Card 50 – must do this again.

Wow. Back in 2010 (!) I did one of my little video/slideshow thingies about embossing painted fabric with an embossing folder. It worked out wonderfully well.

Believe it or not, I still had one of the samples. I had tried brushing glitter glue on the fabric and I think it is a testament to the technique that even now, in 2023, it was still as deeply embossed as ever.

And that was just a bog standard embossing folder – what might a 3D one do I wonder? Anyway, it gave me the chance to use that trip of bright foliage die cuts I flirted with previously. I thought the text was, funny, and perfect.

Card 50 done and Monday will be another trio. Not many days left now.

I think one of the really fun parts of this challenge is discovering those techniques that you might have flirted with even a decade ago and kinda forgot about. I haven’t embossed fabric in ages but dang! I will surely do it again, and soon. While I suspect you could emboss plain fabric, I do feel like the paint is what locks in the dimension. I just think this could be a really fun thing to explore!

Card 26 – deep embossing folder and…embossing?

Card 26! This is a bit out there and not perfect, but I am trying very hard not to have multiple attempts for the same card. I did that on one or two to begin with, but it feels a little less true to the ICAD process. So.

I had one of the deep embossing folders hanging about on my desk. To be honest it isn’t my favourite one, but it does have some nice open areas, which I thought might work for what I wanted to try. I grabbed a few things: a text stamp, some embossing powder and Versamark ink. The pad this time, not my chunky old bottle of ink LOL!

Nearly impossible to see but I stamped the embossing ink on the flat part of the folder. Easier to see once I embossed it then sprinkled on the powder. Wowza!

Yes, yes, of course the text is backwards but I don’t care. I heated it then used some Distress Oxide ink to colour the raised bits

And once got it all done, I had to sort out the part that had no embossing, with ink or folder. I was just playing with the idea so I wasn’t being super careful or considering the final result. It was just playtime. I added a bit of washi tape

and stuck on what I thought was the perfect little phrase.

I did toy with not strange, cause it isn’t, is it? But I had already cut bits of the phrase I ended up using and part of what was left ended up working best. I can “see the potential” in this and will surely explore it more.

And so, tomorrow WOYWW rolls around again. And so quickly!

Have you checked out Temu yet?

So I had been seeing a lot of videos about a new Wish/Geek-like place called Temu. Funnily enough, The Hubster needed some stuff, and Darling Daughter is always up for an online browsing session so we had a look. It was … interesting. Not sure how much I might have bought had there not been free shipping in the introductory period. We ended up getting some cat beds (small Poppy-sized ones so we could try to tempt her into places like DDs room, or give her a comfy place when she gets locked out of my office, which is kinda too dangerous for her to explore on her own) and some cat toys, including an interesting puzzle box you load with treats and they have to figure out how to open the sliders to access them

And I did grab a couple of 3D embossing folders. I can only seem to find one of them now, although there were two that I saw and ordered.

at £3.49 (!) with free shipping, I wish I had ordered all I liked. I mean crikey! That is easily 1/2 the price. and I think these are pretty for cardmaking or even to use as texture plates for gel plate printing.

The other one I got is that one on the left. Similar, but but not exactly the same. I also got a really cute little trio of tree die and some stitched ovals. As I am running out of cards for birthdays and the like, I may need to schedule a cardmaking session some time soon and imagine I will use these things in that. They have a lot of the Stampin’ Up stamp&die combos as well, just like I have seen in other places, but I was super surprised to see these there!

Hold on to your hats! £24.99 at other shops and on Temu for … £1.69. I kid you not. Looks like they have both the regular size as well as a sheet that has what appear to be much smaller versions with the “crazy things” included. Same price. It poses a dilemma. I always like to support businesses, but often you simply cannot find the items in stock. The price is immaterial if you can’t order it anyway. And then you see this.

Many of the videos I saw were complaints about things being not the right size or poor quality, but most of what we got I had no complaints about at all. Were the cat beds super plush and high quality? They were not. Were they perfect for our intended use? They were. Does the cat love them? She does. Honestly, she climbed right in, faster than she did the nicer bed we had bought already. She sleeps happily in one that we put on the end of the sofa, but sadly has yet to sleep in the one in DDs room. We’ll keep working on it. So I would say we are pretty happy with those. And I love my embossing folders, which are NOT, so far as I know, a knock off of some familiar craft brand.

Will it be worth shopping there when the free shipping runs out? Maybe not. At Wish or Geek the shipping is always way more than you expect. It remains to be seen if Temu’s shipping, when the prices land, are outrageous or not.

Metal tape for ATCs

I have been having a good old play with my 3M metal tape, on sale at LIDL in October. It is not QUITE wide enough to cover an ATC in one pass, but I have been experimenting with either landscape or portrait strips abutted or slightly overlapped. For me the real issue is getting it smooth. I found this little scraper/spreader from Letratac that works a treat:

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I know the extreme shine makes it hard to see, but the smooth application after pushing it down to the ATC substrate with the scraper (use a credit card – it’ll probably work close to the same with enough pressure) is smooooth.

