My ATCs done!

Boy, am I out of practice!  But I managed to finish my ATCs so I am happy.  And I not only used and old tool that I thought was only fit for the bin (the Creative Palette) but I used something I bought and had not used yet.  It is a little stamp set from Tiger that cost me all of £3 and is so useful.  Doubly so since I bought two, recognizing that it would be useful to have multiples of letters and more than one upper case set.

You can see it comes with both a circle and a flat piece.  What I love is that the flat piece can be arranged either in a long strip of in two or more lines.  I may even get a third set to extend the amount of typesetting I can do.  To be fair, the font is dead simple, not anything to add any real style, and since I stamped the text then cut it out, printing the text would have worked as well.  But had I decided to stamp directly onto the background I could have.

You can see a couple of the ATCs – here is the whole set:

You can see I added a few little resin dots here and there.  I actually really like them! And it got me doing SOMETHING creative so for that it is all good.

Now off to help clear the dining room and hubby’s office – having one hardwood floor sanded and oiled, and a new wood floor added to make hubby’s home office warmer in winter.  The cold air actually BLOWING up from below the floor made working in there a challenge.  Also, dearest son will be visiting from tomorrow, as he breezes thru Europe on his way back to LA.  So I may be otherwise occupied and back to not crafting for a few more days.  Oh well, it was fun and I’m sure I’ll get back to it soon….

fingers crossed…

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Finally, a use for the Creative Palette!

It has been far too long since I felt up to any crafting but knitting.  I am finally feeling a bit better and trying to flex my creative wings once again.

I am taking a free class from Carolyn Dube called Permission to Play (link in the sidebar) because I used to take part in her Gelli Print Party and I like her enthusiasm and her style.

I am not quite ready to jump in fully as I am very much out of practice, but a post in her group  showed some fab ATCs.  I remember that whenever I felt like I needed a little jumpstart, making ATCs usually worked a treat.  Little bite-sized pieces of creativity, very manageable, and using nothing too precious.

I collected up some stuff – I wanted to make use of the prompt (Using Cardboard or Trash) so I started by covering some cardboard with bits of the Sparks of Art-spiration Carolyn includes as an endless resource – mess it up? print another! I also dragged out a sheet of Teesha Moore stamps that I had not yet even cut from the sheet. And cut them.

I think I may have mentioned about 100 times how much I loathe mounting stamps.  I was not sure I had that sticky backed mounting stuff so I wasn’t sure how best to deal with them.  I considered using sticky backed fun foam, which I have done before and which works pretty well, but what had been in my head was the crappy Creative Palette pseudo-Gelli plate that I reviewed in the past.  Carolyn also has a video on using the Gelli plate to pick up the overflow from acrylic pours and when dry, use them as skins to add to your art.  I saw that a day or so ago and thought that THAT might be a good use for the CP.  It has languished in a drawer for YEARS and I hate to waste money so I’ve held on to it, SURE I would find a use for it SOMEDAY.) It was something I was already thinking about. A solution presented itself.

One problem with the CP is that is is really sticky, for Gelli plate-style pulling.

I had previously cut the CP into shapes with my Big Shot, thinking this was going to give me mini-gelli-plate style tools. It didn’t. But I pulled it out and stuck one of the bits to a stamp mount

and I pressed the unmounted stamp into the plate.

The first time I tried it the stamp fell off – it doesn’t grab the rubber supper firmly with just finger pressure, but if you are ready to stamp and you tamp the ink onto the stamp with a bit of pressure, it will hold.

And it’s a pretty sharp image, right?

So this makes me very happy!  It means I can pretty closely trim the rubber around the stamp without stressing that I have undercut the image, I can cut close enough that I can see where the image will be placed, and I don’t need to buy sheet after sheet of mounting foam!  RESULT!

Now, word of warning.  If you try this, I would shake the mount and make sure the stamp is firmly attached before inking.  It is a temporary hold, strong right after you have pressed the stamp into it and strongest after you have really pushed it down with the inkpad.  It will eventually loosen and you might have the stamp fall off onto your project if you dally.  Washing the CP (like you do with cling stamps) to refresh the sticky will help.  I guess it depends on your tolerance for error, and need for perfection.  For me, as I am not placing the images but will cut them out, it’s a great solution.

Sorry for the portrait style photos – after I decided to post it I realized my camera batteries were dead, the charger MIA and that my phone was downstairs.  My iPad was near so I used that for the photos.  Next time I’ll rotate it 90 degrees so the post isn’t so long.  It’s like I have to learn how to blog all over again…  DOH!

The perils of organization

Whenever I strive to get organized I always go thru a period of disorientation.  Where IS that thing I use 12 times a week, that I could find with my eyes shut cause it lived in THAT spot for years? Until I moved it when  cleaned…

OK, so I can’t say that the stamping gear thing was ever anything more than a bit of a novelty.  I did a few posts about figuring out a way to use wood mounted stamps in or around the gears, made a couple of cards for my card-stash, then boxed it up, and put it…somewhere.

When it came time to make a card, one I could see in my head even before I started looking for the supplies, could I find the darn thing?  I could not.  What I DID find was the set of looms I bought for DD at Christmas.  As I looked at them I thought Hummmm…..

This isn’t written in the form of a tutorial, since I doubt too many people out there still have MagnaStamp stamp mounts LOL!  but the general concept of adding a popsicle stick to the mount and the between-the-pegs spaces to place the stamps holds true.

With the edge of the mount bumped up against the loom, you can get pretty nicely spaced stamping – ignore the oddball one, as you can see I used the same paper to test out a variety of placements.

and inside too

Now, I can’t recall exactly how much the stamping gear thing cost me, but I know my local Tiger has the knitting looms for about £3.  No, it isn’t perfect.  You are never going to get the sort of precision you will get with the official product, so if you care about that sort of thing, buy the real deal. But if you want to get a reasonably well placed curve or circle of images, a knitting loom works well enough to create something like this:

 

Gosh it’s been a long time since I played with paper and ink.  It was fun…note to self: DO MORE.

{wink}

Resized Halloween-y digistamps

Still not entirely happy with the process or the format, but here is a sheet of the “stamps” from yesterday, in a smaller size.  I can only think to add them as individual .jpgs for them to be fully resizable.

 

I did get one comment that, so far as the online translator is able to translate, seems to say that the smaller size is better/more useful.  As I suggested I might, I’ve sized these to fit a 2″ circle punch.  And as that took up so little of a sheet of card, I added a few more that could (perhaps) work as a Halloween item – loosely, costumes, I guess.  The full set is here – same deal as before, click to open the full size image then right-click to save (or drag onto your desktop) and print full size to fit the 2″ punch.  Play around with them in PSE etc. to be able to size them more.

If you use them I would love to see how!

Halloween-y Digital stamps – sort of

Even since I found these images again (bought in the 90s from a place that no longer exists) I have wanted to share them as digital stamps.  I spent a very long time trying to discover the ownership but the most recent place I could trace ownership to denies they own them and the original creator has no idea either – but they did confirm to me that sharing them this way would have been ok under the original usage rights so I am going to go out on a limb and do so.  Frankly, I feel I have done my due diligence on this, and if someone owns the rights and objects then this may flush them out so I can have a conversation about them.

