Let us spray!

Ok a little bit of a history lesson.... A few years ago Mica sprays exploded onto the craft scene, we were spraying everything!! And I mean everything because that was the nature of sprays! Many found them too messy and too uncontrolled, so we developed a range of items that would give the crafter the chance to use sprays easier. And so masks were born!! Skip forward a while and masks are used for so much more now, so ink sprays wandered off trend a little. But there are some lovely ones on the marker now, mainly ink ones with out the mica, so I had a play, and I sprayed over a mask....and I was disappointed! Gone were the smooth colours I was so used to when inking with distress ink, instead I had spotty designs!! I just fr crafting with masks had moved on, so I decided to play and test them a little more! So I got some card and saturated it with loads of beautiful colours, then placed a mask on the top, and another bit of paper on top of that!! And ran it though my die cutter on the cutting sandwich. This just applies pressure, which pushes the colour around, allows it to blend, and where the masks lay the colour is dispersed creating a faded look! The results were fantastic!! Plus even the top paper was pretty. Just make sure you mop up any overflow of ink off your machine to avoid any accidental inking later!!

Hope you have fun with this and happy crafting

Ali xxx

Words don't come easy .......

Ok here is the first of my focus on a product entry...and I am choosing our lovely greeting stamps. I love stamping, and we have some stunning art work on our stamps, but recently we have been adding some beautiful greeting stamps to the range, from everything to large verses, to simple word greetings that say it all. What I love about them is that fact on some cards they are all you need, especially if you have had a whale of a time creating backgrounds that are just too pretty to cover up! So I could fill pages with photos that show off the greeting stamps but I thought for all your sanity I would share one of my favourite projects with the stamps....Orizomegami!! The Japanese art of paper folding and dying...messy but soo much fun. You create stunning bright papers that just look fantastic with the simple bold greeting...simple as that! 

So how do you create these papers, all you need is some ink (I used distress re-inkers), watered down a little, and some kitchen towel! Pop a couple of different colours of ink in little pots, a cake baking tin is a great pallete, then take a sheet of kitchen towel and fold it up into a small wodge. Then begin the fun bit of dipping the folded kitchen towel in the inks, corner dipping creates star bursts, dipping the edges in creates stripes. After dipping gently unfold and hang up to dry. Here are the results of a workshop dipping session!

Don't they look amazing?? So simply let them dry and then either tear or die cut the paper, stamp your choice of greeting with archival ink and you have a bright and stunning card!!

Have fun, happy crafting

Ali xx

Let's try this again!!

Ok I know I am quite possibly the worst blogger in the world but I get distracted by paint and ink and all things crafty!! But I vow to try and do 2 posts a week, a try it Tuesday where I share a technique so you can give it a go and a something for the weekend where I show off a product, some old some brand new and a few ideas to use it! Sound like a plan?

Ok it is Tuesday so a technique, we will start with something fairly simple to ease me back into this blogging game!! Not sure what I should call it, but I call it back stamping!!

It only works with stamps that have some kind of symmetry, round and square are the best!!

So before you pop your stamp on to your acrylic block, ink up the back if the stamp (where it normal would stick to the block) you can mix colours you can add patterns. Really experiment! Now pop the inky side down on your paper, and place your acrylic block on the top so you can apply pressure. Lift up the stamp to reveal a lovely panel of colour. Now simply clean the stamp, pop on to your block normal. Ink up on a bold colour, black is very effective, and over stamp your panel of colour!! See simple but effective, on my card I did 3 panels of back stamping and one normal.

Enjoy!!

Happy crafting

Ali