Magical embossing!

These tutorials are a product of extensive reading, researching and lots of time spent on making them. Please do not copy, or share on your page (for promoting your items in your shop) unless I give you permission to do so. Please ask nicely....I won't say no...but you need to ask.... You can link it on your blogs if you have used these tutorials...please share the link with me when you do use these tutorials...I would love to stop by and see what you have done! 

When I saw this video...oh my God!! I knew I had to make a card with it...without wasting any time I got down to business!!

I also took step by step photos for those who want to see it! First the card and then the step by step pics!

I love the effect...its just amazing!! no doubt I had inky fingers the rest of the day! This card is specially for Ujjwal's embossing challenge on Yvonne's blog.

Also for Virginia's challenge to create something from an inspiration. My inspiration is the video I mentioned earlier.

So now the step by step. The main panel for this card started out as a white CS. I covered the CS with different colors of distress inks. This panel has soft colors because I blended the colors. For stark colors, rub the ink pad straight on the paper as in the video.

 I used Broken China, Wild honey, Worn lipstick, Shabby Shutters.
Then comes the step of  stamping with Versamark and embossing with clear embossing powder.

This piece is different than the one above...I messed up the first CS, so had to re-do this. Just showing the clear embossed butterflies. Used Hero Arts Antique Engravings.

Then comes the magical step. Take black ink, a sponge and rub it all over. Make sure you use a dye based ink, anything that is water-based. I used Faber-Castell black ink pad, the regular one in the market. I used a cosmetic sponge, cheap and disposable. A water-based ink is easy to rub off the embossed image, other inks will stick to the image.
Use a dry tissue and rub off the excess ink of the embossed parts...and here's the result.

Get it as dark as you want it to be.
I added some rainbow bling stones, some make up glitter (VOV pearl powder eyeshadow) over the card...cheap and works like pearl powder..(though I have to figure out how to get it to stick to the card)

So there you have it, simply truly magical embossing. Try it and have fun!!
Here's the final card again...coz I can't help but love these butterflies!

See ya soon with another tutorial...on the faux rain...
Let me know your comments and any questions if you have any!

RAIN

 

 I love listening to the sound of rain, the sound of croaking frogs and love rain falling on the glass...as it forms rivulets and cascades down the glass panes! As a rain and rainbow freak, I loved this little frog holding out a bunch of flowers...maybe hoping to meet Mrs. Frog....Lol!

 I combined all those elements, the frog, the cascading water into this card.
 The HA magical background was like swirls of water....the window cut, has acetate and covered in glue and gloss tear-drops to look like rain!

Here's the inside of the card...I love the frog...Jan please send me more images!!!

Just a shot to show the faux rain drops! I love how beautiful it looks!! Like real rain, which we STILL DON"T HAVE!!! (that's my frustration at the heat)

I also created my own flowers for the first time...or rather the first time they actually looked right. I colored the roses with Distress ink Shabby shutters before assembling the rose. Also created some hat-pins with my stash of beads and pearls (S.M want some hat pins your way?) I love the look of them!! 

And on another note, one of my very favorite bloggers and an exceptional card maker, Britta Swiderski is teaming up with her fav blogger to bring together a blog hop for all the young crafters.

Hop on over and join the fun...there are loads of prizes too. Last date to join in is 27th June.

Blogger issues

Hey is anyone having problems accessing Nichole heady's blog or Dawn's Mcvey blog? I'm having issues with reading a lot of blogs! please let me know if you can access these blogs?

Real butterflies

Finally feels good to be back to my desktop... feels good to connect back to all friends and bloggers! 

I seem to have missed a lot of challenges and anniversary celebrations! Congrats Kavi and Anita on your blog anniversaries!

Hubby just got himself a new camera for his birthday which is a month away..yeah! he got himself a present! what can I say...less work for me! :) And I've been having fun with that camera...shooting away..and if you're in a beautiful environment like Kerala, the pics just keep on coming...
Won't bore you with the whole trip or the 200+  photos I took, but here are some I'd love to share!
I found some butterflies to chase! :D

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Took me a good hour to get these 5 pics...got loads of bad pics in the way too..but then these pics made everything worth it!!  

I just finished  another charm..This one's got a ring on top to tie with a ribbon! Hope you like it..comments and suggestions welcome!

The background is a tag I got from Ujjwal..makes a great background for this charm..

See you soon with some cards!!

A pinch of color

I hope you've been having fun with the new swap..I'm so looking forward to dispatching my swap. And I hope this post goes up on its correct date. Trust blogger to screw things up when not necessary!
For this challenge, we want you to use just 3 colors. Black white and just a pinch of aqua/teal/turquoise. And NO PATTERNED PAPER!! I know, Not making things easy for you, am I?

There is an inspiration picture for your reference too..

 

This is a picture from Etsy. I loved the damask pattern and the aqua ribbon. 

My card has been inspired from  the beautiful damask pattern. Using my only damask-look alike stamp, I repeatedly stamped to get a PP. Just a dash of the peacock blue solid CS(Fabriano, RAK from Ujjwal)  along with some bling, completes the card.
Monogram stamp is from inque boutique.

Hoping to come back soon and see all your wonderful creations!

New found hobby!

While making scrapbook albums, I wanted charms to attach..I couldn't find any..so I thought I'll make one myself...and trying to find supplies in the regular market, its not easy. I needed to hit the old city markets for that...fast forward after all the searching and roaming in the sun...
This is what I made....

