking for it to trim off the edges of my ATCs, it seemed to have disappeared completely! I thought I might as well buy a new one rather than wasting any more time and energy searching… Anyway, I found “The Very Useful Ruler” by Woodware, which is going to be better because it’s 15 inches long instead of 12 (it’s difficult to cut a piece of 12 inch card with a ruler that’s exactly the same length) and it has centimetres as well as inches (not that I use metric that much). It has a steel edge like the Tim Holtz one, but it’s absolutely flat instead of being rounded, and I think this will make for more accurate cutting. It also has measuring from the centre outwards, to make centring stuff easier.

I haven’t tried it yet. No doubt now I’ve got this new ruler, my old one will turn up again!

I also treated myself to the Ranger nib holder to hold my recently acquired nibs – I’ve just started using these for drawing or writing with Distress Inks. In combination with my new palettes, I might use them for writing with Perfect Pearls and alcohol inks, too. I’ve got several clear plastic containers left over from camera films, and annoyingly, the nibs are just too long to fit in, so I’ve trimmed the back ends down so they now measure 1 3/4 inches instead of 2 inches – now I’ve got the holder, making them a little bit shorter doesn’t make that much difference, and they now fit perfectly in the little container. I’ve even kept the bits I cut off because I thought they might come in useful to add to a project sometime… (Never Throw Anything Away!!)

What fun I am going to have with all this new stash. Norty… but Oh So Nice!!!