Tape Lifting Techniques

This technique is so simple! So easy that I could kick myself for not ’seeing’ it sooner! Its been staring at me in the face all along; still, better late than never huh!

This technique involves using clear packaging tape or heavy duty masking tape to actually LIFT off the image and use it to make an impression or background.

There was several ways you can apply the tape lifting technique. This tutorial will give you a run down through all of them.

Read on for details.

Getting Started – Tools Needed For Tape Lifting

The first thing you need is Wide Clear Packaging Tape; you can use any size tape but I prefer to go for the widest as you can lift bigger images and your not as limited.

Heavy Duty Masking Tape; you want the strong stuff not the low tack variety. I got some super duper sticky stuff from poundlands.

Next you need Printed Papers to tape lift from; Newspapers are perfect for this because they are so thin. You can use book pages too from cheap paperbacks, I use the pages from books I get free on magazines for this purpose. Magazines are also ideal.

You will also need Rubber Stamps of your choice and a good Black Permanent Dye Inkpad (for example memories).

Lastly you need ordinary White Card to transfer your tape lifts onto; you can use any colour you wish, I just prefer to use white so I can add my own colour afterwards.

Which Tape Is Best For Tape Lifting?

You can work with either masking tape or clear packaging tape for all these techniques below, they are both ideal and both create very different effects. It depends on the overall look you are aiming for. Clear tape creates a more striking effect where the masking tape creates a very subtle muted effect. Try them both and compare.

Creating Tape Lifting Backgrounds:

For the tape lift backgrounds you need either the masking tape or the clear tape, the directions are the same no matter what type of tape you opt for.

1. Tear off a small strip of tape, gently rub it across newspaper or paperback paper print, do not rub too hard, quickly lift off the tape, then press the tape lift image directly over the top of the white card stock (leaving the actual tape and image on the card itself)

The trick is to remove the tape without removing too much of the paper with it. If you practise this step you will get used to pressing and lifting the text and not the paper. Cheap quality papers work best for this I found like freebie magazine supplements, newspapers and free paperbacks.

2. Continue tape lifting text from various papers until you have completely covered the surface area of your card. When sticking the tape on the card; arrange the tape lifts so that they are showing at all different angles and directions.

Dont worry about completely covering the background with print, it is ok to have blank areas! You can add blank tape inbetween the prints so that there is no break in the texture of the background itself.
When you’ve finished you will have something which looks a little like these samples:

Clear Tape Lifting Background:

Masking Tape Lifting Background:

The newsprint is still visible through the masking tape despite the masking tape being opaque….how cool is that 😉

As you can see from the above two scans that they are very different from one another! Talk about cool!

Adding Colour To The Backgrounds:

Because the clear tape lift backgrounds are glossy they are PERFECT for alcohol inks! Before adding colour I apply a layer of clear tape over the top of the tape lift prints so that the entire surface area of the card is completely covered with clear glossy tape. Then I add colour to the background using alcohol inks. The background below was created using Pinata inks:

To add colour to the Masking Tape Backgrounds I sponged on Dye Inks:

As you can see from the samples above that the 2 different tapes create 2 very different and yet striking effects!

Once youve made your backgrounds you can use them in your projects.

Tape Lift Stamping Technique

This technique involves using the tape to actually lift the image from your rubber stamp!

1. Ink your rubber stamp with black dye ink and place it face up on your work surface. I used Memories brand, the stamp used is part of the Tim Holtz Stampers Anonymous line.

2. Tear off a strip of tape; either clear or masking, and place it sticky side down over the top of the inked rubber stamp.

3. Very gently, rub your finger across the surface of the tape to transfer the ink, the sticky surface of the tape ‘grabs’ at the ink and doesnt slide or slip.

4. Quickly lift off the tape and press the image (and the tape) down onto card stock. Your tape lift stamped image is now transfered and ready for colour!

Note: Your tape lift stamped images will be a REVERSE image so dont use stamped images which rely too much on words (ie greetings) – if your using a word background stamp however the back to front lettering will give it a collagey feeling!

As before you can use alcohol inks with the clear tape or you can sponge on dye inks over the masking tape images.