I think I'm in love with these, and will continue to make these. Still searching for charms to attach...

And for those of you who want them...I'll be happy to make for you too.... I'm planning to make whole load of these and sell it. I

It's raining in Kerala, and I'm off to play in the rains...

Would love your feed back on my new charms!

Butterfly and Bling

This is the first time that so many challenges just fell into place for me. Everything just fit into the card I had in mind. This is a CASE of my own card here.

The theme this week at Less is More is butterfly/Butterflies...how could I not play!
Then CAS-ual Friday challenge is bling..how could I not add Bling?
And at Wee-memories, its Stamping! Simply Fabulous!!
Also this card uses Smriti's Simply Sketches #1.

We both loved Waltzingmouse Sketches, but since they have a requirement for using WM Stamps, which we both don't have. So she started her own sketch series...and I love the idea.
I've rotated the sketch a bit.

The flutter-by is from Hero Arts Antique engravings, the butterfly trail from PTI- Little lady and the sentiment is from 3 bugs in a rug- baby boy ( I think). The butterfly was stamped on CS and then layered with a embossed vellum butterfly. The bling took me so long to place, but loved it.

My flutterby ready for take off!!

I'll be off for vacation end of this week..will set some scheduled posts for next week...I might not be able to comment anywhere, but rest assure, I will stop by once I'm back. 
See you soon!!

Handmade roses

Hey everyone..

 I got down to making flowers...I followed the tutorial from Tim Holtz's blog..and instead of the die cuts, I used my Shilpi Cut-n-Tuc flower template to get the 6 petal shape.

Roses and punched out leaves. Butterfly punched out from colored parchment paper. Duly glittered and blinged! :)

The little pink flower got covered in the first pic..so another one, to show the dimension. This is the first card I made with so much dimension..wonder how I'll end up gifting it? a box perhaps?



A few Q & A about my previous ATCs...

Parchment v/s vellum v/s gateway sheet

From what I researched, originally vellum and parchment were made from animal skins..but for papers they're made from plant fibres and cellulose. What I use are Pergamano parchment papers which are thicker than vellum.
'Pergamano' uses a heavyweight 140/160g (weight in grams per square meter) European made paper of archival quality that is strong enough to withstand fine perforating and pressure embossing without tearing,
90g weight and below is usually called vellum.
Thicker tracing paper is called gateway sheet (as much as I can gather about it). It does come in various weights too...from 30gsm to 280 gsm.

For embossing, I would suggest parchment paper or gateway paper in higher gsm...since most dye based inks will stay wet longer on parchment paper, no need for versamark. Just hold the heat gun away from it and keep moving it around the parchement paper.
And in case if the paper curls, heat it from the opposite side to uncurl it.

ATC overload

What can I say...I just finally (thank the Lord for that) got my Hero arts stamps. Apparently international shipping is taking around 20-25 days now!! I finally (yes, finally) own a butterfly stamp. For all the butterfly craziness that goes around in my craft room, I don't own a single decent butterfly stamp..that is until now..Say hello to Antique engravings and Kiss for the sun!! What yummy sets!!

I've been wanting to enter HA challenges for a very long time....Having one sentiment set never really quite cut it, so here are my first entries for the HA challenge, to create ATCs.

This uses the Kiss from the Sun set..Colored with my Sharpies, glue and gloss and background done with distress inks- Broken china and shabby shutters.

This ATC uses my most wanted set...I've been wishing for this set for over 6 months..finally its mine.The Antique engravings set.  This ATC took the longest to make.
-Started out as white Fabriano CS base, covered it with Worn lipstick distress ink.
-Clear embossed with magical background and covered the whole ATC with broken china. The embossing shows the color underneath..
-Stamped the sentiment in Broken china, clear embossed it and covered it with worn lipstick. (reverse of the ATC base)

I learnt this from Britta and Heather Maria

And my most favorite of all 3. I love this butterfly....
-I stamped the butterfly with black on vellum, clear embossed it and colored with sharpies on reverse of the vellum. It looks like glass..simply awesome!
-The base of the ATC is covered in shabby shutters and stamped with magical background using the same ink.
-Distressed with vintage photo on the edges.
-Stamped the moth on the ATC base, then attached the vellum butterflies with glue dots.

Just showing the dimension on the butterflies, and little bit of glitter.

Hope you enjoyed my newest craze. I'm addicted to distress inks.  (You think?)

OLW52

Boy, I sure missed a whole lot of OLWs!! ...for this week, I knew I had to do it..why? coz I had a ton of new stamps to play with (for those who know I'm mourning the loss of hero arts stamps, they've not come yet..still lost in transit or stolen). These are the stamps that I'd won from Imaginisce, got a ton from Lani.
This week is circles on OLW! And I wanted to be a little smart. Not use circles in the conventional way..so here goes my smart way of using circles on a One Layer Card...

This one is using a stamp from Imaginisce ...Let's roll collection....(the train's wheel's are to be the circles, if you have to ask me. and yes, the border is crooked. I do have OCD about perfection but this time I'm letting it roll)

Another one from the Splash Dance collection..I think this cute puffball qualifies as a circle... I hope Susan will agree!! Its a tiny 3x3 card left over from this set...

 

Not too neat coloring...I think I'm going to keep learning how to color...

Should be back soon, with some more coloring!!