Alcohol ink resist technique with Wendy!

November 22nd, 2012
Hi everyone! Wendy here and today I’m going to show you how to create ornaments using alcohol ink resist.

supplies used: Skipping Stones Design stamps (BRRthday, Sentiment Frames) ClearScraps acrylic (Mini Star Keychain), Ranger Alcohol Ink (Sream), Ranger Archival Ink, Glossy Accents, glitter
Remove the protective covering off one side of the Clear Scraps acrylic star. Using a blending tool, apply alcohol ink. Allow to dry.

 

Ink a stamp with Rangers Archival Ink and stamp onto the dry alcohol ink surface. Immediately wipe with a cloth. The Archival Ink will react with the alcohol ink and pull away the color.

 

Continue to stamp with Archival Ink and wipe off until you’ve filled the acrylic shape with snowflakes. Now flip the acrylic shape over, remove the protective coating on that side and stamp a sentiment.

 

 

Draw a line of Glossy Accents around the edge of the acrylic and sprinkle on glitter. Add some tulle, a silver bow and its ready dress up a package or go straight on the Christmas tree.

 

Using Holiday Paper Scraps to Mass Produce with Stephanie

November 15th, 2012

Hi, everyone!

Are you beginning to panic because you haven’t started your Christmas cards, yet?

I have a great way for you to use up some of your Christmas patterned paper and get started on those holiday cards!

If you are like me, you store all of your scraps of the same paper pad, right in the paper pad itself.
I want you to take out all of those out and slice them down into all kinds of shapes……squares, rectangles, strips…..ALL kinds!
You’ll also need to gather several Christmas sentiments. I pulled out all of my SSD Christmas sets (or previews of sets….that’s how I catalog them) so that I could pick my favorites.
Find some scrap strips of paper of all different sizes for your sentiments.
Stamp various sentiments on the strips.
Gather all of your Christmas embellishments and have them surrounding your work area so they are at your finger tips. You’ll also notice in the photo below that I trimmed down all of those sentiments (on the right side of the picture) so that they had flagtail ends.

You may also want to cut several card bases of various orientations so they are ready to go, too!

Now you are ready to start assembling!

I started reaching for 3 of my patterned paper blocks and just placed them where I thought they would look nice and balanced.

Next, I wanted to add some embellishments and my sentiment.

After everything was laid out, I glued everything down and added some foam dimensionals under the sentiment and some bling in the corner because the card seemed to need something a little bit more.

First card done and many more to go!

After you get into your groove, you’ll be mixing and matching before you know it.

Here are the others that I got finished in this same crafty session.

Seven cards and 2 hours later, I have started my Christmas stash!  And, the best part……I’m using up that patterned paper that I just had sitting in a drawer!

I hope you try this little technique and jump start your holiday card making!

Adding dimension with Paper Piecing and Judith!

November 8th, 2012
Hi everyone, Judith here. I wanted to share a tip with you all about adding more dimension to your paper piecing. This is by no means invented by me, but it is easy and you can get some great results :)
Go ahead and colour and cut all the individual pieces for your project. Here are mine all laid out.
(Sorry about the poor quality photo.)
For this technique you will need a soft mat (I use an old bit of foam) and an embossing stylus tool.
Next, you are going to use the stylus tool and run it over the back of your paper piece in small circular movements. You will begin to see your paper curl upwards – the smaller your stylus point the more curl.
Your pieces should look like something like this.
Finally, assemble your card.
 Here is a close up of that lovely dimension :)
This technique works even better when you have several layers. Thanks so much for stopping by.

 

Fabulous Flower Technique with Tesa

November 1st, 2012
Tesa here to share a fun and easy flower tutorial using Embossing resist technique.
Happy Birthday 2
The thing with this flower is that you need a paper with patterns on both sides that coordinates. I prefer to use one sided patterned paper and make the coordinated colors and patterns using my stamps and inks. In this case I wanted a grey and pink color scheme and found this polka dot paper from American crafts. On the back side I stamped the Timeless Texture with Clear emboss ink and heat embossed it with clear embossing powder. Then I went over it with Distress ink Victorian Velvet.
Birthday 3
Next I punched out 7 circles with my 1” punch. A larger punch gives a larger flower. Once cone I inked the edges with Weathered wood and folded each of the circles into V:s.

Happy Birthday 4

Birthday 5

 Punch a circle out of scrap paper and use as base for the flower. Cover it with glue and assemble the flower.

Happy Birthday 6

I secured my flower with a brad in the center and mounted it on a scalloped circle made with my nesties.

Happy Birthday 7

And here is my card, using a sentiment from the Victorian Summer set.

Happy Birthday 1

Thanks for stopping by!

Creating a Comic Book Look with Karen

October 25th, 2012

Hello, Karen from The Bald Dragonfly here to show you a fun technique that would work really well with your bold stamps. Skipping Stones Design offers a lot of fun, whimsical stamps with bold lines, and Funny Coffee Vol. #1 is a perfect choice for creating a cool comic book feel to your cards.

I gathered a few supplies which included Funny Coffee Vol #1-the funny lady stamped and trimmed onto solid card stock, pre-cut coordinating patterned paper, a card base, some markers and finally, a really dark black dye ink pad, here Onyx Black Versafine was my choice.

To get the comic book feel to your card, swipe your pre-cut patterned paper and stamped image panels across the ink pad, at the very edge.

