SDC31 – acetate

You may recall last week I got confused and made a project with something clear but not Acetate.  Silly me.  So I had to make something else for the challenge over at Stampotique.

The little wings are the Marianne Creatable swirls that I love, and I did the little trick using LetraTac.  Applying the adhesive dots to the FRONT of the acetate, I dusted over some Pearl-ex. The adhesive grabs the mica powder, giving it a nifty little dotty sparkly pattern.  It’s very subtle, but I just love how it looks.  I want to give it a go on dark cardstock because I think it could look very cool. You can see it a little better here, in front of the rainy window.

And maybe a little here on the other wing, showing the flower and those sweet crystal sprays.

Phew.  Reminder to self to read more carefully in the future LOL!

We had a lovely day out in Oxford yesterday (ok, rainy, yes, but still fun) with a browse thru many, many bookstores, lunch at Jamie’s, and a visit to the museum.  I saw an exhibit about Eccentricty that looked like it would have been fab, but Bank Holiday Monday and it wasn’t open.  Oh well.  An excuse for another visit, I guess. DD and I really enjoyed an anime film called The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and found the newly released live-action version (Time Traveller) so that is the afternoon plan for us.

Sunday-someplace-else – Paper tulips at Cheeky Magpie

Spring this year seems to be hesitant.  We have warm and sunny days, then it reverts to rain and cooler temperatures.  Bank holiday weekend, and all we want is a nice sunny, dry day to get out and about and do touristy things and I’m not sure we are going to get any cooperation from Mother Nature! And this year, the daffodil explosion didn’t really come.  There were some, but nothing like past years, when we had multi-colour daffs all over the yard.  So when I stumbled on this tutorial for making paper tulips I though it might be quite fun and springlike for DD and I during the school break.  They certainly look easy enough to make big, but I am wondering about making them small, small enough for a scrapbook page or a card.  I may have to have a play with my pile o’ scraps and see!

 

LetraTac – interesting application

Well, I’ve spent a few days looking at the LetraTac pack and thinking It’s just adhesive.  It’s BORING. Well, I might have been hasty.

I knew it would be brilliant for sticking down small fiddly shapes, like the Marrianne Creatables that I love

I was looking at the actual ADHESIVE and seeing that it is not, like the Xyron, a smooth uniform cover.  It applies little dots of adhesive, a bit like the old Herma repositionable dot applicator, and that got me thinking.  What sticks to that,  that offers a unique look?

I applied the adhesive to the FRONT of the die cut …

and grabbed a little pot of Pearl-ex.  Dusting on the Pearl-ex, over the adhesive, it stuck JUST to the dots, giving an interesting pattern of shimmer!

I’ve run my finger over it, not too vigorously, as I thought I might tear the thin die cut, but it seems to be pretty well attached – I’m not overly worried it would rub off.  But I think the effect is smashing!  I can see it as a fab ATC background, all shimmery dots.  I think the blue-y turquoise looks very pretty, almost like tiny little raindrops.

You could then apply the adhesive to the BACK to stick it down, although I would go gently with the little applicator that you rub over the top. The thin sheet you put over the top  protects the Pearl-exed dots, but too vigorous and you might remove them.  Letting it sit for a bit, as the site says it becomes permanent over time, will help.  Anyway. I just thought it was a pretty and unique effect.  And not so boring after all LOL!

Safmat fun

As you may recall from my WOYWW, I got a sample pack of Safmat transparent film to play with.  I looked at the link on the site and they had some nice projects there, but nothing I personally would do.  I don’t struggle to print on small pieces of card, I just stick it with temporary adhesive to a bigger sheet and it goes thru my printer fine.  I don’t have candles, except for emergency use when the power goes out. Most of what I saw on t’internet all seemed to focus mostly on using Safmat as a sort of rub-on substitute.  Fine, too, but I have 1000s of rub-ons and I never think to use them.   So it got me thinking about the properties of Safmat – what makes it unique?  What can you do with it that you really can’t do some other way.  And then I got one of those brainstorms (all too few and far between)