Card Samples Using Tape Lift Stamping Technique:

Using Clear Tape:

Using Masking Tape:

This technique is really exciting and I love lifting the images of the stamps! The quality of the prints on the clear tape are awesome, far better than on acetate as the tape doesnt slip!

But thats not all!

Tape Lift Foiling:

Below are some samples I did using Tape Lift Foiling!! This technique is just like the tape lifting methods described above; only you use foil on the tape to ‘lift’ it off its protective backing sheet! Try it yourself and see…

Tape Lift Foiling Samples:

I hope you all enjoy playing with this technique and have as much fun with it as I did!If you have any questions or comments you can use the ‘add comments’ function below!
Trish

Additional Notes:

A few readers have asked me about the Masking Tape Lifting Technique on the comments form and how it works as they cannot understand how it could possibly work as the masking tape isnt clear.

Heres my response:
I know masking tape isnt clear and it is opaque or rather cream in colour, but believe me the tape lift technique DOES work with it! Seems to me people have not actually TRIED it to see, just commented that they ‘dont think it will work’ …..
Just place the tape onto either newspaper or onto an inked stamp, lift it off again then stick the masking tape onto a sheet of card. The image WILL be visible – not as strongly as it would be with clear tape but it IS there – just very subtle and slight. It looks especially good on vintage style images as it makes them look distressed.

TRY IT AND SEE FOR YOURSELF!

Shrink Plastic & CDs Mixed Media Embellishments

I was playing around with some cd pieces the other day and I came upon this idea by accident

My latest addiction is the Credit Card Background technque and as I was playing with my cds I wondered what this technique would look like on cds too!

These are the results of my little experiments. They are really fun to make and make great pins!

What You Will Need:

Cd Pieces
Scrap Paper
Metallic Acrylic Paint
Fake Credit Card
Clear Embossing Powder
Plastic Container For Embossng Powder
Teflon Sheet or Baking Parchment
Heat Tool
Shrink Plastic
Stazon or Brilliance Inkpads
Versamark Inkpads
Rainbow Metallic Foil
Itty Bitty Beads

How To Create

1. Squirt little blobs (technical term here!) of metallic paints onto a sheet of scrap paper, I lined my paint blobs up in a little row.

2. Dip the edge of the credit card into the paint and lift a little paint, holding a cd piece in your other hand, swipe the paint from the credit card across the cd to transfer the paint

3. Immediately put your cd piece with wet paint on it, into a container of clear embossing powder, the powder will stick to the paint.

4. Place the cd piece onto your sheet of teflon or baking parchment, embossing powder side up. And heat the powder with your heat gun till it melts and goes clear.

While it is still hot, place back into the clear embossing powder for another layer. Reheat. Repeat this step until you have 3 to 4 layers of clear embossing powder. Set aside to cool

If you look at your cd pieces what you have just clear embossed, you will notice at this point they look like they have been enamelled with all different colours of embossing powders, but they havent!

You have used only clear embossing powder over the credit card technique to add your colour thus creating the illusion of enamelling.

They look pretty good left as they are, but I wanted to add a little more OOMPH to them as per directions below

5. While your Cd pieces are cooling, work with your shrink plastic, I stamped my shrink like so;

On the black shrink I used Gold or Silver Brilliance inkpads, and on the transclucent I used Black Stazon pad.

Some of the shrink I cut into shapes with Sizzix dies, others I simply tore to get a rough shape. Once you have stamped your shrink, heat it with an heat gun to shrink it.

6. Turn your shrunken shrink plastic embellishment over and swipe the back side of it with the Versamark inkpad, place immediately into clear embossing powder and apply heat.

You may well think Ive gone mad at this point, embossing the reverse of the shrink…but it will all become clear in a moment:)

7. By now your cd pieces should have cooled down a little and be safe to touch. Now you can get to work with your foiling.

Gently heat the surface of the clear embossing surface on your cd, you dont want it to become too hot and liquid, just warm to touch.

Carefully press a piece of foil onto the surface of the warm enamel, and apply a little pressure. I used my fingers to rub it, if its too hot for you, use a towel or something to protect your fingers.

8. Gently lift the foil and remove it from the cd piece, at this point you will notice some of the foil has stuck to the surface of the cd!

Depending on whether you are happy with how it looks, add more foil, using different colours, or leave it alone and move onto the next step!

