More Tag-a-Day Stencil Challenge

Here is the next bunch of tags from this months challenge. I've discovered that doing the backgrounds are the easy part and then trying to figure out how to finish them can be a little more difficult. I think this week in Creative Studio we will be discussing ideas for focal points and finishing our tags.

Day 14- Fly

Day 15- Fearless

Day 16- Believe

Day 17- My Story

Day 18- New Day

Day 19- New Growth

Day 20- Explore

Happy Creating!

Wendy

Tag a Day Stencil Challenge goes on.

Although it's been a bit of a catch up game with my Tag a Day Stencil challenge this month I have persevered and I am enjoying it.

Day 6- Explore

Day 7- Adventure

Day 8- Soar

Day 9- Dreams

Day 10- Sweet

Day 11- Dragonfly Dreams

Day 12- Live Everyday

Day 13- Life

There have been some new people join the facebook challenge group but not many posting yet. It's not too late to make a few tags with stencils and share. Or maybe a stencil project not on a tag. It is getting near the end where I could use some motivation and inspiration to keep going. Don't worry about doing one every day just do what you can, when you can. It's all just for fun after all.

Happy Creating!

Wendy

Double embossing tutorial.

I've seen and tried so many different techniques for embossing I was surprised but delighted to come across one more while watching a Tim Holtz video on Scraptime. Even though I didn't have the texture paste he used yet, I had to try the technique right away with what I did have. I love to find a technique to use supplies I already have or to try it even if it's not exactly the same. It's like experimenting and I did like chemistry way back when...

 When I went looking to see what texture paste I had  to use I found a few and decided to try them all. Here, from left to right are Liquitex Modeling Paste, DecoArt Terra Cotta Texture paste, Golden Crackle Paste, Tri Art modeling paste, Jo Sonja Texture paste and DecoArt Media Crackle Paste white. I do like my texture pastes!! They all worked great and most of them came out quite similar. While most of them had a somewhat smooth surface the two DecoArt products looked different then all the others with more texture on one and crackle on the other. 

   The Terra Cotta Texture paste had a gritty texture when applied and this showed in the end result which was interesting. The DecoArt Media crackle paste white, shown above, resulted in a great crackle effect. The Golden Crackle paste has the smoothest end result. 

   But I am getting a little ahead of myself. Here is how I went about trying this technique and making the tag.

 

I started off by using a tag in my stash that already had some colour on with Distress inks and Glimmer mist. I added the pattern on with Dusty Concord Distress Ink and part of a Crafters Workshop stencils.

                                       

As part of the background I used this die cut feather and embossed it by tapping the embossing ink all over it and then sprinkling embossing powder on it before melting it with the heat gun. It was then glued on to the background.

Now for the fun part, double embossing. Mask off the part of the stencil to be used. This is another Crafters Workshop stencil with a variety of leaves or feather, depending who you ask. Today it's a feather!

With a palette knife gently smooth the paste over the stencil. Don't over work it or it will bleed under the stencil. Take the stencil off and wash right away. I used the DecoArt Media Crackle paste white for this project. I really liked the crackle effect on it. I love using the texture paste just like this, it can be inked or painted once dried. But this technique kicks it up a notch. While the paste is still wet, sprinkle embossing powder all over and shake off excess. I used copper embossing powder for my project. So it's double embossed, hence the name I gave it. 

Now the hard part, wait until it's dry before heat embossing the powder. If it's heated before it's dry more texture will result, which could be a good thing too. At this point it's very fragile and can be damaged easily if touched, so place it out of the harms way. Mine was very dry before heating it since once I walk away to let it dry I'm off on another project and it doesn't get done until I happen to remember or come across it again. 

Once the feather was heat embossed I noticed the paste leaked under the stencil so I used a black Stabilo All pencil and water to darken around the feather a little. It didn't completely cover the white but made a nice shadow around the feather. This is before the pencil. I then add the sentiment stamp and some ribbon and charms at the top.

The wonderful puffiness of this technique really makes the central feather standout and it needed little more to finish it.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments about it. And if you try this technique or have already tried it please share your creations here. I'd love to see and hear how you used this double embossing technique.

Happy Creating!

Wendy

Monday giveaway again.

This tag was done for a challenge a few years back. I'm guessing the theme was black and white! I don't often work in black and white but looking at this tag I think I may have to rethink that and take some time to explore it again.

You're probably starting to know the routine now. Leave a comment below and you will have a chance to win this tag. The draw is on Friday of this week. 

Good Luck and pass it on please!

Happy tagging!

Wendy

Finally day 8 and 10 finished

What can I say, better late than never! I finished the the Creative Chemistry with Tim Holtz online workshop. Although it wasn't necessary to watch and do the work during the 2 weeks that it was live, I tried to challenge myself to keep up anyway. I know I will go back to re-watch the videos again because their was so much information to learn in just one sitting. I really enjoyed it and recommend it to anyone interested in learning about how different product work both alone and with other products. It really inspired me thinking about the products I have already and how to mix and match them to create my own techniques now that I know the basic chemistry of how things work well together or not.

So here are my last few tags of the workshop.

 This is the Paint Dabber Resist technique. I had to do some improvising again for this technique but I think it worked out pretty well. This was done on Sticky Back Canvas which I actually had but had never worked with yet. Yes I'm guilty of purchasing something and leaving it in the package for a few years before using it. I know a lot of you out there are guilty of the same thing. Well any way, I was glad to have a reason to try it and really enjoyed working with the canvas. It won't take me so long to get it out to use again, I hope!

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 This tag has both the Crackle Paint Resist Technique(the background crackle) and the Shattered Stains Technique(butterfly) on it. I've worked with these Crackle paints before but I don't think I was applying the correctly so this was very helpful. I really like the way the Shattered Stains butterfly turned out. I would never think to put the crackle paint on so thick but it was very effective.

The last day of class we had only one tag to make so this made it a little easier for me to catch up. This was the Rock Candy Distress Stickles Technique. I wasn't crazy about my finished tag and the photo certainly doesn't do the Rock Candy justice but I'll be trying this again some time.

Well thanks for following me along my Creative Chemistry journey. I hope to share some creations in the near future using some of the new techniques I learned.

Happy Creating!

Wendy

Day 7 and 9 of Creative Chemistry.

Ha, I thought I was doing pretty good with the Creative Chemistry class this week. I was all ready to show you my day 8 and 9 tags so I can go do day 10 and then as I was about to post it I saw that the last post was for day 6. Well that didn't make sense. So after checking the site and sorting through my tags I realized I had completely missed day 8. I don't know how, I don't know where I was or what I was doing but it happened. So I'm going to show you day 7 and 9 today and then I guess I'll catch up on day 8 and hopefully find time for day 10. Who knew taking an on-line class would be so demanding that I could lose a whole day.
Any way here are my tags. This was suppose to be a short and sweet post so I can get on with day 10, now to be days 8 and 10 but I got a little carried away taking pics, so be patient with me and enjoy.

 This is Distress power resist. I only had 2 colours of Distress power so I tried both but wasn't really happy with either one. I think a lighter colour like Tim used would be more effective.

 Here is Rusted Enamel technique. I think this was interesting and I will definitely be doing some more experimenting with the colour variations possible.

The Nostalgic Batik was a lot of fun. I've done variations of this before but hadn't used the coloured inks under the clear embossing power before so I can see a lot of different applications for this now. Oh and I got to use a new stamp I got this week. Well new to me anyway. A friend was cleaning out her stash and I purchased some wonderful new to me stamps. I know I'm suppose to be purging to move to the new studio space but what's a girl to do!!

 Here is some Perfect Distress mist. Always fun to spray and spray and spray to see what mystical background come out. I definitely need some more mini misters, oh the colour combinations between ink and mica powder are endless...

 The Perfect Distress wasn't too perfect in my world and unfortunately the photo looks even worse than the tag did. It's an interesting technique though. I'll have to work on it a bit more obviously.

The Perfect Splatter Distress was fun again too. Another new twist on a fun technique. Hard to see here but I love the way the Perfect Pearls just show up here and there rather than all over the tag.

So that was supposedly my short post for the day. I'm off to watch some more super cool techniques. I'll share them as soon as I can. LOL.

Keep Creating.

Wendy

More improvisation, day 6

Yes another day of not having the products for the Creative Chemistry class. As I watched the videos this morning I thought, oh well I have other stuff I should be working on any way. And then my brain clicked, yes I think I even heard it, as it so often does, only not as fast as I'd like it to and there was the answer. I may not have the Distress markers but I have a good selection of Tombow watercolour markers so why not use them and see if they'll do some of the same things. Tim did tell us to use what we have so that seems to be working for me so far. I don't use my water colour markers a lot so this is a good opportunity to get some more use out of them.

