It Takes All Kinds

Watered Silk

Ann Marie here!  I had hoped to get our Old Faithful pics scrapped in time for this post, but we were barely back from Yellowstone when we turned around and left town again!  We just got back today, and I thought that I would instead showcase some simple water-based products.

1)  Watercolor crayons.  These are so much fun! These are some cheapy ones a friend of mine received as a silly gift...  She isn't the crafty sort and didn't have any interest in them, so she passed them on to me. I hadn't played with them yet, so tried them out.  I just colored across a stamp...

misted it with water, and presto.  A beautiful, elegant, floating image.  (You can get a similar effect by inking up a stamp with Distress Inks and spritzing with water.)

2)  Twinkling H20s.  I loved these when they first came out--the glimmer, shimmer, and fluid graceful beauty absolutely drew me in. I feel like I am still exploring how to use them.  I've "painted" in designs with them, created color washes on backgrounds, used dots of concentrated color to create a 3-D effect...  but I wanted to do something similar to the above technique, that would build off of the fluid nature of these paints.

So...  I watered up each paint pot, swiped big strokes of each color across the stamp in different places, allowing them to overlap...

And voila!  A subtle, shimmery background image.  (This would work with any type of watercolor paint, you just won't get the twinkle.)

3)  Watermark ink.  Yeah, okay, so technically, there's no water involved here beyond the name.  And this is a very basic stamping technique (one of the first I learned!).  But that's okay, it's still a gorgeous look I love to whip out once in awhile.  (Simple is best in my book.)Simply ink up your stamp with a watermark ink (such as Perfect Medium or Versamark), press, and...  you're rewarded with a tone-on-tone effect, with your image a shade darker than your cardstock.

A few tips with these techniques:

1)  Water-based techniques tend to result in a subtle, careworn, or vintage flair.  Use accordingly. I find loosely drawn or distressed images work well.

2)  If you're coloring or painting directly onto a stamp, I've found that rubber works better than polymer.

3)  Protect your work surface and surrounding projects!  Nothing worse than a wet project when you weren't planning for it.  :-/

4)  Use a non-water soluble ink to stamp over the images produced with a water-based technique.  Especially if you are impatient like me and the image may not be completely dry! :-) Pigments are okay, best are archival inks like Brilliance, or something like StazOn.  I don't recommend dye inks for overstamping these types of images.

5) Have fun, relax, and go with the flow!  It may take multiple tries to get the impression you want.  I found it was easier to stamp until I found one I liked, then cut my card from that than to stamp onto a card already in progress.  ;-)

Now, go play in the rain!

Artsy Shot

I love using masks, so much fun, especially with Glimmer Mist! Masking tape and mailbox letters add texture and give an edgy vibe.

Keeping the Reconnection Going

I mentioned back in January that my one little word for 2010 is reconnect. At the end of January, I realised that I needed a way to keep myself on track with my plans for the year, and so I decided to do a layout to document what I wanted to achieve in February.

   

It worked so well, and kept me motivated so I decided to make it a monthly layout.

 

Somehow I never got around to making a page for April, and it showed. I was not on the ball as much that month, and except for two major events, it went by in a blur with not much accomplished.

Back on track for May and June, things are definitely looking up.

 

The first three layouts are all hybrid pages using templates and kits by Karla Dudley. My June page is all digital, because I wanted to be sure to get one done before the month slipped away.

 

I find that doing these pages has really helped me not only to keep up with my plans, but also helps me see where I am spending most of my time (and it's not exercising!). Even when I don't get everything done as planned, I can still see that I am in fact accomplishing things, and I can refine how I approach the following month. Plus it is helping me develop good habits - I now blog more regularly on my personal blog than I did a year ago.

How do you document your monthly goals? Do you find that having a system like this helps to keep you on track? If you're not doing something like this, is it something you would consider doing?

In keeping with a theme free month...

