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.

Card from Recycled Medication Sachets

Those who follow or visit my blog will know that I’m in Full Recycling Mode at the moment, and lots of things I would normally throw away are prompting the question, “Could I make art out of this?”

For my ulcerative colitis, I take medication in the form of granules, which come in individual plastic foil sachets. Taking two of these a day, I realised I was throwing quite a lot of the empty sachets away, and asked myself if they could be recycled in some form. I asked my hubby, “Could I make art out of these?” He pulled a face and replied emphatically, “NO!!” I think he thinks I’m completely off my head at the moment with my obsession with used teabags and empty food boxes… but he should be used to me by now, after 28 years of marriage!!

Anyway, I decided to give it a try. The project turned out a lot more difficult than I’d anticipated as these sachets are made of the most unresponsive material ever!! However, I was determined to make my hubby a card for his birthday today – one in the eye for someone who so doubted my abilities to make art out of such things!

I have made a video of most of the process – disasters and successes – but unfortunately I got so carried away that towards the end I didn’t notice that the camera’s memory was full, so I didn’t manage to complete the whole thing. I also forgot to take very many photos. (Actually, altogether, this project seemed fraught with problems from beginning to end!)

Empty sachets cut open, with some “spills” made from them. The scissors are to stop the beastly things from curling up again!

Epic Fail! My first attempt at creating the background for my project.

I tried to stick the flattened out sachets onto a piece of card using gel medium. They kept curling up and not sticking, so I left it to dry under a pile of books. The result was anything but successful, with a very messy and lumpy surface.

I tried sticking the sachets with Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive (my favourite wet glue) but it didn’t work, probably because the surface was so slick, and not porous. For paper and card, that glue is second to none, but not for this, unfortunately. I was at my wits’ end, trying to think of a way of sticking them, when my hubby phoned, so I picked his brains without giving him any details about the project, and he suggested double sided tape. I was sceptical, but decided I had nothing to lose by trying, and lo and behold, it worked a treat.

I covered a fresh piece of card with strips of double sided tape, and laid down the opened-up sachets onto this, centring the first one and cutting the excess off the sides of the outer ones. It was really, really hard lining these up, because the surface was soooo sticky, and stuck on contact, and the sachets kept curling up. I managed some degree of success in the end, and once it was done, I embossed it with the Cuttlebug, using the folder “Diamond Plate,” which I thought would give the card a more manly air!

I thought the stuff might melt in an interesting way, and produce some nice wrinkled surfaces like Tyvek, but it was very stubborn and only rolled up on itself, but with further heating, it got quite tacky, and I was able to scrunch it up and make it stick to itself. I made six scrunched up ones and laid the three smaller ones on top of the larger ones, hoping they wouldn’t end up simply looking like scrunched up tin foil! I stuck them together with double sided tape and secured them to the embossed card with small jewelled brads. This piece was then layered onto a piece of black card, which in turn was stuck to a white card base.

I had a terrible job rolling the sachets to form the spills which I wanted to use for flower stems – the stuff was so darned slippery and it was very hard to get them to roll tightly enough, but after experimenting, I discovered the best way was to start them off around a wooden barbecue stick, and after a few turns, to withdraw the stick, and pull back on the roll to tighten it, before applying exactly the right amount of pressure (learnt by trial and error) to complete the roll. A line of ATG double sided tape secured the roll.

I stuck down three stems made from the spills, using narrow double sided tape, and then heat-embossed in silver the Happy Birthday sentiment at the top.

Here is the finished card:

and a detailed shot of the flowers.

I used the reverse side of the sachets for the background, being unprinted, and a slightly duller silver than the front surface, which I used for the 3-D pieces. I have got some dull silver card which would have been a lot easier to handle for the embossed background, and I would have ended up without all those joins, too, but I wanted to prove that I could make something out of the sachets!

I gave my hubby the card this morning and he loved it. When he opened it, he saw that I had stuck a sachet onto the inside of the card, with the message, “Who said I couldn’t make art out of these?!!”

Honour is satisfied! However, this was such awful stuff to work with – very unforgiving, and very unresponsive, and the whole project involved a huge amount of very frustrating work. The result wasn’t over-impressive after all that, so I don’t think I shall be continuing with this material. Some things are better for recycling than others! If anyone can come up with some other ways it might be used, I’d be glad to hear it, but from now on the empty sachets will be going into the bin again, I’m afraid. The only part that I think may have potential for the future is the rolled “spills” which could be quite effective en-masse, but it’s a lot of work! Is it worth it, I wonder?