 I thought it would be interesting to try the different techniques with the same image to compare with after. The top one is the water colour with markers technique. It really doesn't take much to get a lot of colour with these markers. The two bottom butterflies are the stamp with markers technique. The one one the left is the first printing and the one of the right is the second printing but with water misted onto the stamp first. I think the stamping with markers is my favourite thing to do with markers, it's just so easy.

Here are the same techniques with a different image. You can see that the image makes all the difference. Some images just don't look that great as a really washed out water colour.

Well such was my experimenting for today. I'm pretty sure I have the supplies for tomorrow so I think it will be more fun for me.

Happy Creating!

Wendy

Improvised day 5 Creative Chemistry

Well I told you earlier that day 5 was a problem because I don't have any of the products Tim used for that day but I got into the spirit of Creative Chemistry and improvised, big time. Yes it's hard to believe that I don't own any Distress stains or sprays. He certainly makes it look tempting though.
So here are my tags I created today. I decided not to put images on my tags for today so I'll used them just as demo tags for these new techniques.

 This is the Marbled stains technique except I call it the Marbled inks and paint technique since I used Distress ink pads and misters and a little white acrylic paint watered down. I think it worked pretty good although I think I'd really like to get my hands on some Picket fence stain. As you can see the white paint didn't mix in as well as the stain would have. I'm happy with it though and will do my own version of this technique again.

 This is my version of Kraft resist. I didn't have any Kraft resist paper so I made my own with varnish. The one on the left is done with a stencil and the varnish was lightly sponged on. The one on the right the varnish was put on with a liner brush, lots of fun. And again since I didn't have any stains I used my Distress ink pads and re-inker misters. I know they're not the same as Tim's but I'm pretty happy with them. Oh and they're not actually on Kraft paper. I tried it on Kraft paper first but I think the paper was too porous and once I inked them the varnish resist hardly showed up at all and everything got very dark and ugly. So I tried them on regular manila tags and it worked wonderfully.

This is actually a do over from day 4. I didn't like how my layered mist technique turned out, since it came out so dark so I redid it and sprayed the tag with water before starting and the results were much better.

So that is how my day 5 turned out. Lots of fun and experimenting. It's really got me thinking about mixing things up more and trying things out just to see what happen. Well that what Tim keeps saying so I guess the class is a success for me. Can't wait to see what tomorrow brings.

Happy Creating

Wendy

Day 4 Creative Chemistry

Well I'm slowly getting caught up with my on line Creative Chemistry class. I'm starting to have a few challenges with not have the same product that Tim is using but today I was able to do the tags with what I had. I wasn't thrilled with my result for day 4 but that was partially because of lack of supplies and partially just because they weren't my favourite techniques.

I cheated for the custom stamp pad technique. I made this one a while back so I just re-inked it to get it going again. It worked even though he suggested to use a stamp with lots of solid areas which of course I didn't know when doing this but I like it all the same. For the water colour technique I had limited colours in the re-inkers so I wasn't too happy with the end result. They are definitely on my shopping list. Again for the layered misting technique I had limited colours and limited misters to make the sprays so the colour combo wasn't very satisfying but I'll definitely do this again when I get more re-inkers.

I'm having even more trouble with day 5. At first I thought I wouldn't be able to do any of them since I didn't have one product he used but then my brain kept turning until it reminded me that it is called Creative Chemistry so that's just what I did. I'm working on making some craft resist paper and I found some substitutes for the marbled technique. So I'm off to finish them up so I hope to share them with you soon.

Happy Creating

Wendy

Creative Chemistry 101

I started the Tim Holtz Creative Chemistry 101 online workshop on Monday and it's been great but I've been a little busy with other things so I'm kind of slow at showing you what I've done so far. To catch up a bit I'm going to show you the first few days of tags. It's all about techniques which is what I like best. We're learning a lot about the chemistry of many different products so it will be easier to explore further on our own. This is just my kind of chemistry class! Day one was all about terminology and properties of certain products, very informative but no play time so no pictures.

 This is day 2's tags. Fun and easy backgrounds.

Here is day 3's tags. Again fun and easy backgrounds with a few new twists to them.

I'm hoping tomorrow I'll have time to get day 4 and 5 done to share with you. Can't wait to do more inking.

Happy tag making!

Wendy

A wish, a hope and a little sorry.