OK, so Safmat is clear. Fine, so is acetate.  But acetate is a pain to attach invisibly.  And you use your printer…

The key to this is your printer does not contain white ink.  It assumes that you are printing on white paper, and ignores any white areas of your design, so they “print” clear.  Well, I had seen the Stampotique challenge, and mistakenly got it in my head that the challenge was CLEAR, not acetate (DOH!) so was thinking also about something to do for that.  I wanted to do some sort of cage, with a figure inside, on a background that was scenic, like clouds and grass, place the gazebo over the background and the figures, sandwiching them between the Safmat and the background, with some extra stamping at the bottom of the gazebo. I had a couple of images from The Graphics Fairy already on my Mac. While browsing my files I picked out the gazebo and a pair of wings. And shifted firmly into Safmat experimentation mode.  I knew the gazebo would work perfectly but the wings intrigued me more.

As you can see, the images have a white background.  Fine if you want to print on white or patterned paper.

Edited to add: I sort of glossed over the fact that while, yes, you could simply print the image onto patterned paper, you can’t PLACE the image precisely.  The beauty of the Safmat is you can see thru it to highlight a specific area of the paper (in this case some little circles that look a bit like the markings on butterfly wings) which I think you would struggle with if you tried to place the printed image with your printer!

Get it?

Look – clear wings, zero effort!

I wanted the wings to have a  subtle pattern. And I just love this paper scrap.

I applied the Safmat to it and cut the wings out. It ALMOST makes it look like you stamped over patterned paper, but with a lovely sheen.

Those went behind my figure.

Shame the card doesn’t fit the challenge (clear, yes, sort of, but def. not Acetate! So I’ll have to do another one) – and I was experimenting, after my Copic class, with cutting out my stamped figure with a halo on one side, then colouring that with grey ink so it looks a bit like a shadow, but am not sure it was totally successful.

I did use the traditional application of Safmat, printing the text on that then applying it over a piece of the same patterned paper, but I could have just as easily printed directly on the paper.  The Safmat does give it a bit of a sheen, which is nice, but now I know this cool way to use it, I don’t really want to waste it when something else works as well.

Edited to add: in this photo you can see, I hope, more clearly the circles I mentioned before.

So, Think about all sorts f images with white backgrounds that you could use!

This one is on my list, also from The Graphics Fairy:

Oh, and the rest of the quote? My sister should look away now…

You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar…

I thought it might work well for a teenage girl, or maybe even for one going off to college soon.

So there you have it.  I think a new way to use Safmat for adding images to tricky or time consuming to edit, merely printing to remove the background.

WOYWW 103

I am looking at the mess in my room (yes, again) and thinking I need to address it.  I spent a lot of time sorting out my word book video and PDF and as a result haven’t had a chance to play with a few goodies – a stamp set, some new Copic Markers (and fresh from my class last week, raring to give a couple of the techniques a try), some samples of Safmat and Letratac, and a few other things out of sight on the floor.  Hopefully I’ll get a chance to have a good old play later in the day.And a lovely few hours of desk hopping, of coursr,  to see what everyone else is up to on a Wednesday.  Julia keeps us AL busy one day of the week!

That’s my Wednesday filled up.  How about you?

PC World no longer sells the mouse I like (boo hoo) and I am not totally happy with the one I got as a replacement for my dead one so I’ll be trolling the net as well, looking for a stockpile of them someplace so I can grab a few.  I do wish DH was going to Tokyo regularly – they had the neatest, tiniest mouses there – all the ones in the store are too big for me.

Kennedy Name Book You Tube

OK, well it was a struggle (finding the old video camera, figuring out how to make something that resembled a tripod, getting the camera angle right, forgetting to change my dodgy Seattle grunge lumberjack shirt LOL!, figuring out how to incorporate the video clip in with the usual slideshow – won’t be trying this again in a hurry!) but I managed to make a video to accompany the PDF of the name book.   Oh and having my mouse die a horrible death all of sudden, I forgot that – cue a hunt through the house for a spare mouse that wouldn’t be missed till I could get out to buy one.

I am so chuffed with this. I love how it turned out, love how the spine works (FINALLY!) and hope someone else makes one too a they are so cute and really not at all hard.

Have a look:

Kennedy word Book PDF

Well I’ve been happily making my word books and finally feel like I have sorted out the spine to one I really like.  You can leave it with a fairly simple cardstock cover, sandwich the cover between bigger pieces of cardstock for a sturdier cover, cover it with chipboard for a REALLY sturdy one, and it all works well.  I love the way you can make quite long word/name books from this, because the traditional word book needs ever increasingly longer pages to work properly and frankly, with kids who have names of 7 and 9 letters, they just were never going to work.

Looks dead boring, right?  I used the Grand Nesties to make the chipboard cover but haven’t gotten around to decorating it as I am dithering between two themes for the book.  Once I decide and sort the photos I’ll do that.

Loving how bang tidy that spine looks and the fact that the first page doesn’t want to “pop up” at half mast like some of my experiments.  Again, looks pretty boring still but….

when you pull the tab at the back and the pages all roll out it looks so cute.  Love the font (Rosita) and the pretty girly pinks.  The pages all flip over and sort of collect themselves back onto the front cover.  When DS gets home I’m going to see if he can give me a hand with his camera on his Mac to record it in action, because I don’t think you can really appreciate it seeing it as a still image.  I have done a You Tube doodah, but I am waiting to load that until I see if I can append actual motion video, rather than my usual slideshow thing.  I think the PDF and the video work together, as the video covers some info about making the reveal wider, if you choose a wide font, but the PDF has more detailed photos, with annotations and arrow that make understanding the construction a bit better. I’m trying a new way to add the PDFs – not sure myself what will happen when you click the link below, but I hope the PDF will download automatically.  If not, I’ll add it to my sidebar as well.  If you do download it, please take a moment to comment.

kennedywordbook

Sunday-someplace-else – One Pretty Thing

Such a fun place to browse! One Pretty Thing is just full of links to explore.  Def. not the place to think well, I’ll just pop in briefly… cause you won’t.

There are at least a couple of things I think gotta do that! every time I check it out.  Love the subway-style word art pieces (and it reminded me I still haven’t done one) and the party printables:

And older posts have plenty to look at as well. How cute are the tomato pincushions?  I missed those on Martha Stewart, but caught the link here!

Have fun!

What a week!

It’s been jammed packed with stuff.  I am working on another mini based on the Kennedy book, and trying to finalize the tricky spine arrangement – if you saw the other posts and the video on You Tube you will know I have experimented with 3 or 4 different ones. well, I think I finally cracked it.  Yay. we had a hospital consultation yesterday for DD and a possible surgery on her hand that left both DH and I reeling a bit, and I am off to a Copic Colouring class today and a little apprehensive about the driving instructions – too many tricky roundabouts to negotiate.  So please bear with me.  I need to finish the mini (so nearly there – if not for the class I would have sorted that today!) and do the YouTube and a PDF because I know people like written instructions. Check back after the weekend and my hope is it will all be in place!

Have a good one – hope for sun!

WOYWW 102 Word book

Do pop over to Julia’s place and see what’s on workdesks across the world.  It’s fun!

What’s on MY workdesk is something I have been playing with – a sort of cross between one of the Kennedy books and a word book.  I hope to finish it today.

Looking forward to my Copic Colouring class on Friday. Quite chuffed today to find that my first Instructable (the doodled iPad cover that was the project on my workdesk last Wednesday (and Thursday and Friday and a bit of Saturday!)) was an editor’s choice!   And even better, DH loved it to bits.  It took seconds for him to see and admire it before he installed it on his iPad2.  Off to see WO YOUR W this Wednesday.

Have a great one.