Birthday Alcohol

Hi, Nope it's not what you think! It was a birthday card made with alcohol inks!
First though....big whooping shoutout to Darnell for the blogger fix on the commenting problem.  I know many of you have seen this, sent me a heads up, but just in case you've had the problem, missed Darnell's excellent instructions, here's the link above.

Now I have to say: I'd tried this very thing (deleting the email, saving, re-adding, then saving again) a couple of times. It did no good. But as I read through Darnell's post, I remembered that I'd not had the blogger email asking me to subscribe that she mentions. Soooo...very carefully, I followed her instructions. Checked my email, and there were 2 notices from blogger to subscribe. I had 2 places where I changed & re-added that email address. I subscribed to each blogger email.  And Heavenly Day, very shortly I had a comment come in to the preferred email. Oh did I holler & cheer! Hoping that things were on the mend. Today I had more comments come into that mailbox. Also had a bunch in the Hotmail, (went into a junk folder). My tech had set up the Hotmail id as a new user in the outlook program, and I'm able to see stuff when I go to the regular email I use all the time. Don't have to hunt all over to find it. So things are looking up. Mucho thanks to Our Darnell! She is one smart cookie (well, yeah, I know, she gets a lot of help from Hammy, but he was on a little family vacation, or so she said. Wish I had a helper like that!)

Ahem, on to the card:

Had seen this card by my blog pal Loll (who has just joined Penny Black on a Design team!YAY! PB will be very happy she's on their team I know).

Loll foiled the sticky places one sometimes gets as blobs are drying on an alcohol ink card. Now I had a day when I was pretty disgusted with blogging, and just generally aggravated by many other things, so I decided to drag out the AI's,  some translucent yupo paper and have a little play. Loll was right about the places that stay a bit sticky as the ink dries. You place a foil piece over it, pretty side up - and just rub it pretty well (technical term is burnish) with your finger. The foil will stick. The translucent yupo is a much lighter weight, more like a good quality vellum, than the regular yupo. First time I've tried using the translucent type.

Now my foil really IS there, and if you enlarge the photo - you may get a hint of it. IRL it shows a bit better. It's where the deep red place is on the right and then another small red spot on the left. I liked it! And will be trying this again, (inks are still out on the table!). Had done another alcohol piece using the regular yupo, but didn't have any 'sticky' places on that. Die cut a no-name die from this pink & yellow yupo piece, as it sort of complimented the pinks in the background. These inks were some of the latest Ranger colors, Coral something, and a blue one. First time I've tried these colors. 

Versamarked the background edges, heat embossed with Ranger Queen's Gold. A small sentiment was done with the same process. Tha's all Folks!

I think I've caught up commenting on the 2fer comments. I will do my best to catch up on a lot of the other posts where I was missing out because of the blogger problem. Ya'll have a great Friday, and a wonderful weekend. I think ours will be quiet. I HOPE it will be quiet! It's hot as heck here, so I'm just trying to stay inside in cool air conditioning as much as is possible.

Hugs, Blessings, God Bless and thanks for sticking with me! 

Autumn Leaves Heat Embossed and Inlaid

Good evening...on this our first day of the new Eastern Standard Time. After all the reminders to set the clocks back I still nearly forgot to do that this morning! Fortunately some of the electronics do it automatically. We still have a bunch of clocks that have to get manual attention though.

Thanks for all the sweet comments about the fall photos I shared. This is quite a pretty neighborhood...feels a bit rural, although it is not really. We are about 4 miles away from most of the important things we need! (like restaurants and Walmart!!!). Thanks too for the kind comments about the porch decorations. We do enjoy that porch, especially these last few weeks, when it has been such super weather. We have coffee (my #2 brother & myself...DH is an herbal tea drinker) on the porch many mornings.

Have been trying to work on finishing up some Fall/Thanksgiving cards, since I was so negligent with sending out any Halloween cards. I hope you don't get sick of seeing fall motifs! Here goes with one:

 

 

- Heartfelt Autumn Leaves background (cling). Tried to find a picture of this at Heartfelt Creations, but was unsuccessful. It may have been discontinued. The link should take you to a picture of what this pretty stamp looks like. Inked with versamark, then heat embossed with Nuvo EP Glacier White...which gave a very nice coverage. Not really 'glacier white' as I think of that color, but between a nice white and sort of vanilla shade. Is pretty with the DI colors sponged over it. Since this EP had no glitter in it, it sponged smoothly.

 

- Echo Park die sentiment. When this was ordered, I didn't realized how large it was. I'm always looking for small sizes to use instead of stamping an extra bit on the front. This size lent itself to a bold treatment on the front of the card, so sponged another white c/s with DI Peacock Feathers. Used the die on both the leaf design & plain sponging, reversed the inner cuts. This one only 1 area of  tiny center bits were missing,(up at the 't') so used a tiny marker to color in, and think it's not too, too obvious.

 

Looked a bit like it needed another embellishment. Used soda can metal, played with some brown, orange and yellow shades of alcohol inks to color the metal - let dry between coats, sponged again, with various other colors of AI until I got a 'fall leaf' look.. Used a Sizzix Thinlets 660955 to cut quite a few leaves from the altered metal, which cut quite nicely with the special metal plate shim in place. This should have had embossed veins in the leaves, but it's not showing up. That may require an extra embossing step that I didn't do.

 

Hope you like this one. I share the links so that if you're interested, you can see what the product looks like. It may not be where I purchased the one I used. I do try to find these products on sale if possible.

 

Take care, start the week off happily & healthily, and thanks for coming to visit. Hugs & Blessings.

 

 

Anniversary with Fall Colors

Welcome Saturday..I hope your weekend has started off great. We have a family anniversary coming up next month, and since I'm thinking Fall colors, that was the theme for this card. Kept it simple so that the colors & the texture would show to advantage.

- Background created with Dylusions & some gold tattered angels.

- gold embossing paste - has a bit of a gritty texture & is a Viva product found in Walmart - done over a MB mesh stencil. This has been my best effort with the embossing paste to date.

- Alcohol ink over soda can - die cut leaf.

- Gold glitter sentiment. Happy is from a Joanna Sheen die -part of a Happy Birthday set. Anniversary is also J. Sheen die. I tried to cut these with the soda can metal, but it was very difficult to get them out of the dies without breaking the metal pieces. Happy worked ok, but the anniversary was too fiddly and broke in the middle as I tried to release it. The cut out pieces did not cut through well either. Enough aggravation, so I used a snippet of the gold glitter! I also don't like fussing with saving the tiny bits for the 'i' so I usually just use a rhinestone or pearl. Saves on the nerves! (got that idea from my Pixie friend over at the Pixie's Crafty Workshop - aka the Snippets Playground. So thank Diane. )

Ya'll come back when you can set a spell, now heah? Have a great day and big hugs.

First Gelli Plate Print

Good afternoon Friends and it's been a busy week for us. Lots of medical appointments (for DH), go early, sit & wait. This morning was an 8am appointment to get some results of an earlier test, and guess what? We had the schedule card, but the computer did not list DH's appointment. Sooo...he had to be worked in 3+ hours later. Rather than sit around in a germy office, we left, had breakfast, came home and then returned at the new scheduled work-in time. The results were happily received, and thanks to all who were saying prayers for DH. I know those prayers were heard.

Before I go any further, let me say a big warm Welcome to 2 new followers:

Jacee of Simply Paper and Bea L. from Fall Foods. I hope that Bea's link will work for you, as I had a bit of trouble with this link. Bea is on Google Circles and I'm not able to access her blog that way. I appreciate both of you taking the time to become followers, and sorry I was so slow in introducing you here! Please do take time to visit these fabulous artists.

Also I would like to thank all who left comments on The Creative Blog Hop post. I got some very sweet comments and did those ever make me feel so good. I had 2 bloggers that I tagged, Brenda (Friends Craftin' with Friends) and Veerle(Veerle Her Little Card Corner). Let me add my 3rd taggee, Irish Cherokee (Love the Details). At first Cherokee didn't know if he would have the time to participate, but after my post was published, I got a nice email telling me that circumstances had changed enough that he could play along in TCBH. So here's just a little bit about Irish Cherokee (in his own words). Just FYI, his wife ALSO has a blog.

I have been married for 51 years on the last day of this month. I made an alter call early in my teen years and fully entered as a born again Christian in 1971. I have been devoted to the Lord ever since. I held most jobs in the building trades over the years including licensed plumber, maintenance man in a local bakery, various jobs in stores and temp services. I spent nearly 20 years in the telephone industry. I was a truck driver, lineman and installer until the breakup of this particular telephone company. At that point I transferred to another communications company as a systems installer and later was promoted to a managers job as a technical customer support specialist (essentially a systems trainer & trouble shooter). I was forced to retire due to pending company layoffs.  My final job with a major corporation was checking for errors, fraud and the overall correctness of incoming and outgoing monies. From there is mostly a hodge podge of jobs including 2+ years with various home improvement & department stores. At this point I had enough of the corporate world and just went on full retirement. Several years ago I started coloring for my DW Jill. In the last week of December of 2013, I started my blog Love the Details.

 All 3 of these wonderful bloggers will have a more detailed post on Monday, August 25, and you can find out more about how each of them started to develop their creativity, and what their lives are like. This has been such fun, and I thank each of these busy bloggers for graciously saying yes to being tagged. Ditto to the ones in line ahead of me, who passed along the fun.
 

I've had several things in the works, and here's one of them. My first Gelli print. I've been inspired lately by Pat(Colourful Card Creations) and Elizabeth (The Silverscrapper's Craft Space). Of course there are some other blogs on which I've enjoyed seeing Gelli plate work, but these 2 names are in my most recent access memory.  I had a little play the other afternoon after we had returned home from errands on a very hot day. Here's the resulting card:

 

 

 

- Background was made using the gelli; the leaf was made with alcohol inks and the silver side of a soda can which was die cut with a maple leaf. The leaf has been floating around on my desk for a bit, and when I was adhering it to the white background, realized a tiny tip had broken off. Hence the blue butterfly - which was a Dollar Store find. (A bunch of blue & pink plastic party favor type of thing). A dark blue copic changed the intensity of the blue, and dark gray colored the insect's body. The sentiment is a sticker & think this shall be a birthday card after I add the appropriate inside verse.

 

Here's some of the process pictures.

 

Paints used on the gelli plate



2 prints pulled. The white print was #2



This is all the supplies used. Underneath the prints is the stencil that was laid on the gelli plate before pulling the 2 prints. I could have done some more prints, but stopped here.  This is my very first play with the 6x6 gelli. It was fun, and I plan to do some more experimenting with this fun technique. I need to have some quiet time, however, when I am not feeling rushed or having to concentrate on other matters.




Hope you've all had a good week, and are looking forward to the weekend. I should have a couple more posts soon, as I've got some things finished ready to share. Just needed a quiet time to sit down and write up a post! Thanks for visiting, and apologies for a long post once again. I promise the next one will be short! Hugs & Blessings. 

 

Butterfly for 3 B's

Hello and welcome to my world on a beautiful balmy spring-like Sunday afternoon. There is a marvelous new Butterfly Challenge and it's still open for 2 more days. The theme is to have 3B's - Butterflies, Buttons & Bows. I wanted to join in, but still have a few St. Pat's cards to finish up. Took a break from St. Pat's, and broke out the Ranger alcohol inks to have a little play. Some time ago, DH had sliced open some soda cans, after seeing some nifty examples of what can be done with dies & thinner metal at a stamp show. Flattened one of the opened cans as much as possible. Collected some bottles of alcohol inks in greens - blue green shades plus the gold, and started to play, being careful of sharp edges.  Here's what resulted:
 (can you believe I'm still thinking Green?)!

