Having fun!

Today I’ve been having fun trying out some new techniques and ideas.

I found this first technique in the latest copy of Craft Stamper magazine.

As usual I didn’t have all the suggested ingredients, so I improvised! I started by gluing a piece of baking foil to a piece of recycled packaging card, then coloured the foil white using a Uni Paint Marker. When the white marker was dry I dripped spots of different colours of alcohol ink onto the white then added white marker spots on top of the colours. As you can see – some of my spots spread a little! When all of that was dry, I embossed it using an embossing folder then sanded the edges of the embossed edges to allow the foil to shine through. Mine’s not quite as dramatic looking as the example in the magazine, but I’m still impressed with the result.

The inspiration for my second piece came from these two posts (Dimensional Paper Cut Cards and Watercolored Dimensional Paper Cut Cards) from Julie Fei-Fan Balzer. I have always loved creating pop-ups but have normally made them as add-ons to the page. The idea of cutting them directly from the page seemed too intimidating. Seeing Julie’s beautiful work inspired me to have a go.

After a few rather disastrous efforts where the middles fell out altogether or the design folded into strange places, I finally got it worked out! I drew the design using pencil, then cut it out very carefully using a pair of tiny, very sharp pointed scissors. I chose a red card to back it and stuck them together using low tac double-sided tape. I didn’t erase the pencil lines as I couldn’t decide whether or not to outline the shapes. What do you think? I’m really pleased with how this first one turned out and am itching to try another one. As Julie says on her blog – they are very addictive!