The next issue is how to share them.  Wordpress doesn’t allow the sharing of .PNG files (which would be my best choice) and I can’t seem to find the time to sort out the best way to share .JPGs so I am going to just share then as I have them NOW – that is one decent quality .JPG.  If you use a photo editing program you should be able to cut out a single image and print just that, and re-size it if need be.  Otherwise you can print the page and cut out the image.  I think they are arranged on the page so your options for cutting are varied. The biggest image is about 3 x 3 inches – in fact most of them fall in that area.  You should be able to click on the image to see it full size then right-click to download. I’ll test that after I add it to make sure. NOTE: Yes, that is right, it does work. I can also drag the image to my desktop with a Mac, but no idea if that works on a PC.   You can also opt to print the image 2 x on the page (in your printer dialog box – I’ve mentioned this many times before) and print the images in a smaller size, more like 2 x 2ish. And in fact that makes me think that sizing them to fit a 2″ circle punch might be worth doing – comment if you agree …

If you recall I used the screamer on an ATC recently:

Still entertaining the in-laws, so don’t expect to see me every day, but I’ll do my best.  Do LMK by commenting if you know how best to share these “stamps” or how you would like to have them shared and I’ll re-post them in a more useful way.  Assuming anyone likes them, and it’s not just ME that finds them totally quirky but oh so fun……

Make your own stamping plate

There has been a discussion on UKS about stamp+die sets.  The dilemma is to cut the paper or card THEN stamp the image or stamp the image and THE place the die to cut it out.  Last I looked I am not sure if one method was winning over the other.  But that discussion prompted a discussion of stamping plates – Fiskars has one (and I have that one, or did till I stepped on it and broke off a corner – DOH!)

and it seems there is a Martha Stewart one too – or at least a block with foam feet.

You know me – if I have a hankering for something but neither the time nor the cash to get it, I am always going to try to figure out how to make something similar from stuff I have hanging around the house.

What I used:

an acrylic block – this is one of the big chunks a mate cut for me, that I have used previously as a stamp mount for my Gelli plate. But any large acrylic stamp mount will  work – I got these from a craft show – maybe £10 for nine.  The larger ones are best

a strip of cork tile – I don’t see why Fun Foam wouldn’t work as well, one thickness or two stuck together.  You’ll have to play with it.  You just need something to make the stamp hit the paper fully, compensating for the foam.  When compressed it will be close to flush with the table but the little extra helps.

a Sharpie marker – to draw grid lines on the acrylic.  Not required, but it may help with placement and act like a positioner

a bathroom sponge – has to be the easily compressed foam, not cellulose sponge, for example.  You might find this sort of foam as kids foam stamps.  That’ll save you cutting them.

And speaking of cutting – I cut them with my Big Shot and a thick die, but you can just cut them in squares with scissors.

I thought this very thick sponge was TOO think so I cut the circles in half thru the middle

I stuck them to the corners of the block

and covered the gluey bit you can see thru the block with fun foam circles – totally not required. I used Fabri-tac, which held the foam perfectly to the acrylic.  Not sure what will happen if I ever try to WASH is, but I’m not planning on doing that – likewise the Sharpie lines.  they don’t seem to wipe off with a baby wipe so they might last,

I cut the cork tile so it fit between the foam feet

You can see what I mean about the cork or Fun Foam making up the difference.  Add the stamp.

just flip it over the paper and press

See? The stamp would be too far from the paper for a good impression without the cork.

and a perfect image!

I think you could add smaller foam bits to ANY block – you can still use the other side as a normal mount then flip it over to use the foam as feet if you need to.  But the point is, it took 10 minutes and I didn’t have to buy anything.  OK so the sponge was bought for another purpose, but it was 45p so not going to break the bank, now is it?

Off to work on the memory book a bit more.  Enjoying it, but I’ll be glad when I’m done…

Zetti stuff and about that house….

OK so I finally finished all the stamping of the Zetti grab bags.  What a huge amount of stuff!

Five sleeves of four 4×6 pockets

Three sleeves of nine 2.5 x 3.5 pockets

and two sleeves of 20 2 x 2 slide pockets

And, just cause so many people were curious, these are the two I will never use – the quotes themselves are fine, but that FONT.  It might as well be comic sans…. The other small one is the single duplicate I got.

I was cutting out some of the first images I stamped on white, just to test the fit on the little house.  I am torn – while I like the idea of colouring them I am also pretty in love with the stark B&W images.  I simply can’t decide.  I’ll have to colour a couple and then take a photo and look at them both.  Maybe that will help me figure it out….

