Bright and cheery cards from card kits

I made up these bright and cheery cards from kits from this class.  It sure is nice to have kits on hand as it makes getting last minute card made up very quick and easy!!  

These fun backgrounds were created with ink I made up from the ink cartridges we removed from our inkjet printer a while back.  I used 4" x 6" photo paper and then colour printed black images over the backgrounds before cutting them apart for my cards.  These digital images are from Melon headz. I stamped the card fronts with coordinating ink and some of my background stamps.  I colour printed the layers with their greetings and assembling the card was pretty simple after that!!

Therese

Fun cards from kits

I made up these two cards from kits I made up for this class in May.   I used ink cartridges from the colour printer and glossy photo paper to make up the fun decorative paper and then I printed images on them using the printer.  These digital. images are from Melonheadz.  I combined them with some fun sayings for some fun cards!!  I trimmed the images and layered them onto the yellow layers which were printed with the greetings and then mounted them to the stamped card front.  They were stamped with pink ink using a script background stamp (SU).  I did use a bit of watercolour to add a bit of intensity to parts of the images to give them more dimension.    Therese

Sympathy cards from kits

I made up these two cards from kits I made up for this class.   The card fronts are stamped - the green one with a blue ink using a script stamp (SU) and the blue one with bleach using a worn background stamp (SU).  The digital images (CLKER) were printed on the coloured ink backgrounds then trimmed to fit on the coordinating layers which have colour printed greetings on them before being mounted to the card fronts.  Quick and easy cards from kits!!       Therese

Hand decorated return address labels

I printed another set of return address labels last week and with the prep for our weekend plans I did not get to painting  them til today!!  I used the yellow and magenta ink spray that I created using the spent inkjet cartridges.    Needless to say the yellow had a bit of malfunction and so there was more yellow than I had originally planned to use so I just went with it and added a bit more magenta afterwards!!  They are bright!!!!!!  Have enough for another few months now!!

Therese

Cardmaking - May - Glossy photo paper watercolour backgrounds combined with colour inkjet printed digital images

We recently acquired an inkjet printer after being without for a number of years so I wanted to see what I could do with this new tool for this month's cardmaking class.  

I chose to make some dye ink backgrounds using glossy photo paper using this common technique - apply colour to non stick mat, spritz with water and lay the photo paper glossy side down and twist a little.  It worked very well and I ended up using old dried water based markers for the blue/green and green/purple ones.  I used empty inkjet ink cartridges for the yellow and pink ones.  You can check out a tutorial at Crafting a Green World. that explains how to use dried out markers to make watercolour ink.  The sponges in the ink cartridges worked pretty much the same way.  You can check what I did with them in this blog post.  Once all the backgrounds were dry I used my new printer to print digital stamps on them (candles and cupcake - Melonheadz). I used Corel Draw to layout three different images for each 4" x 6" background and printed the images in black onto the colourful backgrounds though I could have converted my images and printed them in colour instead.  It was easy to highlight some of the details in the images with watercolour by simply applying it with a small paint brush.  I expect I could have added any colour of watercolour that I wanted to but I applied those I had used in the backgrounds. So there remains quite a few options I would like to explore with this technique.  I cut the images apart and set out to create greeting layers.   I chose light coloured coordinating cardstock and designed a layer that was 2.75" x 4.25" and added a greeting on the right hand side the colour laser printed them.  The landscape images created landscape cards with the greeting below the image.  For portrait images, it created portrait cards with a greeting running up the side.  Next, I needed card fronts!!  I chose to use rubber stamps and ink to embellish my card fronts.  That was less successful in that I had difficulty getting non muddy prints from stamps that have been used and stained with dark colours in the past when I applied light coloured inks.  So I have a pile of discards which will have to be repurposed!!  I did finally get all the card fronts ready to go.  I will consider colour inkjet printing my card fronts next time though I will have to acquire a few more vector digital background stamps that can be changed to different colours before I can do that.  It will be a process.  The card making process was fast and easy!  Glue the image to the greeting layer and then glue this large element to the card front!!  

These two cards were created while I was preparing kits for this class.  

For the yellow one, I ended up trimming the overall stamped background to allow an even margin and gluing the whole layer to a dark blue card front.  This worked very well too!!  

For the butterfly card, I used bleach for the background and then realized that it would not work well for the other cards being as they were too light for the bleaching to show up well.  I am very happy with the results of this experiment and I look forward to exploring the other options available to me in his process at a later date.  

