Card Factory 2015–Foiled Cards and another Florabunda Card

Today I made up three quick cards. The first two were made from my Florabunda Floral Mandala design which my friend Lucy foiled for me, one in gold and one in purple.

The gold one:

and the purple one.

Always hard to photograph shiny and reflective surfaces, but I hope you get the idea! I kept the matting and layering fairly simple. The gold one just has a 1/16-in matt layer made from gold mirror card, and then straight onto the white card base. I thought that was all that was required, to keep it clean and simple.

I didn’t have any purple mirror card so I used silver, again at 1/16-in, and then some of the pale purple glitter card from the collection I have used for other cards in this Card Factory.

Both simple designs, but with some impact, I think.

While I was having my final chemo on Friday, I did a bit more colouring with coloured pencils, this time in reds, oranges, yellows and a bit of purple, on my Flowers in a Circle Florabunda design, so I made up that card this morning as well.

I made the 1/16-in matt layer from orange glitter card from the same pack, and then onto a wider matt of plain cream card. Again, quite simple, but co-ordinating with the design and colour scheme of the card.

Florabunda Printouts

The other day, my hubby tried unsuccessfully to print out my pdfs of the Florabunda drawings I did recently, and my friend Lucy offered to print them for me – they have to be done on a laser printer whose ink will not run if you wet it. She dropped them off this afternoon and the results are absolutely great – I gave her two different sorts of card to experiment with, and the best results were definitely from the smooth card (Oce Top Colour Satinated printer card). The lines came out lovely and fine, unlike the somewhat smudgy dark lines on the rougher, more absorbent card (regular inkjet printer card). The Top Colour card is the one I like to use for Zentangle drawing as it has a lovely smooth surface that the pens flow over nicely, and it seems to take colour well, at least from the Inktense pencils – I am going to have to experiment with other media, which is one reason why I wanted several copies of each design. If this is successful, I shall ask Lucy to print out some more for me.

My hubby’s laser printer is not working very well and may be on the way out – he’s had it for quite a number of years now, and maybe the time has come to invest in one myself. He doesn’t use it much since he retired and I can always print out anything he needs done on a laser printer. Not that I am particularly keen to shell out the cash for another printer just now…

Anyway, here are examples of the sheets she did for me.

If you look carefully you can see some small black lines in the margins of each sheet. These are part of the grid templates I have created on my desktop publisher in various sizes for different purposes, and indicate where the card should be cut. The card with the larger motifs on it has four 2 1/2 inch squares down the right hand side, which I shall cut and do further alphabet letters on. The borders were just arranged as many as I could get onto an A4 sheet, without creating a grid template for them – they were just drawn on offcut strips and I’m not so fussy about them being an exact size, but for the other pieces it’s good to have an accurate measurement for matting and layering purposes when card making.

Then came the big surprise! Lucy persuaded me to look again at the stack of copies, and at the bottom were two sheets that she had foiled!! I was stunned at how absolutely gorgeous they were, and could scarcely believe that I had drawn these – with this treatment, they looked like professionally printed designs!! On the cutting machines forum recently we’d had a discussion about different methods of foiling, and Lucy, and several of the other members, have foiling machines that they use in conjunction with their laser printers – you need a laser printer because the toner will re-melt in the foiling machine and fuse the foil onto the card just where the black toner is, and nowhere else. The detail is astonishing. (Oh dear… not only do I now want a laser printer, but also a foiling machine!!!)

As usual, shiny and reflective surfaces are notoriously difficult to photograph, but here goes with my best effort. The top image on the right-hand sheet is foiled in purple but it isn’t catching the light.

I hope this gives an indication of what fabulous results you can get from foiling! Lucy said that she did the whole sheet of the letter B, laying strips of different coloured foil for each row, so that I could experiment with adding inks and other forms of colour – she thinks that the foil should stay put and not lift up if it gets wet. The foil should also act as a resist to any water-based media. It will be interesting to experiment. I shall probably leave the two larger ones as they are, and make cards from them.

Not having felt too well over the past few days, I have made no further progress with drawing and colouring.

Mixed Media Boxes for Lavender Sachets

Today I started making the little boxes to contain my lavender sachets, which I am making as gifts for my fellow chemo-ites.

The other night I was indulging my Pinterest addiction and came across the template for these boxes. They were originally designed to be made up in fabric, and the design is available as a free download along with some other small quilting projects, but I thought I could make them from card and embellish them with mixed media.

First of all, here are the completed foiled dragonfly sachets.

Since they were quite rich looking, with gold embellishments, I wanted to create an exotic style box for them, and I must say I am delighted with the result!

I decided to use watercolour paper to make the boxes, because it is fairly thick and strong, and takes a lot of moisture without falling apart. Some while ago, I rescued a whole pile of sheets of watercolour paper from my hubby’s bin – they were what he considered to be failed watercolours, some of which were incomplete. Nearly all the sheets were unused on the back, and if I had been him I’d have kept them to paint on the backs! I have used quite a lot of the blank backs to dry teabags on.

For these boxes I decided to use the painted side, because it had the makings of a reasonable background with a bit of work! Here is one of them after I drew around the box template twice, and cut one out.

This watercolour was rather appropriate because of was one that my hubby did in Granada, and the boxes have a distinctly Islamic look to them!

The first step was to wash over the piece with a large, wet brush, to try and mute and blend the paint a little. It was surprisingly resistant to this treatment, so I added some of my own watercolour, nice and wet.

For the next step, after drying the piece well with my heat gun, was to rub my Versamark pad randomly over the surface, and I then added some sticky embossing powder, shaking off the residue. I recently acquired this stuff and it’s brilliant for loads of things. It behaves like ordinary embossing powder, but when you heat it, it melts into a sticky glue. Here it is, before heating.

Here is the first step in the foiling process, with the foil being peeled back.

The foil didn’t go onto all the sticky surface, so I repeated the process several times, until I was satisfied there was enough foil on the surface. I dusted it with talcum powder to counteract any remaining stickiness on the surface.

The foil sheet, as you can see in the photo where it is being peeled back, now has patches with no foil on them. However, this does not mean that it is used up and should be thrown away – on the contrary – if you use it to foil over a sticky surface, any remaining foil on the sheet will be applied, leaving gaps of stickiness on the surface, and you can use another sheet of a different colour to fill these gaps, giving a gorgeous variegated effect (this is a technique I have yet to try).

The next step was to distress the edges, and I used Forest Moss distress ink, applied with an Inkylicious Ink Duster.

I then took a glue pen and drew a line around the edge of each piece, and embossed it using gold embossing powder. Here I made a rather disconcerting discovery. I have a Chinese takeaway box into which I had emptied a large pot of gold embossing powder several years ago, and when I embossed with it today, it came out a dark greeny-brown colour! I had no idea that embossing powder could have a limited shelf life, but this stuff is certainly no use for producing gold any more! I shan’t throw it away as it might be useful if I want a dark greeny-brown colour. Fortunately I had a small tub of gold which was more recent, and I got the effect I wanted.

I added a bit more distressing with the Forest Moss distress ink to give a darker, richer effect and to show off the gold of the foiling and embossing better. You can still see some of the original watercolour paint, giving subtle variations in colour.

For the insides of the boxes, I smooshed some Forest Moss distress ink onto my non-stick craft sheet and spritzed it with water. I also spritzed the pieces, and smooshed them around in the ink, drying in between and re-applying, until I was happy with the result – a nice random background.

I painted the surface with regular matt gel medium, using a foam brush, and then added some gold gilding flakes, pressing them well into the surface with my brayer.

I finished off the insides by distressing around the edges with Forest Moss distress ink (I forgot to photograph this, but you can see the effect in the photos below).

The boxes are assembled by bending the two tabbed pieces upwards and holding the tabs together, and then folding up the other two pieces, one by one, threading the tabs through the slits. The shape of the tab on the top holds the box closed.

Here are the two completed boxes, together with the foiled lavender sachets which will be put inside.

The completed boxes.

I am very pleased with this effect, which looks like rich gold-embossed leather. The original watercolour background gives subtle variations of colour on the outside of the box. The foiling, using the sticky embossing powder, has worked extremely well – I didn’t have a lot of joy with this technique using fabrics but it’s great for paper or card.

Foiling Success, and More Calico Lavender Sachets

I’ve now had the chance to complete the foiling project which I started the other day.

I applied the foil glue to the fabric by painting it onto a rubber stamp and stamping carefully onto the fabric. To get a good impression, and because the foam on the cling mount of the new stamps is rather hard, I used a foam mat under the fabric. I left the glue to dry fully, and then laid the foil, shiny side up, over the glue and rubbed it firmly with the back of a fingernail, peeling the foil back carefully to check that I had not missed any.

This is the result.

I am quite pleased with this. These small rectangles can now be made up into more lavender sachets. This fabric is rather thin, so I may need to back these pieces with calico before making up.

I am very pleased with the Jones Tones foiling kit that I bought. There are some cases when you really do have to use the right equipment for the job, and no glue in my possession was working properly. I am keen to try more foiling in future as I love the effect. I have discovered that you can also apply foil using iron-on interfacing and I am eager to try this technique too.

Last night I completed five more lavender sachets made from calico, onto which I had stamped different images using archival inks in a selection of colours.