A couple of the things I have been trying are embossing the card with an embossing folder then colouring it with alcohol markers OR dripping or sponging on alcohol ink or acrylic ink.

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Very cool but so hard to really SEE.

The problem with that is that the card … contracts a bit, I guess, when embossed so it is slightly smaller than ATC size (very slightly, but still) and the back is lumpy so harder to stick the back with the info on to it.

Here is another idea then – I got out a handful of stencils, and with a small stylus/dotting tool, drew thru the stencil to deboss the pattern but keep the back of the card flat.

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I have a lot of stencils and many, but not all, work really well for this. I have a set of images from one of The Octopode Factory sets that I printed and cut out, then decided they weren’t right for the backgrounds I had made. I think I will see if I can make them work with these. Still working on a few things to share at some point but still no quite there yet!

BIG CARDS – 8 of Diamonds

This one is less inky and painty but I had the idea of the technique and as I worked through it it didn’t seem appropriate to get all arty with it.

What I used – and sorry I didn’t take photos along the way, but I will try to explain – is a Prima mask, Distress ink, some old foam letters, some graph paper, a Quickie glue pen and some glitter.

First I embossed with the mask – using the Grand Calibur, which is quite wide, I stacked the base plate, mask, heavy cardstock, the embossing mat and embossing plate. Once I embossed it I used the mak as a mask, and smudged Barn door Distress ink in the gaps.  Taking the mask away I smudged Spun Sugar over the embossed areas. When that dried, I used the glue pen to line each circle (and I used the mask again for this) then added the glitter.  Once it dried I could easily whisk away the excess with a wide soft brush.  I did only a few circles at a time because the glue dies pretty quick.

I cut out the embossed area and sliced it in half to split it in two.  I added the number word and a thin black border, and mounted the split diamond half above and half below the word.

I think I need a layer of white card under the graph paper, which was from a tablet rather than “real” scrapbooking paper, as I can see the Diamonds from the card through that, just a bit.

In the close-up you can see the glitter a bit better.  I like this.  I think it could make a nice card topper too.  The embossing is more a pattern than deep embossing, but the effect is still a good one, I think. Def. one to play with a bit more.  I don’t know you could get the same effect with an embossing folder – the mask has holes in the negative space, where the embossing folder doesn’t.  There is no good way I can think of to get the two-tone effect.  Maybe if you brayer over the negative space  the folder then embossed then brayered over the embossing in another colour?  So long as the negative space was inked dark and the colours the same (like this, red deep and pink on the high points) you could brayer over the raised area without worrying too much about the other colour getting on the debossed bits.

Now, mini-book and printables on deck….

Printable word hearts

Just a quick one today as it’s DDs transition meeting.  I started these, gosh, ages ago, last year some time, but I wasn’t happy with how it was so I shelved it.  Got busy with other thing. Now that I seem to be on a Valentine’s Day kick I figured I might as well finish  up in a way I liked and post them.

There are two sheets, Hearts1 and Hearts2. You can see an overview here, as well as some overlaid Nesties to show how they can be cut. Also that they are spaced so you SHOULD be able to cut all of them with little waste. You could def. print one in economy mode and make yourself a template of the centre heart then cut that from coloured card or patterned paper to make them more interesting, but my experiences over the last 6 months with colour issues made me scrap the filled heart version, as a solid block of colour runs the risk of looking rubbish on YOUR printer, where a thin line of text will be more acceptable.

Impossible to read in the photo but it says: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach…

That’s the 2″ circle punch, FYI. Then I made a quick card to show one way you might use them.

Loving my Cheery Lynn sunflower, still. And I did something nifty with it.  I got some WOW embossing powders to play with. I had the idea to emboss the die cut but wasn’t sure if it would work.  It did! I feared the fine lattice might be hard to ink and hard for the embossing powder to stick, but it worked great.  I have another idea for then die and the powders, but I messed up the first version so that may have to wait a few days before I can share it.

Basically I smeared Versamark all over the lattice surface – and I found that easier to do before I cut out the flower shape. This one I had already cut off the border but it really is easier, if very slightly wasteful of the powder, to leave the border on – then dumped on the whole pot to make sure I got good cover on it.

Heat embossed.  Hard to see, but it gives a lovely effect, and the lattice is then almost mold-able – I curved in the edges slightly, which you may be able to detect on the final card above.

I also did one with the Gold Satin Pearl that was really lovely, although that was part of the failed experiment.  This was their REGULAR grade powder in Earthtone Pomegranate, a very pretty colour.  I have some mauve glitter I am dying to try with this too. I could have cut the lattice from coloured card, and have done, but the enamel look of the embossing powder just adds something to it, I think.

Anyway, grab the printables if you like and comment with a link to anything you make with them so I can see.

 

WOYWW – cool tag

I had a lot of fun playing with these yesterday and will be doing more of the same today!

I did make a little video, although they are def. NOT rocket science, and it is under 90 seconds to watch so if you want to, here it is: