Label Stamping Technique

I was once asked to show someone in person how to do this technique in person because they couldnt imagine how you get all those little labels lined up so neatly – they imagined that Id peeled them all off one by one and stuck em on singly – I may be mad but I aint THAT mad 😉

For the benefit of anyone who never quite grasped this technique first time around Ive took a coupla shots with the digital camera to show the steps of how you do the transferring the labels to the card part – a picture is worth a 1000 words right?

Label Stamping Technique Instructions:

1. One sheet of labels still on the adhesive backing all stamped and ready to be transferred over onto card:

2. Slightly peel off the labels on the left most edge as seen below:

3. Flip the sheet around and fold the adhesive backing back onto itself like below:

4. Place the stickers down onto a sheet of card stock and gently pull the backing paper from behind till they have all stuck down onto the card like so:

5. Repeat steps 2 & 3 with the next row of labels:

6. Place the labels onto the card and carefully align them with the labels which youve already stuck down on the card:

7: Gently peel the backing paper from behind till all the labels have stuck down:

8. If your label sheet has more rows repeat these steps till they are all stuck down and its finished:

Finished Artwork:

Polymer Clay Brocades

Ive finally managed to sign up for my first swap of 2009!

This was for a mystery swap where initially we didnt know what we were all signing up for! All was finally revealed and we found out for the swap we had to make something following these fab instructions for polymer clay brocades which Ms Adrienne ‘bossy boots’ had uploaded and shared on her blog:
http://adriennegoodenough.blogspot.com/2009/05/polymer-clay-brocade.html

I finally got round to playing and making my bits for this swap last night and took a couple of photos along the way to share my experience!

Polymer Clay Brocade First Steps:

1. You have to roll out a piece of polymer clay onto a ceramic tile using a roller – I didnt have neither of these so instead I used chopped up pieces of a black bin liner to work on and I improvised using a gluestick as my rolling pin for the clay.

The clay I used was fimo soft and I was surprised just how soft it was to work with, as you know I am always moaning about the pains in my hands and I didnt have any real issues working with this clay – happy days!

2. Once you’ve rolled out the clay you paint it with a few layers of metalic paint, for this I used my lumieres paints in bronze, gold and pearl white and also my stewart gill bright gold as I love that colour! You only need a tiny bit of paint and you apply it with your fingers.

3. Next stage is to stamp into the clay, I didnt wait till the paint had dried as Im impatient, I inked my stamps with versamark so that they wouldnt get stuck into the clay and could be removed easily and it seemed to do the trick.

4. You need 3 different colours of acrylic paints for the next stage, basically you rub the colours onto the clay to add highlights to the raised unstamped areas, less is more. My clay was still wet from the previous paint layers and this seemed to help the highlighting colours to blend onto the clay more freely I found.

The colours I used mainly for this stage where blue, pink, turquiose,green, yellow and purple.

Heres some photos of what my clay brocades looked like at this point:

These 2 I did with Model Magic by Crayola just to see if it would work with air dry clay:

The instructions for this technique ask for black colour clay, I did use black but I also used some brown and some light blue clay I already had to see if you REALLY REALLY needed the black clay to make this technique work. As you can see from the photographs above, you DONT really need black clay because you cant really tell the difference once youve put all the layers of paint onto the clay.

Step 2:

Once youve painted, stamped and highlighted the clay you need to use cookie cutters or any type of cutters to make little shapes, I decided to go for geometric shapes with the intention of making mosiacs or something with them, heres a selection of the brocade shapes just prior to cooking them:

Step 3:

To cook my clay I used my melting pot! Ive had this gadget for probably about 5 years or more and up till now I have NEVER used it! First time out! To cook the fimo I put the heat setting on the melt pot to 110, waiting till it was hot enough, then evenly spaced the clay directly onto the pan of the melting pot, placed the lid on and walked off and left them to cook for half an hour. Came back and they were ready! I repeated this step till Id cooked all my pieces.

By the end of it all I had a few little pieces left which didnt quite fill the melting pot pan, so I placed them on the pan anyway and unplugged the melting pot and just left them on there till the melting pot had totally cooled down – when I came to put the melting pot away I realised the fimo had totally cooked itself on the pot as it was cooling off! So I didnt need to waste any more electricity cooking the small lil pieces I had left over!