The top one, with the blue butterfly, has been edged with pale blue ribbon. All the others were edged with finger-crocheted yarn (finger-crocheted because I couldn’t be bothered to go up and find a crochet hook!).

I have now completed a total of fifteen lavender sachets – I am not sure how many I shall need, but I’ve got a few more pieces of fabric cut and ready to make up, so I shall complete those and hope it’s enough! Next step is the little boxes to put them in, and these will have to be made in my ARTHaven as I really can’t bring all the stuff I need downstairs! I am hoping to get these completed by Friday, when I go in for my second chemo treatment, so that I can start giving them to my fellow chemo-ites.

New Stash, and More Lavender Sachets

New Stash

For my birthday, my friend Shaz sent me a beautiful card with white heat-embossed dragonflies on it, and I asked her what stamp it was, and she told me it was a set from Papermania, and how very reasonably priced it was, along with some others she thought I might be interested in. I promptly went and had a look, and yes, you’ve guessed it, I succumbed! Thank you Shaz!

Like Shaz, I have now cut the stamps to separate them from the original single stamp.

Now that I shall be doing more with textiles (this was my plan for this year, but so far it hasn’t materialised in any large degree) I thought I would finally get around to getting myself a decent craft iron. Ages ago I found one online but it was consistently unobtainable, and the website said they would inform me when it was available again, but it never has been… In the meantime my hubby lent me his little travel iron but I have to say it was rubbish and didn’t heat up enough! Anyway, this is what I have now bought for myself, and it’s a really powerful little iron, with steam facility too.

As you can see, it comes with its own little drawstring bag and a tiny jug to fill the water tank with (this opens via the oval rubber cover at the front end of the top of the iron).

The design is very ergonomic, and it feels very nice in the hand. All the controls are recessed below the surface so there’s no danger of operating them inadvertently.

Finally, the iron has a little clip on the front, and you can wind the cable around the iron and clip it firmly. Nice design!

I also bought myself a nice ironing mat, which has a foam back and a metallised surface to reflect the heat back. There’s no way I can carry our ironing board upstairs to my ARTHaven, and this is the ideal solution. Here it is, folded over so that you can see the back as well as the front. The foam back makes it quite non-slip as well as giving a nice spongy surface, and the whole thing can be folded away when not in use.

It is resting on one of my large ultra-heatproof mica mats from Presspahn. See my sidebar for details of these – I wouldn’t be without them, especially after warping so many cutting mats with my heat gun! They will withstand much higher temperatures than I’m ever likely to generate in my studio, even if I were to get myself a butane torch! I have now brought one of the small ones downstairs and it’s under the cutting mat on the table in front of the recliner, should I want to do any sewing downstairs which might require pressing.

The final thing I got recently was a Jones Tones foiling kit. I have a couple of sheets of gold and silver foil that I bought at a craft show ages ago, and the other night I tried stamping and foiling on some fabric to use for my lavender sachets, with complete lack of success! It wasn’t easy to find good answers online but eventually I discovered Jones Tones who do quite a few foiling and other products, and I thought this little starter kit was quite a good idea – for a very reasonable price I’ve got quite a few different coloured foils and a small bottle of glue.

You have to put the glue onto whatever surface you want to foil, and leave it to dry completely, and then place the foil shiny side up over the glue and rub it, and the foil transfers onto the glue but not elsewhere – there’s a transparent layer on the top of the sheet from which the foil is transferred.

I tried painting some of the glue onto one of my new dragonfly stamps, using a foam brush, and this is the result so far:

Not very impressive, I grant you, but we’ll see how well the foil transfers once it’s dry.

Lavender Sachets

Three more completed lavender sachets.

The one on the left is plain red fabric with a strip of quite stiff, open-work lace laid over the top. The little red checked wooden charm was in my stash, and I added some black ribbon and the signature heart charm that’s going on each bag.

The middle one ended up a bit lumpy because I had quite a job stitching down the three ribbon flowers – these wired flowers were part of the gorgeous box of crafty stash that my friend Marlene sent me for my birthday. The one on the right has a collection of wired beaded flowers and some pink stamens that were also in Marlene’s parcel, and some sequins and beads. Both these green bags have gathered ribbon around the edges.

Today I’ve done some more printing on calico using archival inks – this time utilising most of the colours that I have.

First of all, more sepia ones, this time using some small seashell stamps.

The next one is one of Ryn’s leaf stamps.

Using one of my new butterfly stamps. OK, I’ve got loads of butterfly stamps, but can one ever have enough butterflies??!!

Finally, something I’ve been wanting to do, random stamping of tiny butterflies in different colours. These two little stamps are part of a larger set that I’ve had for ages.

Time to get these new calico ones stitched and made up!