Card for Ryn

I recently did a blog post about Ryn Tanaka, who designs beautiful art stamps. I had ordered some stamps and when they arrived, I decided to make a card for Ryn using some of them as I know how much she likes to see how her stamps are used (who wouldn’t?) and also because there was a new technique I was keen to try. (I wrote this blog post as I was making the card, but I couldn’t upload it until I had heard from her that she’d received it as I didn’t want to spoil the surprise for her!! I’ve just received an email from her that it’s arrived, so now I can share it with you.)

Some time ago I bought some Angelina fibres and did a small amount of experimental melting and fusing work which incorporated some of these amongst other things. (I didn’t pursue this much after this, but it’s in the back of my mind to do some more.) At a craft show last year I saw someone using a wooden fabric printing block to melt Angelina fibre onto, using an iron, and I was eager to try this with one of Ryn’s stamps as they are deeply etched, and I thought the effect would work well.

This is not a technique one can do with clear stamps because they would melt under the heat of the iron, but genuine rubber stamps work very well. You put the stamp down face up, lay the fibres over it, and put a piece of baking parchment on top, and then iron it until the fibres fuse – the iron will only be fully in contact with them where the design of the stamp is, so the design of the stamp is fixed into the fibres.

Here are the materials ready to start.

Here I am laying the Angelina fibres on top of the stamp ready for ironing. I spread them out as evenly as possible, adding more until the stamp was covered. The small iron I used was my hubby’s travel iron – I am hoping to get myself a decent craft iron before too long, but this is more or less OK in the meantime.

This is what the Angelina fibres look like once they have been fused. As usual with shiny, iridescent, reflective or glittery surfaces, the photos do not do it justice. The fibres are very shimmery, and where they were fused, they have turned a gorgeous metallic copper colour.

I had some brown coloured aluminium foil in my stash box, which I think probably came off an Easter egg, and I dug it out for this project once I saw the colour of the fused fibres.

After I made the 80th birthday card with the floating butterflies, I had some pieces of white card left from cutting the frames, and I used one of these for this project, covering it with the brown foil. You can see it in this picture, where I am smoothing out the worst of the wrinkles from the foil with a plastic modelling tool. I wasn’t too concerned about getting it absolutely flat and smooth (impossible anyway), because I quite liked the texture.

In the next picture, I am about to start spreading regular matt gel medium onto the card piece, to adhere it to the foil.

Laying it down onto the back of the foil, I went over it firmly with my brayer to make sure it was sufficiently adhered.

After this, I trimmed off the excess foil, leaving an overlap.

This overlap was then painted with the gel medium, ready to turn and stick to the underside of the card.

Before turning it, it had to be snipped at right angles to the edge, so that it would follow the curves of the card when turned in.

Here it is with the edges turned over and stuck down.

This is the right side of the card, covered with the brown foil.

The next step was to apply the gel medium to the back of the fused Angelina fibre piece.

Again using the brayer, and a piece of baking parchment to protect it, I applied the Angelina fibre piece to the centre of the foil covered card.

This is what it looked like at this stage.

Because the photo was so disappointing, I departed from my usual practice and tried a flash shot – I don’t like flash generally, because it alters the colours and gives a very flat appearance as a rule, and of course, with reflective surfaces, it can give a huge amount of glare, but I wanted to show just how reflective the foil and Angelina fibres were.

The next stage was to create the background piece. I wanted a nice watery effect, echoing the green colour of the unfused Angelina fibres, and found some turquoise cardstock. I have got a set of Fiskar’s Texture Plates which I can use with the Cuttlebug, and chose one called “Carpet” which actually looks more like ripples.

The normal sandwich for embossing with Fiskar’s Texture Plates in the Cuttlebug is: A plate, Fiskar’s Texture Plate (RS up), Cardstock (RS down), Tan Embossing Mat, C plate.

These plates will emboss a piece 5 1/2 inches square, but unfortunately my tan embossing mat isn’t as wide as this – I needed the maximum amount of embossing because of the size of the foil covered card, so I used my No More Shims mat which is a bit wider. It is also a bit thicker, though, so the usual Cuttlebug sandwich for embossing with Fiskar’s Texture Plates wouldn’t go through the Cuttlebug. Grrr. Anyway, I got round it by using a B plate and two thicknesses of scrap card as a shim, instead of the C plate of the original sandwich, and it worked OK, although the embossing wasn’t that deep – more shims (with the No More Shims mat, he he!!) would probably give a better effect. Anyway, it was sufficient for my purposes. This picture actually shows the card after it had been embossed and inked (because I forgot to take it before!)