Heres some photos of my finished clay brocades, Ive not uploaded my model magic ones yet because they arent dry yet!

Some Polymer Clay Brocade Close Ups:

The Van Gogh Technique

While searching through Blogland, I saw a mention about a new technique featured in the latest issue of Techniques Junkies called ‘The Van Gogh Technique’.

Sadly I dont subscribe to that newsletter because I cant afford it so I didnt know what this technique was about. But not to be outdone, I decided to google for artwork using this technique so I could see what all the fuss was about and work out how its done.

Vincent Van Gogh is particulary famous for his unique painting style, if you look at any one of his paintings you’ll see what really makes his art really stand apart is how you can see every single brush stroke and movement in the painting. He was a genius, certainly ahead of his time and misunderstood.

The Van Gogh Technique takes on the basic principles of Vincents work by re-creating a feeling of movement within a stamped image by adding little scratches or dots of colour using pens to give it a 3 dimensional feel.

So instead of colouring in your stamped image ‘flat’ by using only one colour, with The Van Gogh technique you use more than one colour to create a free style pattern which resembles a flowing movement.

The technique is pretty straightforward, all you need is a stamped image and a couple of marker pens. It works best on images of ‘things’ rather than people, so flowers, fruits and other still life images are perfect. Ive seen it done on people but I dont like the effect Ive seen so far as the people look as if they’ve got a bad rash!

I think your supposed to use marker pens for this technique, but to be honest there are no rules in art! So theres nothing to stop you recreating this technique using your gel pens or coloured pencils for that matter, adapt and use whatever you have to hand.

Anyway heres my take on the technique and how I did it based on the pictures I found online:

Creating The Van Gogh Effect:

The sun image below was stamped on watercolour paper using a blend of yellow and orange acrylic paints, its a large foam stamp which Ive been itching to use for a while, since summer is here at last I was inspired to use it 🙂

Once the stamped image had dried I went over the top with blue goache paint to give it a background wash to resemble the sky and let that dry.

Heres the image I worked on before I started attacking it with my pens:

To create the Van Gogh effect, I took 2 gel pens – one was a signo pastel orange and the other a sakura glittery orange.

Using these 2 pens I added little lines and scribbles all over the face of the sun. I used the lighter pastel pen on the left hand side of the suns face and the glittery pen I used on the right hand side of the face.

For the sky I used a pale blue signo gel pen and added marks all over the background untill Id finished the entire piece.

To finish the picture I got out my black marker and added a border and outlined the sun image to make it pop, heres what the finished piece looks like below:

Another photo of the same piece – I took this one because the glittery pen reflected back on the flash of my camera so you could see how it looks in a different light:

See the photographs below for close up shots so you can see for yourselves (if you click on the pictures you can see them bigger)

For reference heres a couple of the links I found of other artwork while looking to see what the technique was:

http://www.stampqueen.blogspot.com/

http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/gallery/photo/1377784?limit=last1

http://starvingartistampsgallery.blogspot.com/2009/06/van-gogh-contest-still-time-to-enter.html

http://ibrakeforstamps.blogspot.com/2009/06/large-daisy-with-eye.html

Brayered Bands Resist Backgrounds

I’ve decided to go right back to basics and revisit one of the very first background techniques I ever tried! Elastic Band Brayering!

This is a background that everyone can do because everyone has elastic bands in their house, if you don’t; chances are the local postman has dropped some in the street recently (that’s how I got mine!)

Supplies:

• Thick Elastic Bands
• Brayer – with removable roller (Woodware or Ranger)
• White Card Stock
• Versamark or Embossing Inkpad
• Embossing Powder – Metallic, Clear or White
• Newspaper
• Adirondak Colorwash Sprays – any colour (I use them all!)
• Sponge
• Kitchen Towelling

Instructions:

1. Remove roller from brayer, take 2 rubber bands, wrap and twist around the roller, spread them out to cover the entire width, re-assemble brayer back together again.

1. Place white card onto newspaper, ink brayer with versamark inkpad, randomly roll across the surface of the card. Repeat this step, each time rolling in a different direction. Don’t worry about overlapping as you want to be completely random, continue until you have completely rolled the entire card surface.

1. Pour embossing powder over the pattern and heat set. White or clear creates a more traditional faux batik effect. I used gold on some backgrounds, on others I used a white pearl as I wanted a shimmer effect.

1. Once cooled; take 1 colourwash spray and lightly mist over the surface of the card, use a sponge to spread the colour across the card and remove all traces of the white card base colour.

1. Next take 2-3 different colours of colourwash sprays: stream, wild plum and butterscotch work well together, as do raisin, eggplant and terracotta. Squirt 3-4 times with each colour randomly over the card, you want to have little bursts of colours. Don’t worry about the colours overlapping as they will blend together nicely.

1. Heat set inks, once dry take a kitchen towel sheet and rub across the surface of the embossed pattern to remove some of the ink, you can control how much ink you remove with pressure. If you want to completely remove the ink from the embossed areas to create a faux batik effect you can use a moist baby wipe to lift the ink. Your background is complete.

Textured Variation:

This is an interesting variation of this background which creates a lovely texture.

Follow the directions above from Steps 1 – 3. Once the embossing has cooled; crumple the card into a tight ball, twisting and turning  the paper to create lots of creases, don’t worry if some of the embossing flakes off or if by twisting it you break the embossed areas; this is normal. Flatten out the card again, and then apply the inks following the main directions from step 4 onwards above.

This variation will not only create a brayered band resist, but the inks will seep into all the creases and folds in the card and breaks in the embossing to create a more textured background.

Background Samples:

Brayed Bands Cards:

Stamping On 45’s

I decided I needed to make some more badges and pins for a stamp show I’m going to in 2 weeks time but couldn’t think WHAT to make badges with!

I happened upon some old 7″ vinyl records in a local junk shop for only 10p each and wondered if I could use them to make pins with?

So I decided theres only one way to find out! And thats TRY IT AND SEE!

So I did and this is what I came up with:

The Vinyl bellies are very easy to make and I had a lot of fun with them!

I’ve since been told be various people that in the past they have used old 38″ records to make bowls and vases by placing the whole record over a bowl and then either standing both in a bowl of very hot water OR placing in the oven….apparently the record melts and takes on the shape of the bowl and was used as an unusual shaped container…

Anyway you are probably wondering how I created these embellishments and pins! Read on for more information!

Preparing The Vinyl:

There are 2 ways to break the vinyl records down into embellishment sized pieces. One is to snap the records with your hands, they are quite flexible, into small abstract shapes.

Another is to use strong sharp scissors to cut them into little pieces.

How To Create:

If you look at the url above you will see I have created different looks with the vinyl records. So I will walk you through each and explain how you do it:

Stamping On Vinyl:

The bellies in the scan which are plain black with silver lettering on them are actually stamped bellies. For these I used Platinum Planet Brilliance Inkpad and this is how I created them:

1. Place your piece of vinyl onto a sheet of teflon (or non stick baking parchment)

2. Blast the vinyl piece with heat gun until it curls, turn it over and blast other side. At this point the vinyl resembles a piece of floppy licorice!

3. Quickly stamp into the hot vinyl piece using a pre inked rubber stamp. Set aside to cool.

Once the belly has cooled, you will notice that the stamped impression is almost like an intaglio effect.

You will notice in the scan that I have attached charms to 2 of the bellies, while the vinyl piece was still hot, I pierced it using a darning needle. Once the belly had cooled down, the hole I pierced turned solid and enabled me to thread a gimp ring and a charm through it.

Embossing On Vinyl:

1. Place your piece of vinyl onto a sheet of teflon (or non stick baking parchment)

2. Place the vinyl onto Blast vinyl piece with heat gun until curls, turn over and blast other side, the vinyl piece will flatten slightly.

3. Next sprinkle on little bits of embossing powders OR glitters. Reheat to melt. Add more ep or glitter if required.

4. Once you are happy with how it looks, dip the hot vinyl belly into clear embossing powder and reheat to seal. Set aside to cool

To finish off the pins.embellishments I edged them using a gold krylon pen.

One of the bellies in the scan was hi lighted using a copper krylon pen to age it.

I hope you have as much fun creating these embellishments as I did!