{sigh} Sometimes I just struggle with creative decisions….

…but at least I feel like I’ve made progress.  I may have to set it all aside to work on DDs play-leader’s memory book, but I have a fear they will hoard all the stuff that needs to go inside till the last-minute, or the kids and parents will wait for the last-minute to hand over art, writing and photos. What ever have I let myself in for??

 

 

Bye Bye Zettiology – so sad

I was so sad to get an email that Zettiology was closing its stamp making business.  Teesha and Tracy Moore have been firm favourites of mine for years, although I only have a small handful of their stamps.  The shipping (and customs) fees to order from the States are HUGE, and there were only ever a few stamps offered in the UK. I kept putting off and putting off ordering any, thinking I would place a big order to coincide with either a trip BACK to the USA or a visit over to the UK of anyone willing to stuff a load of rubber in their packed shoes.  It never quite happened.  But the thought of not being able to get the stamps ever made me bite the bullet and place an order for a couple of grab bags from Teesha’s etsy store.

Now, grab bags are always a risk – you could get a tone of duplicates. You could get a ton of stamps you loathe and only a few you like and even fewer you LOVE.  Well, my order has arrived and I am doing the happy dance. I got a MASSIVE pile o’ rubber, and only ONE SINGLE DUPLICATE IMAGE.  Outstanding.

THIS is the pile of images I am 99% sure I am going to LOVE

This is the pile of images I will have to stamp to know if I like or LOVE them.

and this is the pile of images that I am pretty sure I will find a use for but I can already tell won’t be LOVES and may not be likes

Those are mostly text-based stamps, quotes, alone or with images.  Some look like they can by cut apart in various creative ways, but no matter how you look at it, that is a huge WIN.  I have already stamped a handful of the ones I KNOW I love (ok, the two small ones in the corners fit the sheet, but are def. LIKE not LOVE)

It looks like the grab bags may be gone, so I am glad I leapt rather than dithering.  But had I known when I ordered – really, like two minutes after I got the email – that she would offer last-minute, one time only orders of a few specific sets, I might have added them in {sigh} Oh well.

So I will be merrily stamping and assessing today.  I am far too lazy to mount each and every stamp, so I just stuck a piece of fun foam over a mid-sized block and applied some Tack it! to it – that lets me temporarily mount the stamps and makes the cutting a lot easier, as it’s just trimming the rubber.  I’m OK with needing to use a stamp positioner if I have to place them precisely, as more often than not I tend to cut stamped images out and then add them to a project.

 

Box card – SDC 151

OK so I am going to go out on a limb here and call this a BOX, for the purposes of the Stampotique Designers Challenge.  It’s been a LONG time since I did one of these but as I was using some Stampotique stamps I figured I’d check.  OK technically it may not conform to the ideal definition of a box, but what the heck? I’ve already done the definitive BOX for an SDC ages back anyway:

That series of nested boxes was for SDC 9 (What Summer Means to Me) and can be seen more fully in my Stampotique menu at the top. THIS is for SDC 151!  Blimey.

Anyway, DS was after a card to give to his GF and wanted something complex and interactive.  He never asks for much…. so I had the idea to make one of the pop-up box cards.  As I said yesterday I was 90% done with it when I told him the quote I wanted to use: You’re my sun in the morning and my moon at night (from a Springsteen song but sung by Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes) and mentioned it would have been nice had I thought to make it two-tone/double-sided.  DOH!  Me and my big mouth..

I had to then re-do the box part and add another side to the pop-up section.  I considered a number of option for the box itself, but wasn’t happy with one solid colour.  I wanted the Morning side to be light and bright, and the Night side to be dark.  Nothing for it but figuring out how to adapt the box.

I started with two pieces of A4 card – one black, one cream.

Each piece was 5 3/4 x the width of the card.  A4 is a bit narrower and a bit longer than US letter, but that is fine.  Each piece is creased at 1 inch, at 4 inches, at 5 inches and at 8 inches.