Therese

Inky fun with a couple of colour printer cartridges

 We recently acquired a colour inkjet printer which required some intervention before it would print all the colours successfully so in the process of that repair there were two printer cartridges that were empty and ready to be put in the garbage.  Knowing that others have scavenged ink from markers I thought I would have a go with scavenging the ink leftover in the two cartridges - a yellow and a magenta.  You can see above that I have managed to bend back the top of the cartridge enough to access the inside (using a hack saw and a some pliers) and remove the sponges which were holding the remaining ink.   I simply added some water and the ink dissolved into it.  I filled two bottles with the ink I retrieved - a small one and a spray bottle.  I did the same with the magenta cartridge and got two bottles from that as well.  

Here are the papers I created in the process of removing the ink from the sponges.  I made several backgrounds on glossy photo paper (10) and the rest was applied to regular bond paper in a variety of patterns. So I have a LOT of backgrounds to use for my creative projects and 4 bottles of ink that I can use for making quite a few more.  It was a bit of a messy job and I should have wore gloves because my hand look like they have been "altered".  I expect it will wear off in a couple of days.   I am pretty happy with my little experiment and look forward to making up some cards with my glossy photo backgrounds.  

Therese

Postcard - Traci Bautista style

Here is the postcard I mentioned here!!  I am super happy with how it turned out as it is my first attempt at doing the Traci Bautista style of art.  I used the hot glue stencils I made the other day  - they were really fun to play with.  I watched several of Traci's videos on line so I could get a feel for how she did her layers and what supplies she used. Most of the videos are in "quick mode" so I had to really pay attention to figure out what supplies she was using and how she was using her tools.
I started by creating my background on glossy photo paper. You can check below for more information. Once I was happy with it I found a bright piece of hand decorated paper in my stash and punched six ovals (SU)  from different areas of it to get a variety of colours.  I used a red stamp pad and a Making Memories magnetic alphabet set to add the words to the petals - life, thoughts, words, deeds, kindness, joy.  I used a red gel pen to add a squiggly border to each petal.  I created the flower center by layering a red scallop outline over a yellow scalloped circle and layered a C over it.  The C was created by cutting two neighbouring circle Nestibilities out of yellow cardstock which created an O.  I then trimmed out a section to create the C and added an outline filled with cross hatching using the red gel pen.  I eventually added red watercolour pencil and used a wet brush to push it around to get a more solid shape.  I hand lettered the rest of the letters to spell "Choose" and once it was dry I spritzed it with yellow ink spray.  I hand cut the leaves and stem from a piece of green hand decorated paper and added some definition with a green watercolour pencil blending out the colour with a wet paintbrush.  After positioning all the elements I glued the petals, stem and leaves in place using white glue in a fine tip applicator and added the flower center over them using a small square of 3D foam tape.  

So here is what my side table looks like after a stint of playing with ink sprays and hot glue stencils. I created sprays by mixing a few drops of dye reinkers with water in little TH misters. That worked great.  I ended up using navy (Night of Navy), medium blue (Brocade Blue), red (Real Red) and yellow (Crushed Curry) (SU) for my creations.  You can see in the photo the first three backgrounds I created and how much paper I had down to catch the over spray (those will eventually have more colour added and be added to my hand decorated paper stash).  The first one - yellow & blue - the blue was too dark.  The other two were too close to the colour of the flower petals to be effective backgrounds. The lighter blue was a much better choice.  I laid several stencils over my 4" x 6" glossy photo paper and spritzed it a couple of times with the medium blue spray.  I removed those stencils and added others and added a couple spritzes of yellow. When I removed those stencils I turned them over, spritzed their flat backs with yellow and laid them on the corners of my developing background.  I was happy with that.  Next, I turned another stencil over, spritzed it with blue and laid it over my background, repeated the spritzing and laid it in a different place.  That was better.  I was quite happy with the results and the contrast between it and the bright petals was really good, but it still needed a bit of something.  I decided it needed a bit of red/pink.  I knew that spraying the red would be too dark so I punched an eyelet border (SU) out of white cardstock hoping to use it like a stamp.  It was very porous and immediately absorbed all the colour I had spritzed it with.  Bummer!!  I kept experimenting and eventually discovered that once it was saturated with colour I could use it like a stamp - perfect.  I just laid it over my background in three places and rubbed the back to transfer the ink.  That worked very well and gave me the more subtle colour I was looking for.  I have resisted adding any black to this piece of art mostly because I did not want to ruin it and also to let myself just appreciate the colours for what they are though I may consider just a few drops of black ink spritzed in a few spots from the bristles of a toothbrush!!

Therese