This picture shows the card being inked. I experimented with some scrap, trying one or two different Tim Holtz Distress Inks to get the colour I wanted, and in the end chose quite a yellow-ish green in the form of Peeled Paint, which blended very well with the turquoise card to give a nice patchy, mottled effect of sea green. (This doesn’t show up terribly well in the photo.)

After this, I painted the whole surface with iridescent acrylic gel medium to get a nice pearlised finish.

I dried it well with my heat gun before proceeding to the next step. (The green ink shows up a bit better on these next photos.) You can see the reflective surface on the card, generated by the iridescent medium.

Here it is, dried off, lying on top of some of the original turquoise card, to show the different effect I have created.

Now came the exciting part! My favourite of Ryn’s stamps is her incredible water droplets one, which once seen, just HAD to be had!! I’ve never seen such a realistic effect – it’s stunning! Here it is, with the card and my archival black ink pad.

In this picture you can see that I have covered the whole surface with the water droplets – I had to fill in a few gaps where the shape of the stamp didn’t go to the edge – normally this wouldn’t matter too much, but since much of the centre would be covered with the Angelina fibre topper, I wanted the full effect of the water droplets. When I took this photo, I had just added a little distressing around the edges, in the form of a light dusting of Black Soot Distress Ink.

Here is the topper attached to the background with foam pads around the edge, and a good splurging of Pinflair gel adhesive in the middle to stop it collapsing. I could have used Pinflair for the whole thing, but I wanted a consistent height, especially around the edges, so I opted for the foam pads to establish this, and then filled in with the Pinflair.

Again, here is a flash photo to give an impression of the reflective nature of the project. It’s rather artificial because it’s not that reflective, but you can see the idea.

The next step was matting and layering. I spent a long time trying to decide what was best – it looked much too dark simply matted onto black – I wanted the black to pick up the colour of the water droplets, and eventually decided on a 1/16 in gold mirror card mat which just lifted it a little, and made all the difference.

Finally, the completed card. The base card was some Conqueror iridescent cardstock in gold haze that I got through Thyme Graphics – I didn’t really want to use this as a base card because I bought it for cutting with Sheba, my Black Cat Cougar cutting machine, and didn’t want to waste it, but the colour was just what I wanted, and I love the finish on it, which mirrors the rest of the iridescence of the project. (You can’t really see it on this next photo because it’s against a white towel, but it’s a narrow cream border around the black.) I also added tiny dots with a white marker, to highlight each water droplet.

Again, a flash photo to show how reflective it all is.

The final step was to create a card insert on the computer, trim it to size and insert it with double sided tape.

I didn’t have an envelope to fit this card, so I used an ordinary white A5 one, and decorated it. Using the same fish stamp, I stamped with Versamark and created a resist with clear embossing powder. Because the paper was white, I had to add some blue (Salty Ocean Distress Ink from the Summer seasonal set) as well as the Peeled Paint one. I blended them together and when I’d finished, rubbed over it with some kitchen paper to clean up the heat embossing and reveal the fish. Some water spattering completed the effect, and I sprayed the whole thing with fixative to prevent it getting damaged by rain in the post! It’s got a long journey to complete – all the way to Canada!

This card was created for Ryn to say thank you for her gorgeous stamps, and just for being so lovely!!

To see Ryn’s beautiful work, and to order her stamps for yourself, visit her website here. She also has a blog that she has recently started, and I am sure she would appreciate a visit!

WOYWW 168

I’m doing this a bit later than usual (in the small hours of Wednesday morning) because there’s been a bit of a crisis with my parents – my dad is poorly with an infection and has become quite confused, and my mum phoned this evening because they had a flood due to a leaking pipe. We had to go over, and found my dad in quite a state, and my mum trying to clear up the mess, so we phoned the all-night duty doctor, and had to wait for him to arrive, and then sort out what needed to be done. My hubby will have to pick up a few things in the morning and arrange an appointment with my dad’s regular GP, but at least our worst fears weren’t realised, and he didn’t end up in hospital. They are both very elderly and quite vulnerable now, and their house still hasn’t sold – the whole situation is fairly precarious and we may have to drop everything at any time and rush over and sort out whatever crisis arises.

Anyway, back to the matter in hand – my work space! “What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday” – the world’s greatest nosey fest! Click on the WOYWW link in my right-hand sidebar to visit our lovely hostess Julia’s blog for further info.