9. Pick up your heat gun and melt the cd again, this time you want to get the whole cd hot so that the embossing powder starts moving and swirling, as you apply the heat, the foil starts to crinkle and takes on a texture all of its own.

Once the cd is heated, place into the container of clear embossing powder to apply another layer of ep.

10. Heat the surface of the cd to melt the layer of embossing powder you have just applied, and at the same time, reheat the back of the shrink plastic embellishment.

Once both have melted, press the shrink plastic gently into the liquid embossing powder to embed it. Use cocktail sticks or tooth picks to press it in firmly.

The embossing powder on the reverse of the Shrink acts as a kind of ‘glue’ and helps the cd, ep and shrink bond together better.

11. Heat the surface again, and the sprinkle on a final layer of clear embossing powder to seal the shrink plastic and the cd pieces together, and sprinkle on itty bitty beads to add hilights to your embellishments.

Now you have some funky card embellishments or pins! Have a go!

Mixed Media Samples

Worksheet Wonders

I keep reading instructions for techniques and projects both online and in magazines and some of them tell you that you must always protect your work surface with one of those special non stick sheets when working with inks and paints.

While in some cases I agree that you really do need to protect your work surface as some paints and inks are just too messy I also cant help but wonder if its just a marketing ploy to make you buy the special work sheets which you dont always need.

Take this ugly looking background for instance which you can see below:

The background above is just a sheet or ordinary copier paper which I used as a protective surface while stamping and dtp-ing inks onto a project.

I wonder how many of you would normally discard this worksheet after working on it?

But why throw it away when it would make a perfectly good base for a background!?

This is how my ‘Worksheets Wonders’ idea came about – finding a use for those scrap worksheet protectors which you wouldnt normally give a second glance…

Basics Directions For Worksheet Wonders Backgrounds:

1. When starting on a new project which doesnt involve too much paint or glue; protect your worksurface with a large sheet of ordinary copier paper or blank card.

2. As your working; deliberately stamp off the edges or smear inks off the edges and be a little sloppier than usual so that some of it transfers onto the worksheet page protector underneath.

3. When your done, take your basic worksheet and have a good look at it, if there are any empty blank spaces on the page; fill them up! Use an inkpad to dtp or spray inks or anything you have to hand to add colour to it to fill in the white spaces.

4. Next step is to add some interesting stamped images to the worksheet – I find that the best stamps to use are collage or wordy backgrounds. If youve got a big ugly darkspot in your worksheet like I had above you can use a white inkpad to stamp the images with or a metallic one to make the image stand out.

Continue till your happy with how the worksheet looks.

At this point you can now go and use your worksheet wonder background as is – trim or tear it into sections and layer it onto atcs and decos etc OR you can continue with the steps below to add a bit of glitz to the background…

Adding Glitz:

5. Sprinkle clear embossing powder over the entire surface of the worksheet.

Tips – Work in small sections of the paper until you have more or less covered the entire sheet, you dont need a lot of powder -just enough for a light coating.

I dont use embossing ink for this step as I find the sheet will be damp enough for the powder to stick to from the ink application.

Remember when heating the embossing powder with your heat gun, to move the gun slowly towards the powder as it gently melts otherwise you’ll get it all over the place!

6. After the clear embossing has cooled, crumple the entire page up to get some nice texture going on, you’ll find some of the clear embossing will crack and even break off. Thats ok 🙂

7. Uncrumple the sheet again and flatten it out slightly for the next step.

Again this next step is completely optional but I do think it adds a nice final bit of glitz! 🙂

8. Reheat the embossing with your gun so that it warms up and take some metal foil sheets – you want the types that you can use with double sided tape and glue to adhere.

9. Gently press the foil sheets onto the warm embossing powder, leave for a few seconds then lift it off to reveal a lovely foil finish which has stuck to some of the clear embossing. If you use different coloured foils for this step the end results are pretty stunning!

Try it and see! The scans on this page really do not do these backgrounds justice – you need to do them and see for yourself. If you dont have foil sheets why not improvise and use glitter embossing powders instead for a twist.

Worksheet Wonders Background With Embossing & Foiling Sample:

Close Ups Of The Background:

Art Work Featuring These Backgrounds: