Shimmer sheets

Just playing.  Shimmer sheet - embossing folder - alcohol inks.....and no, I'm still not a cardmaker!!!  But for some reason this past couple of months, I've felt like making cards.  My BRB friend Nancy said she is going through the same thing.  Is it the water.....or the weather???  At any rate, I've been having fun!!

The expressions are not stamps.  They are sentiments that come on a CD that you can print out.  I just love them because they are scaleable and you can make them fit into the tiniest space up to a full page!  How brilliant is that?

You can see many more examples on Shelly's blog.  If you want to order a CD, just let me know and I'll send you her contact information.  There are hundreds and she has an index on the CD so you can easily find the Bible verse or saying.  So easy to just cut out and tape on cardstock and put on a background.  Gotta love how easy these are to make!

"They" will never know it's a Bible!

In countries all around the world, Bibles are being taken away from people.  Have you ever thought that it might happen here one day?  I decided to camouflage an old Bible and I don't think anyone will ever suspect it's a Bible (well, unless they started to read the contents!

Found an old 1901 American Standard Version on ebay.  It's my preference.  A better translation than the KJV.

But it was in bad shape.

You can see that the signatures are coming apart.  Now, if you know how to build signatures, you can repair them....just rebuild them.  My problem is that this paper was printed in 1901....and the paper is really fragile.

and the thread they used in the signatures were very, very fine.  So you can see here how they are broken.

I used fine silk thread to rebuild the signatures....carefully pulling through pre-existing holes.  It worked!

I then covered the book with leather book liner.  This is very, very thin leather usually used for the inside of a book.  It is too thin to be tooled, but it can be distressed.  The leather is usually a very pale shade of pink.

I used a scrap of leather to decide what shade of alcohol ink to use to get the shade I wanted.  I settled on a mix of Caramel and Butterscotch.  Have you ever mixed alcohol inks?  I used a makeup sponge to apply the ink to the leather.  I love the distress look I got.

 Inside the front, I covered the title page with sheet music and added a coordinating library card

This is inside the back cover

This is the first page you see.  Nothing saying it's a Bible

But it gets better!  I was at a thrift store and found this bag.  It is buttery soft leather - oh so yummy!  I don't know if this was used to carry arrows or what, but it was too great to resist!  I fell in love with the twisted, beaded fringe down the side.

And of course....I cut into it!  GASP!!!

Punched holes across the bottom, rethreaded them, and turned it into a book bag for the Bible.  

If you saw this would you even suspect there's a Bible inside?  Great to take camping as well.

I used a bit of the leftover scraps from the bag to create a cool front for the Bible.  You can see the distressed leather, how the tongs tie around the Bible and loop into a Buffalo head nickel button.

Finally, I used distress ink to ink the edges - they were sort of red and now they're more brown

I have a total of $18 in the bag and Bible.  It took about 4 hours to cover the Bible and make the bag.  Not too bad for a Sunday afternoon.  Give it some thought - I think it's a really great idea to camouflage a Bible.  Just in case!

Alcohol ink on Kato Clay

Peg had made up a bunch of kato clay tiles. Kato has more "plastic" in it and we wanted to see how the alcohol inks worked on them.....I think it's wonderful!


Once I introduced Peg to the metallic AIs - she went crazy! LOL!

I think this might be my favorite......


And here, she even tried it on a flat piece of clay...

She decided that it's best to paint on the metallic AI first, then apply colored AI over that. I have to agree. If you do it the other way around, the metallics tone down the colors a bit too much.

Just blending 2 colors together gives you a wonderful look -

And yes, another day of experiments coming up tomorrow night!

Friendly Plastic Painted Pellet Fusion

I poured Friendly Plastic pellets in little cups, squeezed alcohol ink in on top of them and stirred them up.

And then I took a piece of Friendly Plastic strip and pressed it into mold and pour and made a bracelet blank mold.

Next I poured the pellets into the mold....

And I only used 3 colors...but I'm thinking the more the merrier!

Set them on the griddle with the temp just under 200 degrees and let them melt

It was fun to watch them start to blend together...

and melt.....

and then take them out of the mold when they are cool:

So what are my options now?  

1.  Re-heat on the griddle and run the comb thru them

2. Cut into strips and use in the inlaid technique

3.  Use as is

4.  Back with a strip of Friendly Plastic and make a bracelet

5.  Cut up and use pieces in other art

And what do we call this one?  Melt and blend?  

I haven't even touched the surface of where we can go with this.  Alcohol ink provides a transluscent coloring.  Acrylic paint will give an opaque coloring.  Metallic paints or inks will give us a 4th look.  I'm thinking copper, silver and gold could be a fabulous mix!

And that bracelet blank - I can hardly wait to play with that!  I have ideas to take left over scraps and melt and shape them.  Or how about fracture & fuse with left over scraps and then combed?  I can hardly wait to play!

Sad to say, I took Linda to the airport this morning.  I'm so sad to see her go, but I can't even start to explain the ideas floating around in my head that I want to experiment with.  So as I said...one idea just leads to another, and another, and.....it never seems to end!!!

Alcohol ink - outside the box - final

With the backgrounds already done, it took about 20 minutes to make these 4 quick cards using stamps, markers and scraps of paper.

Mostly simple little cards

Inkadinkadoo, B Line Designs, and this one is just a printed sentiment:

And I have enough backgrounds still left to make up 20 more cards.  Such fun - alcohol inks!!

Alcohol ink - outside the box - part 2

Continuing the tutorial on alcohol inks.....you can stamp on them:


or like this:

Run them through a cuttlebug folder and add some stickles glitter:

Highlight the embossed detail of a cuttlebug folder with black ink and then white pen work:


Or use white pen without the black ink pad:

Use a gold pen to highlight specific parts like 2, 4, 6, 8......and you know this one is going to get turned into a card that says "who do we appreciate?"

OK, that's just a few more ideas to play with.  Come back tomorrow for even more.  Isn't it amazing what you can do just layering a few products?  And here's another tip, try blowing on the alcohol inks as you apply it.  Will give you a totally different look!  First time I did that, Kerry came running into the room to see what all the huffing and puffing was all about!  He has since learned to just ignore most of the sounds coming from my studio!  LOL!

Alcohol Ink - outside the "box"

OK, how about a tutorial tonight? Part 1 of I don't know how many! LOL!

When you use alcohol ink, almost always, you apply 3 dots in a triangle. But for this technique, apply 3 or more colors in a straight line. Here I have used 5 colors.



Using glossy cardstock, swipe them down the card in a straight pattern:



Your finished piece might look something like this. But the fun is in experimenting with different combinations of inks.



Take the same felt pad and swipe across the card to form a "plaid".



A bit too much cranberry?



Using the same felt, don't add any more ink, pounce the rest of the ink on top of what you just did:



If you allow each layer to dry, it will come out looking something like this:



Sort of looks like watercolor spots up close:

Change your ink to get a different look:

Don't wait for it to dry between layers and it will blend together a little like this:



If you swipe several times in each direction, you get a linen look:

And I think this might just be my favorite so far:



Now, go off and play with that and come back tomorrow to see all the fun things you can do with these backgrounds!

And did you notice that I actually did my nails??? Amazing, huh? LOL!