I’ve had another busy week doing lots of sorting and chucking out and generally downsizing – see my previous post for details. This is how it looked on Tuesday afternoon, viewed from the door.

I’m very thrilled with the extra space it’s created. There’s still quite a lot more to do – scanning documents and photos, and further weeding out of the boxes on the big shelving unit beyond the book case. I’ve now got my gift-wrapping papers in the top drawer of the filing cabinet, which has got rid of another box, and the middle drawer is filling up with old cassette tapes that need wiping off before sending to the recycling centre. The bottom drawer is broken – you can see the new runners I got from Amazon, on the floor in front, waiting to be fitted. Here’s an annotated photo so you can find your way around!

Now for the desk itself. I’ve had a fun time a couple of days ago, working on a project that I can’t share with you just yet because I don’t want to spoil someone’s surprise, but watch this space for details, hopefully in a few days.

Here’s the annotated version!

I will be doing further blog posts on all the activities on my desk this week. The water droplets stamp is from Ryn – see my recent post about her here. The gorgeous stamps I ordered from her came on Saturday and I’m super-thrilled with them. The experimental piece, stamping on Angelina fibres, was done with her fish stamp, fusing the fibres with an iron over the stamp – full details will follow in due course.

The flowers for Judy are now nearly complete but I’ve got a couple more techniques I want to try before I send them off. In the first photo you can see the poly-wallet on the floor beside Sheba, full of the most gorgeous vibrant fabric flowers Judy sent me for the swap we are doing – I’ll show you these in due course, I promise! Once I’ve finished the flowers for her, I’ll photograph hers and mine properly so that I can share them with you.

I’ve got a few more flower and butterfly pieces cut from watercolour card that I want to colour with my Dylusions ink sprays, and I’ve got a few more flower pieces inked and ready to make up.

Hope you enjoy my annotated photos this week!

Sorry I didn’t manage to visit many of your blogs last week – with my clearing, I’ve been very busy, and pretty tired afterwards! Not sure how well I’ll do this week either, as there’s a fair bit on, and we’re not sure what will happen with my parents. Have a happy WOYWW everyone, and a great week ahead. Hopefully we’ll all get the opportunity to be creative.

Iridescent Butterfly–Part 2

Back again – I wasn’t able to do any yesterday, because I was busy setting up my new printer. Today, the Gallery Glass on my wings has now fully dried, and I can move on to the next stage.

I have trimmed off the cellophane from around the wings. You can see how iridescent they are already, and they can be left like this if you want. Dragonfly wings would be gorgeous like this, but you would need thinner wire.

After trimming, the edges have to be heat set, so going carefully with the heat gun, with the wing edge on, I went round each wing until the edge of the cellophane melted.

On this close-up shot, you can see that the edge is slightly rounded.

Heating the wings does soften the Gallery Glass and superglue a bit, so it’s important not to handle them too much until they are thoroughly cooled, or they will get damaged.

The next stage is to paint them. I am using Daler Rowney Pearlescent liquid acrylic in the colour Galactic Blue, which is a gorgeous vibrant colour. The wings will need two coats, drying thoroughly between each coat.

Here are the wings after the first coat. You will notice that I’ve painted over the wires too. This makes them look slightly less obvious – they are a bit thick!

When you’ve painted the second coat, before it is dry, you can sprinkle a little ultra-fine poly-glitter onto the wings. It’s best not to use too much. Using the silvery-white glitter, it doesn’t look much when you first put it on…

…but once the wings have been set aside to dry thoroughly, the glitter is heat set using the heat gun, and this has the effect of bringing out all the gorgeous colours in the glitter. (Using any other colour of glitter, heating it would not have any effect.) I'm afraid the photo doesn't do it justice - I can never understand why sparkly or shimmery effects come out so badly on photographs!

I have not painted the backs of the wings. The blue acrylic on the front deepens the iridescence of the cellophane on the back, and I love this effect. It will not be lost in the project I am using this butterfly in, either, because the back will be reflected in a layer of silver mirror card.

You can paint the backs with black acrylic paint if you like, and this will make the blue on the front darker and richer. It’s all a matter of personal taste. I prefer to keep the surface colour as it is, because it will match my project better.

I am quite pleased with the result of this first pair of wings, despite the wire being a bit thicker than I wanted, so I’m going to go ahead and make the smaller pair. I am going to look around for some thin, already covered wire, which should make life easier.

To be continued…