On A4 card that leaves you with about 1/4 inch at the side.  US letter it will be more like 1/2 inch.

In order to join the pieces and to neaten up the slot that allows the pop-up, I cut down about 1/4 inch past the final crease. You can make your pop-up any size you want, but try to keep it to no wider than 3 3/4 inches so you leave about 1 inch on either side of the pop up.  Crease between the cuts.

Fold back along the new crease line and stick to the back of the box.

Your slot is now nice and neat and the side flaps can be joined to create a base with one side one colour and the other side another!

You can obviously tailor this to whatever size you want, so long as you use the basic principles of having the distance between the edge and the first crease the SAME as the distance between the second and third crease, and the distance between the first crease and the second the SAME as the distance between the third crease and the last crease.

Creases:  1 inch (distance of 1 inch ) at 4 inches (distance of 3 inches), at 5 inches (distance of 1 inch) and at 8 inches (distance of  3 inches)

Keep in mind that is for 1/2 of the box base.  Frankly, I couldn’t have made one this big, where the box when collapsed nearly completely covered the pop-up, from one sheet without buying a HUGE piece of cardstock.  Necessity is the mother of invention, right?

After that it is exactly the same as the basic card – I knew what I wanted to make, knew how to do it, but had NO IDEA what it was called!  After an unreasonably long hunt I found this tutorial.  She calls it a free-standing pop-up card.  Works for me… Obviously the tutorial is for a solid, one-colour cardstock base, far easier but smaller.

Here it is!

Oh and just BTW, it looks like it would fit in a C5 envelope.  I didn’t have one, so I just collected the scraps from my desk and decorated an plain old mailing envelope.

MORNING side:

and NIGHT side:

You can see that the card is not totally flat.  When pushed flat-flatJust the heart shows.

Popped up:

and

The box-base allows the free-standing of the card, and the bits that are hidden provide a place for whatever sappy nonsense DS wants to add.

Phew.  Hope she likes it.  Given she spend an afternoon here playing with the Gelli plate with ME, and she is into art in general, I’m betting she will.

Hope it all makes sense but if not, feel free to ask and I’ll try to clarify if I can!

 

More about pencil eraser stamps and placement

I still have DS in town (and still a list of things to do for him before he heads back, mostly clothing repair – you see? I just KNEW there was sewing in my future, I just hoped it would be quilting!) and DD is home sick from school, so this is just another quickie.

Following on from yesterday, I did eventually find my larger size punchinella.   I just KNEW the size was perfect to use as a guide for stamping a uniform pattern with the tiny eraser stamps, and I was right.

The width of my punchinella is about 3 1/2 inches, but it is very very easy to reposition and carry on.  Even so, just a 6 inch (measured from one full circle to another full circle) length produces a grid of 3 x 6, which would still work widthwise for many cards.

LOL!  My eraser carving is not expert but some of them I quite like.  Remove the punchinella and…

I must have gotten a smudge of brown on the side of my finger cause there are some smudges there, but as this is a sample it doesn’t really matter much.  But it does show you the idea. Personally I think it’s a lot easier than drawing a grid, and a lot more reliable than eyeballing it. And you could perhaps pick out different patterns – I can see how you might make an arrow, or a chevron or straight lines or triangles…

But not a circle.  But as I mentioned yesterday,  other stencils work as well.  Not sure who makes this one, but someone will recognize it, I’m sure.

For the outermost ring of stamping, there is PLENTY of room.  For the next one in, it’s a close fit, so a stamp like I’ve used (the starburst one) works, but the other one wouldn’t – anything that depends on the full diameter of the eraser to show the pattern won’t work.  Maybe another similar stencil will?  Nothing I have carved fit the tiny holes of the smallest circle but just a dot from a bullet-tip marker works.

I think I really need to store these pencils someplace where I won’t forget I have them.  I tend to do that.  Now back to laundry and sewing.