Faux Leather Masterboard Part 1

With only five days to go till my next chemo, I am taking advantage of feeling pretty well, and spending time being creative as much as possible. I have been working on some projects with a deadline, that I am not able to share with you until the recipients have received them, but today I began a new masterboard, which I am going to be using for one of these projects. I need to get these done before I feel too poorly again, because if my next treatment affects me worse than the last one, I may not be well enough to complete the projects in time. This means that the angels have had to take a bit of a back seat for a while!

Last year, I made some faux leather to cover my recycled mini-album. I didn’t give much detail of how I made this so I thought I would share this now.

I had an idea yesterday. The masterboards I made last year were supposed to be used in the normal way, being cut up and used for projects, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to cut them up – they were too useful as photographic backgrounds! It suddenly occurred to me that if I made two identical masterboards, I could use one and keep one, so this is what I am now going to do.

So I have started making two identical faux leather masterboards, working on them both concurrently, so that they will be finished together. Otherwise I may go off the boil if I complete one, and won’t bother to make the second! I know how undisciplined I can be!!

Faux leather is amazing. It looks and feels exactly like leather – quite different from the original card from which it is made. The transformation of one material into another is astonishing, and so easy to do. The only thing it lacks is that distinctive leather smell but I expect one day someone will bottle that and we’ll be able to spray it on for that ultimate authentic touch!

Some people start with craft card (which is a dull buff colour) or brown cardstock, and then add some colour and dimension with distress inks, but I prefer to start with whatever card I have handy and then paint it with acrylics. In the past I have used recycled card with printing on it – if you are going to paint it it really doesn’t matter what colour it is or what is on it, so if you have any patterned card that you don’t like, for instance, or any old bits of junk card for recycling, that will do fine. The better quality card, the less likely it is to fall apart, so you don’t want anything too thin and flimsy. I have seen faux leather made from toilet paper middles, and this is usually pretty poor quality card, but it works fine – it just requires fairly careful handling.

I have looked at various different techniques for making faux leather and combined different aspects of each, to develop my own slant on this. There are various tutorials available on Youtube and elsewhere online and if you are more into papercrafting and perhaps don’t have access to acrylic paints, you can get good results with distress inks.

Faux leather embosses very well, too, using embossing folders. You can leave the painting until after it is embossed if you want, so that you can emphasise the peaks and troughs in the texture with lighter and darker shades, to give the effect of tooled leather, which looks extremely realistic.

Card has to be altered to soften the fibres in order to give it that soft, flexible feel so characteristic of leather. Not only does it handle like leather, but the surface has a soft, suede-like feel almost like chamois leather. Painting and sealing gives it the more normal leather finish. With ink, you could probably retain the chamois finish, but I haven’t tried this.

To soften the fibres, I took a small spray bottle and poured a little glycerine into it – glycerine is very inexpensive and easily obtainable from your local pharmacist. This is diluted with water in approximate proportions of 1:6 glycerine to water. Shake the bottle to mix the solution.

Lay out the cardstock on a non-stick craft sheet and spritz it well with the liquid. It needs to be pushed into the card so that it is soaked up by the fibres. To begin with, it is fine to rub it gently with your fingers but as the process goes on, it is important not to damage the surface too much, and a patting motion with the fingers outstretched and the palms flat works best.

Here is the card after the first spritzing.

Once the solution has been sufficiently absorbed, it is necessary to scrunch the card up. After the first spritzing it is still quite stiff, so I scrunched and unfolded it twice, the first time emphasising the widthwise direction and then the lengthwise, taking care not to tear it when flattening it out again. This becomes increasingly important as the process advances as it becomes ever more fragile the wetter it becomes.

Here it is scrunched up for the first time.

The next picture shows the second spritzing carried out.

You can see that the label on my bottle is not surviving this process very well! I had the glycerine solution all over my hands and it started to break down the fibres of the label too.

The card scrunched up after the second spritzing.

You can see that it is now possible to scrunch it up quite a bit more tightly.

Here it is flattened out and the third spritzing applied.

Observe how much more creased the card has now become.

Here it is after the third scrunching – quite a tight ball.

It is important to take your time when unscrunching it at this stage because it has become very fragile and will tear easily. Spread out, this is what it looks like. Lots of creases running in every direction. I patted it well to flatten it out.

It has a slightly translucent appearance while it is still wet, and it is very floppy and soft, and needs careful handling. I took both sheets down and laid them out in the airing cupboard to dry overnight.

Once dry, I can apply the paint, and then it will really start to look like leather.

Gold Seahorses Birthday Card

Today I made another card from my gold seahorses masterboard.

A fairly simple card – just a matter of a bit of matting and layering and the addition of a sentiment, and some work on the inside.

Here is the original masterboard.

The base of the card was a piece of heavy white cardstock trimmed and folded to 5 1/2 inches square. I inked it lightly with Peacock Feathers distress ink, using an Inkylicious Ink Duster, and matted and layered the trimmed masterboard piece and a square of gold mirror card to create the card front. The matting and layering was at 1/8 inch intervals.

I had a rummage in my stash and found the stamped sentiment on a piece of smooshed ink background – not sure what project that was originally for, or whether it was perhaps a practice piece – but despite the colour being different, it looked good on the card, so I decided to use it. It needed a bit of trimming, and not wanting to waste any scraps, I saved them for embellishing the inside of the card. I stuck the sentiment piece down with double sided tape and added a few doodled lines with a gold gel pen.

The stamp is a clear sentiment stamp which came from my original collection of stamps when I first started out, and I didn’t keep the packaging so I have no idea what it is. I had used a small pigment ink stamp in dark purple to stamp this sentiment, and I repeated it inside the card, which had also been inked with Peacock Feathers distress ink with an Inkylicious Ink Duster.

I laid out the trimmed pieces until I was happy with the layout, along with a small piece of trimmed masterboard – I did not cut the square for the card from the edge of the masterboard but a little way in, so that I could get the best of the seahorses. I adhered the pieces into the inside of the card using double sided tape, and added a bit of doodling with a gold gel pen, as before.

I made the envelope using my We Are Memory Keepers Envelope Punch Board, and stamped a single seahorse on the corner, which I heat-embossed in gold. The envelope was inked with Peacock Feathers distress ink and I used the same turquoise gel pen to address it, that I had used to write inside the card.

I took a small piece of masterboard and lined the envelope flap with this.

This card is made for someone who is an expert card maker. Every year I need to pull the stops out for such a discerning recipient, but this time it is a relatively simple card. I think the masterboard speaks for itself and doesn’t need a lot of embellishment.

Finally, here is a digital montage of the masterboard with the two cards I have so far made from it.

 

 

Today I updated my Gutless Bag Lady blog with a review of all the samples we picked up at the stoma open day last month. Full details on the “Products” page.

Final Two Lavender Sachet Boxes

Warning: LOTS of pictures!

Today I had a lovely morning meeting up with my two friends whom I met while we were all in hospital together. We were all very pleasantly surprised to see how well we each looked! Only one of them is undergoing chemo as I am – the other’s cancer was sufficiently confined for her not to need it. The one who is having chemo has the same oncologist as me, and she has her treatments on the Mondays following my Fridays; we are receiving the same infusion and are at the same stage on our journey, so we can compare notes and support each other along the way. Like me, she has had her dose reduced, and is feeling the benefit of that. We had such a lovely chat and laugh together over a cup of coffee, and I gave them the little gifts I had made for them.

I had two lavender sachets remaining from when I made them for my fellow chemo-ites on the day unit, and decided they would be for my two friends, so I needed to make little boxes for them. I am so pleased to be feeling so much better this week, and yesterday I spent the evening in my ARTHaven working on the two boxes, and managed to complete them in time.

Both are made from watercolour paper which is great when you are likely to be using a lot of water, because it is designed to take this level of punishment without disintegrating. It is also heavy enough to make a nice sturdy little box. For both, I used clear embossing as a resist, and different Distress Inks, with a combination of blending with Inkylicious Ink Dusters, blending pads, and smooshing with water, to give a nice random effect.

The Green One

I smooshed the outside and inside of the box using Evergreen Bough distress ink on my non-stick craft sheet, spritzed with water, and pulling the piece through the ink to get a good random effect, drying in between and repeating until I got the result I wanted.

Then I heat-embossed the pieces, using a stamp from my new Chocolate Baroque set called “Harlequin Fragments” using clear embossing powder. I did not put the stamp on an acrylic block but used it unmounted because I didn’t mind it having a less defined look. I stamped once on each of the four flaps.

To bring out the resist, I inked the piece using Pine Needles distress ink.

For the inside, I repeated the process, but this time used silver embossing powder. I chose a stamp from my Floral Doodle Dallions set by Stamp attack for a motif for the centre of the box.

The final step was to distress the edges of the inside and outside of the box, using Forest Moss distress ink and a blending pad. This added a slightly yellower green to the mix because it was too blue and didn’t match the lavender sachet so well.

The finished green box.

The green sachet.

The Blue One

I began by covering the entire surface of the outside with Tumbled Glass distress ink, using an Inkylicious Ink Duster.

The stamps for this were from the Stampin’ Up Papillon Potpourri set. I chose a larger and a smaller butterfly, and again, stamped with Versamark and clear-embossed the images to create a resist. I chose another stamp from the Floral Doodle Dallions set for the centre.

The next colour of ink to be added, again with the Inkylicious Ink Duster, was Salty Ocean.

The final colour was Faded Jeans.

Once this was done, I wasn’t entirely happy with the result, which looked a little flat and boring, so I decided to have some fun with it, and experiment with coarse sea salt. I spritzed the surface well with water until it was very wet, and sprinkled the coarse grains of salt randomly over the surface and left it to stand for a few minutes.

Then I dried it gently with my heat gun, holding it well back so as not to re-melt the embossing, and so that the piece did not curl up and dislodge all the salt grains. I spritzed it again, and repeated the process. This was the result. A lot more interesting, I think you will agree.

For the inside, I again began with Tumbled Glass distress ink, covering the entire surface but not going for too even an effect.

This was followed by patches of Salty Ocean distress ink.

Finally, Faded Jeans. Again, keeping it fairly blotchy.

I then repeated the process with the sea salt.

You get gorgeous swirls and patterns with it, and darker spots around the place where the salt grain was.

To complete the inside of the box, I added some silver gilding flakes, being careful not to cover up all the patterns from the sea salt.

As a finishing touch, I went around the edges of both the inside and the outside of the box with a silver gel marker.

The finished blue box.

The blue sachet. On both sachets I have used little embellishments recycled from other things. In this case, the two little discs of abalone shell came from a cannibalised necklace I bought once at a village fete.

The Two Boxes, Complete

Both my friends were very thrilled with their little gift! For the one having chemo, I slipped one of my lavender chemo cards inside.