Tissue Fabric and Friday Inspirations

We are having a wet spring - lots of time for reading/crafting/watching - the garden is way too soggy to work in, and I don't fancy doing too much walking in the rain. Was sunny this morning to walk to the boys to school, but the predicted storm has started so it will be pickup in the car.

I am inspired by Rebekah Meier's techniques and was very happy to get her book for my birthday. It has sat on my bookshelf for a while, but at last I have tried one of the techniques in there - it is called Tissue Fabric, and she has photos of some pieces on her blog eg.here and here. These are my steps so far : First the torn tissues sandwiched between 2 layers of fusible - I have peeled back the top release paper here.

Top release paper removed. The top is sticky enough to add things like foil or angelina fibres if you wish.

I then painted it with watered-down blue acrylic paint, and then added some green-gold metallic paint for sparkle - not sure that I need to add any foil now. This has been ironed to cotton fabric which has now become the base. The result is stitchable, and is much softer than fabric paper. I will continue to experiment with this.Onto what I'm watching - Craig and I love this series and have been watching the old seasons from the library. We are about 1/2 way through season 3.

My brother was lovely and came to look after the kids so that we finally got to see this movie. Still thinking about it - lots in it.Scored well at a sale at the DVD shop the other day - we have plenty to watch for a wet weekend (or 3!!) Enjoying reading this - an old man reminiscing about his days working in a circus

And Katherine loaned me this wonderful book. It is now on my Xmas list! Click on the cover to go to a view of the pages within on Amazon .

Blog love this week :

Divine combination of Ruth Rae and e.e.cummings here

Take a look at a couple of free 10 min shows presented by Linda Kemshall - I found her talking about where she finds and captures inspiration for projects particularly inspiring.

Angie Hughes continues to inspire with this new work.

Hope you have time to create this weekend.

Distress Inks and Embossing

Lucky me - my lovely friend Katherine and I had a Play day yesterday. These are what I made.The velvet samples are embossed velvet using the techniques shared by Jacinta Leishman on her blog in this post. We followed her instructions and created some lovely samples.

The only thing we found that differed from her advice was that we tried indian woodblocks with great success! (see the spirally one above) A fabulous technique to try again - click here for her follow-up post where she shares her BEAUTIFUL embossed velvet book.

For the rest of the day, we were exploring some of the techniques from this book by Tim Holtz.Distress Ink Pads are a Ranger product - more info here - they are lovely to work with since they blend really well, and stay wet a bit longer so you can create interesting effects. The colours are also very yummy. First experiment was water stamping - basically you ink the card, put an embossing stamp pad onto a stamp and then mist it with water. Once you stamp it on the inked background you dry it with a heat gun and the image fades like bleach. I should note here that I used watercolour paper which meant the ink didn't blend as well. Katherine's background is much more subtle, and I learned that lesson and used smoother paper for the rest of the experiments.Next was inking the paper followed by stamping an image with Embossing ink and applying clear embossing powder. Once this was heated and cooled, we re-inked over the top with a different colour. Then ironed it with newsprint so it stopped being shiny. Mine turned out really well because there was good contrast between my first and second ink colours. It is yummy in person.We tried applying acrylic paint to a stamp next, and then inked over so that acted as a resist. Didn't really think that was anything different from similar 'resist' techniques we've tried, but a good reminder of a nice effect.

Using Distress Embossing Powder was the last technique. You stamp the image with embossing ink, and then use the Distress Embossing Powder as usual, followed by inking with the Distress Ink. These turned out fabulously.

I wondered what the difference really was between distress embossing powder and others, and did a test with some silver....I really like the distress embossing powder because it is not shiny. Nice to have different options for different effects.

If you like these techniques, also click here to get to the Tutorials on the Ranger site for making cards - some of the projects there use distress inks and embossing powders.

Have fun :-)

Lutradur Gift Box

Inspired once more by Ineke Berlyn's book This lutradur sample layered with fusible web (from this post)became this gift boxSmall metal butterflies complete the sides. Looking down on the topIt stands 14 cm high, and the base edges are 7 cm. This was so much fun to make - lutradur doesn't fray so it was just a matter of fusing 2 layers together to get the right weight, and then embellishing with the fusible web and decorative stitching with metallic thread. The cords are several strands of fibres zigzagged over with the same metallic thread.