 I'm more than a little sorry that I've neglected you, my blogging friends. I'm alive and well, although a little tired and worn out from the holiday festivities. Tis the season and all that! Starting out the holiday season a little low on energy caused me to shorten my list of to do's so blogging and baking were two of them. We did fine without the baking as many people bring things with when they come to visit and the Tin Man bought a few extra sweet treats while shopping. But I missing my blogging and am glad to be back at it. I found a little time in December to create some tags and here are a couple just for you.

A special wish that your holiday was a joyful one with lots of laughter and fun.

And a Hope of Happiness and Health in the New Year!

Wendy

My bliss is back.

I didn't really realize it but I've been in a bit of a creative rut lately. I've worked on a few creative things but just couldn't seem to get anything done. So this afternoon I decided to give myself some free time just to work at what ever came to mind first. It seemed to work I think my bliss is back and I'm feeling a lot better.

This tag was on my desk from earlier this week when I started it for Grungy Monday. It also works for Simon Says Stamp and Show so I'll link it to both of them. Go check them out, they're both a lot of fun to join in or just see what everyone else has done with this weeks challenges.

Have a wonderful weekend. I'm off to have a mysterious dinner with my parents and the Tin man.

Enjoy the journey...

Yes some mornings I need to remind myself of this as I lay awake hours before the alarm goes off. Sleep is not my friend lately so this morning I decided to get up and make the most of it. I had my challenges tag finished before the Tin Man even got up for work!

I felt a little cheated with this one because I used some paper that already had the background collaging done for me. That's the part I quite like to do the best. Well it did make for a quick tag.

I'm entering this into the following challenges:

Kard Krazy- "postcards"

CCC- Pg. 56

Simon Says Stamp and Stripes

If you haven't checked out the Challenges on these blogs yet, get over there and enjoy some wonderful creative works.

Friends tag.

Yes another tag challenge over at Kard Krazy for Tag Tuesday. The theme this week is Friends.

I thought I'd try something a little new to me for this tag. I seem to be drawn to a lot of scrap booking blogs and videos lately. Do you think it's trying to tell me something, like get those boxes of photos off the pool table and get scrapping! Oh maybe that's the Tin Man sending me mental vibes again! LOL.

So I decided to try a scrap page layout that I came across recently. It's called the L design because you use some kind of L shape to frame your photo. Of course mine is backwards but sometimes that's the way things work out. It was a quick and easy layout to do and definitely makes me think more about trying to tackle all those boxes of photos. But where to start!!

Hope you're having a great weekend and finding some creative time to yourself.

Angel tag for challenges.

This tag is for the Compendium of Curiosity Challenge over at Studio L3. Another new technique for me on page 59. I don't do a lot of masking but this will certainly make me think about doing it more, it was so easy and reusable.

I'm also using this for the Simon Says challenge which was tag. Kind of a no brainer for me!

Tag challenges.

It's been a busy week visiting so many wonderfully talented OWOH participants. I've received so many lovely comments that I've added 2 more tags to win. If you haven't entered yet there is still time to do so here until Feb.17.

I did find a little time to make some tags for a few challenges this week.

The first is a Valentine's tag for Red/Romance Theme Thursday over at Sheila's blog. I'm loving the red theme for this month. I already have next weeks idea ready! Go share your link for something red/romantic.

My next tag I'm going to enter into 3 challenges. First is Compendium of Curiosities (CCC) at Studio L3 blog. This week we were to use the technique on page 41 called Rusted Enamel. This was a new one for me and I think I would use more ink on the top layer next time to give it more of a rusted look but it came out okay anyway.

The second challenge was Simon Says Stamps and show some embossing. Well the stamping is always easy but I just had to go look at it again to see if I did stamp although it's odd when I don't have some kind of stamping on whatever I'm working on but it was there in the background, just a few swirls added. I love to emboss and there is just so many different ways to do it that it was just a matter of deciding which way to go. Well obviously I chose the metal embossing. I used a new mold I got recently for Ten Second Studio for the zipper and dress form. I just love this one and have been waiting for the right thing to put it on.

The last challenge was for Tag Tuesday over at Kard Krazy with the theme "tag on your tag". I had this tag almost finished when I found out about tag Tuesday's theme and I had planned on using a Graphics 45 element so it worked out well to use one of their tags.

So once again I've managed to combine a few challenges into one tag. So much fun.