New Butterfly Yankee Candle topper

 

Close up

 

 

- Memory Box Delia Butterfly (base butterfly). Alcohol inks - Meadow, Stream, Oregano, Gold & Lettuce. First drops dots of the ink applied directly to soda can metal (?snippet?) in a small area. Spread this around with the TH tool covered in felt*. Let it dry, then moved to another area, until the surface was covered. Once there was a dried base coating, applied small drops of the same inks onto the felt, sponged, pounced & twisted to get the mottled look. Die cut the dried metal into the butterfly shape. Since the metal underside was not colored, didn't lift the wings, but shaped them so they would stay flat to the card.

 

- MB Finn Butterfly die cut using navy blue textured Bazzill snippet, glued to the metal butterfly using Easy Flow glue, just dabbed in spots. Body also from navy blue.

 

- Ranger Gold stickles applied with a toothpick.

 

- S/B Grand Circle smallest die cut from yellow textured snippet; dimensional foam strips to raise up from the S/B large square of turquoise mat. Both of these shapes were embossed to add some dimension to the pieces.

 

- 6x6 card base covered with some VOS patterned paper. Liked the colors & textures with the butterfly - so that's why it was chosen. Since this butterfly is rather large, it needed a 6x6 base, rather than my usual 5.5 x 4.25 card base.

 

- Elizabeth Craft die sentiment from the tiny bit of the colored metal (does it qualify for a snippet designation? Perhaps). Wanted to use a love die, but was too large for the space, and the leftover metal bit was not big enough.

 

- MS large punch for the buttons, also from a snippet bit of the metal. Took a couple of tries to get the punch positioned to punch the shape properly, so that's why the material was not enough for the love sentiment. :-)

 

- Waxed twine bows were colored with a dark turquoise blue copic, threaded through the holes. Pearl trim added over the bow.

*Cut the felt pieces from craft felt - a heavier weight works better. The ones used on this project were of  thinner weight; didn't like their performance as well. Used a quilting rotary cutter to cut  felt strips to size, then cut the strips to fit applicator made from a dowel and block of wood. Very similar to the THoltz blending tool, but I had a bunch of these made, so I'm  not always having to change sponges & felt pads. Works great.

 

This is quite larger than my usual cards. It is going to be for a VSP (very special person) and though the sentiment says "Believe", I'll take care of the "Love" sentiment that I really wanted to use, by the inside verse. This was quite an experimental card for me, and I had fun making it. So thanks, Mrs. A for coming up with this challenge.

 

Linking to: Butterfly Challenge, 3B's

Pixie's Crafty Workshop Snippet Challenge No. 115

 

Hope you like this one, and that you'll check out these fun challenges.  Promise you'll see lovely work and meet some friendly people who play. Maybe I'll see ya there. So enjoy your afternoon, come again when you have time, and in the meantime, big Hugs.

 

 

 

 



Friday Fun Day Challenge at Jo's Scrap Shack

Good Morning, and welcome to another Friday Fun Day challenge #22 over at Jo's Scrap Shack. Today the sponsor for Team A is Bugaboo Digi Stamps. I've chosen the very easy to color, Autumn Sign. Our challenge was "Anything Goes", and I thought I'd read somewhere "anything but a card". Decided I'd try using this cute little digi on a tag, experiment with some of the molding paste that I've gotten in my recent travels. Here is the tag:

 







- Manilla tag sprayed with Dylusions Orange Zest, Postbox Red, Melted Chocolate - which had been diluted with water & White Linen which made the sprays more opaque. The Chocolate was water with some Tattered Angels Gold, which doesn't show in the photo, but created a pretty bronze glimmer to the painted surface.