I present you with a theme-free post.  Just chock full of random free-for-allness.  First up, some general feel-the-love cards:

Or maybe you're more in the mood for a general cute-for-cute's-sake layout:

Or maybe a theme *is* what you need.  Maybe you've had a few graduations in your social circle recently.  I bet they'd like a gift of green that would coordinate nicely with any one of these cards, celebrating their stellar achievement:

Or perhaps you need an end-of-school gift for a supremely frazzled teacher:

(The Do-It-Yourself part?  It was a bag full of fancy chocolate.  :-)  Self-medicating, indeed.)

Maybe you want to document the everyday summer surrounding you right now:

Well, whatever your poison, have a great weekend, go get your scrap on--and try to stay out of trouble! 

Retirement Goodies

Our school saw five people retire this year (quite a bit for a school with a staff of 21)!  For the retirement tea, I was in charge of finding baskets for cards that they could use later, and making some sort of nameplate. I found these at Old Tyme Pottery, but with a rustic fabric woven in and a countrified 'Simplify' plaque wired on the front.

So...  I removed the fabric and wire, painted the plaque, stamped a flourish with Brilliance ink, and handwrote their names with a glitter pen. Punching larger holes and adding eyelets to the wood plaques was easy with my cropadile.   Then I tied on each nameplate with a different ribbon, something they could easily remove later.

For the cards, I played with inking some diecut chipboard various blingy colors, and debossed some vellum using my Cuttlebug and old Fiskars embossing plates.  Some Stickled butterfly punches and Jolee's later, I had a series of mass-produced, yet all different, elegant cards. (pretend there is a sentiment--I couldn't find my Congratulations stamps to save my life!).

Showers and Flowers

Welcome to May! It's personally my favourite month of the year (because I celebrate my birthday), and also the month where things really start looking good weather wise. This month we focus on showers and flowers. Rain showers, bridal and baby showers, showers of blessing......and of course we know that showers bring flowers!

We also have a technique challenge this month: handmade flowers. Here's a page I did recently where I made some rolled paper flowers.

 

I used the tutorial found here on the Creating Keepsakes blog

 

Keep checking back to see what the team has in store this month!

...a friendship renewed.

Hi! Ann Marie here. :-) I'm excited to be a part of It Takes All Kinds, and look forward to sharing all sorts of fun stuff with everyone. I love this month's theme. When I saw the word 'renewal,' I thought of a recent chain of events that unfolded between me and a friend from high school.

I used cheerful colors because they were happy events that resulted in a renewed connection.  I also used my scissors for some light distressing along the edge of the main mat to represent the fear and stress that I felt before the resolution. Finally, I made a flower to support the idea of renewal, just like all those beautiful buds and blossoms we're surrounded with this time of year.

 

Hope you're having a happy spring! 

He's So Crafty

A while back my husband decided he wanted to learn to sew. I didn't take him seriously, but he even went online and found a free piece of software that makes patterns for hats and bags (you can download it here). Then he started bothering me asking for fabric, and to show him how to use the sewing machine. I still didn't think too much of it, but one weekend he made me this tote bag.

 

Of course I had to scrap a page about this! This page was originally done for a challenge, to stitch everything to the page. I figured this was the best topic for that!

 

Some shots of the details

 Do you have an unexpected crafter in your family? Or someone with a special skill or love for a hobby? Scrap a layout about it!

February means Sweet Nothings

February is the month of love and chocolate. Whether your sweet nothings are whispered or nibbled, lets get them recorded on a scrapbook page. Tune in to see what the team comes up with this month!

Reconnect

This year I chose Reconnect as my one little word.

After a year spent preparing to become, and then becoming a mother, this year I want to focus on reconnecting all the various parts of me. You can read more about my plans for this year on my personal blog.

I did this canvas to keep in my scrap space as a reminder of all I want to achieve this year. I used a few layers of colour washes to colour the background of the canvas, and artists crayons to paint in the leaves. Then I added a variety of items from the Making Memories Vintage Findings line, the chipboard vine from BasicGrey, and the letter stickers from Scrap Works.

I recently redesigned my blog using this colour scheme, and it seemed natural to connect the canvas to the blog by using similar colours.

How are you gently reminding yourself about your one little word for 2010?