An array of Close to My Heart Techniques I have done & some that I need to try out. You can shop for all the current CTMH products used to try out the techniques & ideas here: http://maz.ctmh.com.au
So it is summer here in Australia, which often means rain in January, at the moment we have heavy downpours & it has been like that all week. Although the last couple of days it has been broken up with humid sunshine. Plus we are still in a hotspot for Covid in my region – so my holiday leave is at home. What is a girl to do ? Well craft of course.
I stuck to the orientation of the sketch & used a tiny scallop stamp for the scallops & replace the Flowers with these Penguins to create this cute Birthday Card.
I used Close To My Heart Party Time Paper for the main rectangle & the current Jan – Feb Mix-ins paper for the banner. I added stamped faux stitching to the banner to ground it a bit more as it is sits away from the edge. The Penguins are from the current Jan – Feb CTMH catalogue & are called Winter Penguins – I think they are so cute.
I hope you liked my idea & it has inspired you to try it out or even the sketch out for yourself.
If you are interested in any of the products I used & live in Australia you can order these on my website.
Welcome to this month’s Technique Blog Hop where we the theme is to “Inky Fingers” with Close To My Heart products.
If you have arrived here from Michelle Johns then you are in the right place.
If you landed here by accident, no problem, please join in by following the link at the end of this post.
I love to get inky & creative with my ink pads & really there are just so many different techniques using just inkpads.
The first idea comes from the Close To My Heart, Make It from Your Heart blog where they applied Distress Oxide™ ink with a blending tool, splatter with water, and dab with a dry paper towel. Follow up with a splatter of watercolour. I also added some shimmer brush to mine.
I wanted the background to peek out under my woodgrain paper that I cut with the heart Fancy Borders Thin Cuts die. SO once I knew how wide that was I added picked raspberry distress oxide ink, then splattered with water, then green watercolour pain & clear shimmer brush. I stamped the flower from the Operation Smile stamp set: Every Bit of Wonderful. While this particular colour is out of stock at the moment I think it look great in the Candied Apple that is in stock with the green & then match in a red flower – it make for a great Christmas card idea.
This next one I blended a number of oxide inks over white embossed flowers from the stamp set in the Serenity Cardmaking Workshop Kit.
Once the ink was buffed off, cut out the centre with the smallest stitched recangle die & the outside with the largest. I lighten or oxidized the ink of the background with the clear shimmer brush Matted the centre with cardstock & foam tape for height.
This final card uses stamping with water – Yes you read that right water.
I covered the Distress Oxide watercolour paper with seedless preserves distress oxide inks & then wet the Floral Details & Background stamp, not too wet that the water is dripping but wet enough that you would need to wait for it to dry if you going to ink up. I stamped onto the inked background & let the stamp sit for a bit, this allows the water to sink in as per the pattern of the stamp image & then very quickly I stamped again onto scrap white daisy.
The wet stamp lifts off some of the ink that if you are fast enough you get an impression from it. Once these were dry I cut a piece I liked using the medium sized stitched rectangle & put them together on the card front. What I like is I have the other halves left over so I can actually make another card with this background. Again at the moment the seedless preserves distress oxide ink is out of stock, but you can try this technique out on the candied apple distressed oxide ink which is available from your consultant or wait till more stock arrives which does happen often.
I had fun creating all these cards & getting inky & I’d love for you to leave a comment before you head on over to Melissa Robinson to get more Inky Fingers ideas.
If you like to get any of the products that I have used in this project, please contact your Close To My Heart Consultant or if you do not have a consultant & are an Aussie, I would love for you to place an order with me on my website
Welcome to this month’s Technique Blog Hop where we the theme is to “Plastic Patterns” with Close To My Heart products.
If you have arrived here from Michelle Loncar then you are in the right place.
If you landed here by accident, no problem, please join in by following the link at the end of this post.
Whether you are creating your own stencils with the Stencil Sheets or grabbing a ready to use Stencil Pack, there is sure to be some great ideas for you to try out & use in your papercrafting.
I decided to use one of the smaller stencils from Stencil Pack 3 & I created a stencil/mask circle out of cardstock using the Circle Shaker Window Thin Cut Die.
I cut my cardstock with the large Stitched Rectangle Frames Thin Cut Die & then laid down my cut out circle Stencil/mask into position & then added the diamond patten onto & pounced in abandoned coral & tattered rose Distress Oxide inks into the stencil to create my background.
I added a thin strip of Black Ore Paper & lovely paper & stamped a seasonal border under the stamped & die cut fox from the Woodland Friends. And layered it on some Lovely pattern paper to tie in the colours.
I did accidentally get a mark on the top of my card once I adhered it together – so extra falling leaves were added to make it look like it was part of the design. But overall I think is creates a soft & pretty card.
My next card I used Transparent Gloss texture paste with the stencil as once dry this texture paste is dry it resists ink.
I blended on some Antique Linen Distress Oxide Ink & some Tattered Rose Distress Oxide. I then coloured & fussy cut a flower from the Every Bit of Wonderful set & added some strips of Comfort & Joy paper to finish off the card. The Just For You is from the Seasonal Borders stamp set.
I had fun creating this card & I’d love for you to leave a comment before you head on over to Darlys Recker to get more Plastic Patterns ideas.
If you like to get any of the products that I have used in this project, please contact your Close To My Heart Consultant or if you do not have a consultant & are an Aussie, I would love for you to place an order with me on my website
Some of us are still staying home in 2020, so what better way than to spend your time making & creating cards this World Cardmaing day. Although today we have a gorgeous spring day outside so a bit of it will be spent outdoors enjoying it.
I thought I start off my day by working off a sketch from the Atlantic Hearts Sketch Challenge #388 and I wanted to try out a mini slimline card & seeing it is a gorgeous spring day – I had to use flowers.
So this is the sketch I worked off from today.
And from that bit of inspiration I created this sweet mini slimline card.
I used the Close To My Heart Operation Smile Every Bit of Wonderful stamp set for the flowers & sentiment. I cut the squares from the Woodgrain pattern paper using the smallest stitched square thin cut dies, kraft cardstock & some soft pink cardstock to create my mini slimline card.
I added some black shimmer brush splatters to represent the three dots at the top of the card.
The mini slimline card with a finished size of 6″ x 3.5″ was a fun slightly smaller surface to play with but I loved how it turned out.
I hope you liked my idea & it has inspired you to try it out or even the sketch out for yourself.
Welcome to this month’s Technique Blog Hop where we the theme is to “Peek-a-boo!” with Close To My Heart products.
If you have arrived here from Cat Nowak then you are in the right place.
If you landed here by accident, no problem, please join in by following the link at the end of this post.
I love interactive cards & the peek-a-boo theme is a fun theme to create an interactive interactive card.
I have created a card called a Peek-a-Boo Card – the image slides into place to reveal a different image.
This is the card closed
You can see a cute little chicken jumping for joy in the circle opening.
This is the card Open
When you open the card a larger Chicken appears.
Check out this very short video to see the card in action & how the larger chicken plays peek-a-boo every time you open the card.
I had fun creating this card & I’d love for you to leave a comment before you head on over to Lauren Moore to get more Peek-a-boo! ideas.
If you like to get any of the products that I have used in this project, please contact your Close To My Heart Consultant or if you do not have a consultant & are an Aussie, I would love for you to place an order with me on my website
Distress® Oxide® Inks are not new but they are to Close To My Heart & I thought it would be fun to play with these fun water-reactive dye & pigment ink fusion & use the Floral Details & Background stamp to showcase the different looks you can achieve Distress® Oxide® Inks with with one image.
What I love about Distress® Oxide® Inks is that they are easy to blend, if you had issues blending before, than try these inks. They help give you nice coverage with no lines. They create an oxidized effect when sprayed with water , the look is unique to these inks. But with these inks you can also stamp & emboss with them & there are soo many things you can do with them.
Distress Oxide Stamping & Embossing Resist
This is one of the simplest techniques, it really just embossing resist, but Distress Oxides blend so nicely & are easy to wipe off the embossed image.
Once I embossed the image, I added picked raspberry & candied apple. I buffed off the excess ink on top of the embossed image. The card design came into play due to the fact when I was covering the embossing there was just one part that didn’t emboss properly so I only had once nice area that I could use that I just did not want to toss after all the hard work, but wow I loved how this card came together from this mistake. I used the inside of the large stitched rectangle & cut out a piece using one of the Fancy Borders Thin Cuts & added foam tape to raise it above the background.
Distress Oxide Stamping & Water
When you add water to the inks they run which is great to create water colours but doing this directly on cardstock they do nor run or smudge much. To get that to occur you need a barrier like Gesso or even stamp onto watercolour cardstock, to stop the water from sinking straight into the cardstock.
Once the Gesso was dry I stamped the Floral Details & Background stamp onto it & then used a water brush to spread out & smudge the ink into the stamped images.
For anyone wondering what else you can do if you do not have Gesso, in this card I used the Distress Watercolor Cardstock & stamped onto the smooth side & was still able to do the blending & smudging.
With this technique you cover cardstock with Distress® Oxide® Inks & then cover your stamp with water & stamp – thats right stamp the image with with water. Make sure you let the stamp sit for a bit on the ink before removing & dry with a heat gun to speed up the oxide reaction.
For this one I cover white daisy cardstock with candied apple before I stamped over with the Floral Details & Background stamp in water. I cut the cardstock down & added a thin strip of black cardstock & silver shimmer trim. I really like how subtle the stamp image is.
Now I also tried this technique with Black cardstock – one of the things with Distress® Oxide® Inks is due to their pigment properties they sit on top of the cardstock showing the colour.
I covered the black cardstock with seedless preserves before I stamped over with the Floral Details & Background stamp in water. I die cut the Thanks Thin Cuts I added some White Opal Pearls to the Thanks image & extra flowers. It is amazing how the water stamped image stands out so much more on the black cardstock than the white.
Distress Oxide & Waterpainting or Watercolour lifting technique
For this technique I used water in a water brush to colour in images. I started with the Distress Oxide Stamping & Embossing Resist techniques first described in this post. I covered the entire piece of cardstock with mowed lawn Distress® Oxide® Inks & buffed off the excess. I then went back with the water colour brush & painted the flowers & leaves with water & let it dry. To remove more colour you can dab off the excess water & add more water. The whiter/lighter colour intensifies over time as it dries.
Once I was happy how the leaves & flowers were lighter, I stamped, die cut & coloured the fawn from the Woodland Friends image. Added the stitched rectangle die layered a few times & a Merry Christmas cut using the Cricut.
Iron Off Transfer
For this technique I started with the Distress Oxide Stamping & Embossing Resist techniques first described in this post. I then used the Distress Oxide & Waterpainting or Watercolour lifting technique as above. Then I covered the cardstock with another piece of cardstock & ironed over it – only the embossing powder will transfer, unless you did not buff off the excess ink off the embossed image. It makes the cardstock flat so you no longer see the embossing & on the transfer piece the embossed image is a little more smooshed, not as fine lined & crisp.
I then covered the iron off transfer with more distress oxide inks & it looks more softer way than before.
You can see the two pieces before I created into cards side by side. The left side is the embossed image that I covered with Mustard Seed & Spiced Marmalade & the right side is where I have ironed off the embossing powder & then covered with Abandoned coral, Mustard Seed & Spiced Marmalade.
Painting with Distress Oxide Inks
So we know we can create a water colour like paint with the distress oxide inks, so I thought it be good to do some painting/colouring with the watercolours I created with them. To create the watercolours I smooshed some ink onto the All-purpose Mat & mixed with some water & picked up the colours with the water brush to paint onto the images.
The gold embossing kept the paint in the lines & adding more layers of paint over the dried areas helped create shades.
On this card I stepped up this technique a notch & coloured over back soot with the watercolours I created on the All-purpose Mat and wow I loved how this turned out.
I white embossed onto white daisy cards stock & then covered the embossed image in black soot distress oxide ink. I then smooshed some ink onto the All-purpose Mat & mixed with some water. I picked up the colour with the water colour brush & coloured the leaves & flowers in with the Distress® Oxide® Inks & then on the flowers I added some Clear Shimmer Brush for some extra sparkle.
The ink mixed with water not only oxidized the black soot, but also allowed me to layer the colour on top of the black soot background. They are soft & pretty over the black soot.
Specials
Make sure you check out our other great promotions including Got Candy? & National Stamping Day Creativity in Motion And don’t forget you can sign up any time to our Craft with Heart™ – Scrapbooking or Cardmaking Subscriptions with Heart. With new designs that have started this month.