Stop when there is a slight pooling of the ink, this creates a fun, whimsical and eneven edge. The ink will be very wet, and prone to smudging, so I always have a designated drying area and allow the panels to dry for at least an hour before handling again.

After the panels have dried, I colored my main image selectively-I created a feathered background and chose only a few areas to color within the image. I laid down the color by creating squiggle and circle lines.

Then I assembled the card, stamped the coordinating sentiment and wrapped it all with some bold, black embossing string and tied it off with a button. This technique is really fun, will give entirely new looks to your Skipping Stones Design stamps. I hope you give it a try!

Quick and Stylish Gift Bags with Glenda

October 18th, 2012

Have you ever needed a last minute gift bag and don’t really want to go out and buy one?  I know I have.  I’m going to show you today how you can whip up a gift bag with two 8.5″x11″ pieces of card stock and just a few other items.  I’ve used the Cheers stamp set for my decorative elements.

What you’ll need is:

  • 2 pieces of 8.5″x11″ card stock
  • strong adhesive
  • a scoring tool of some sort
  • some ribbon
  • a hole punch
  • scissors
  • stamps, punches, etc. to decorate with
1. Score both sheets of cards stock at an equal distance in from three of the sides.  In my case, I scored 1.5 inches in from both short sides and one long side.

2. Clip one side of the ‘squares’ that have been created.  Fold the newly created tabs and all sides into the centre.  Do this for both sheets of card stock.

3. Adhere the tabs to the flap and slide one section inside the other, wrong sides facing towards each other.  I find it easiest to put the adhesive on before sliding them together.

4. Punch two holes in the top edge.  Thread ribbon through and tie the ends into knots.

5. Decorate to your hearts content!

Hope you’ve found this helpful.  If you are wondering…. yes, my craft space is usually that messy.
Thanks for stopping by and have a great day,
Glenda
Details:
Celebrate gift box
Stamps:  Skipping Stones Cheers
Paper: A Muse Studio Chevron paper, white and black card stock
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black and Rhubarb
Accessories: Copic markers, Wavy Edge blade for Marvy Trimming Buddy, ribbon, EK Success punches – 1.75″ circle and 2″ scallop, baker’s twine, hole punch, ScorPal

Simple Steps to Shabby Chic with Rochelle!

October 11th, 2012
Hello everyone!  Rochelle here.  I want to share one of my favorite tips for creating a shabby chic card.  There are four things that I use to create a quick shabby chic look.  A pair of craft scissors, a good background stamp and two different colors of distress ink – one light and one dark.

 
The first thing you want to do is cut your cardstock to the desired size.  Then, you want to take your light colored distress ink and ink up your background stamp.  I used the damask stamp from “Damask Darlings“.

 

 
Stamp your pattern all over the panel.
 

 
Next, take some of the darker distress ink and ink up the edges of your panel.  You want to make it seem old and aged.  So, start with a light application and then add more if needed.
 
 

 
Using a small pair of craft scissors, scratch the edges of your panel.  You want to make sure that the edges look frayed just like a pair of old blue jeans.  Don’t scratch too hard or you’ll actually tear the cardstock.
 
 
Next, using your index finger and your thumb, roll the corners of the panel inward toward the center of the panel.  If you roll and unroll a few times, the corner will look like has been worn over time.  If you leave it tightly rolled, the aged effect is lessened.
 
At that point, you’re all done!

 

 
We can’t wait to see how you incorporate this tip into your next project!  Be sure to come back and share!

Mixing and Masking with Megan

October 4th, 2012

Hello!

Megan here with a quick tip for combining your stamp sets. I love combining my sets in different ways to create unique looks. One of my new found favorite techniques is masking. At first it can seem intimidating, but a few tips can really help out!

I wanted to add some texture to these shoes from the Sassy Shoes set to give them a bit of pizzazz. I pulled out the Timeless Textures set and chose the music texture because it had an intricate pattern that would work in my small spaces.

After stamping the shoes on plain printer paper, I cut out the sections that I wanted to stamp with the music, using my craft knife. I use plain printer paper because it is thin. Some people use post-it notes, which are nice because they already have the removable adhesive on the back, but printer paper is larger and cheaper and I have a bunch of it lying around.
Initially, I stamped the shoes randomly like you see above, thinking that it wouldn’t matter, but I had a tough time keeping the ink from the music stamp JUST where I wanted it, so I re-stamped them in the center of a larger paper. It doesn’t matter that they are stamped the way they are going to end up on the card. You could work with just one, and then the other.
You can see from the green ink leftover on that scrap paper that I didn’t just press the stamp one time over each shoe. That is what you would probably do for a larger area that you were masking, but since my areas were SO small, I wasnt getting a lot of contact between the stamp and the paper beneath the itty bitty holes.
Basically, my tiny areas were all in the ‘halo’. That’s what I call it when I mask and there’s a tiny gap between the stamped image and the edge of the mask, due to the width of the mask. One thing that I find to help with that is the thinner paper. Another is to use a softer stamping surface. You can see here that I have a piece of purple foam, covered by a piece of darker purple felt. Usually, I used the purple foam as my stamping mat, but I added the felt for this project to get less ‘halo’.
Finally, what I ended up doing for the tiny dots, is using the corner of the stamp and really jamming it in there.  It sort of distorts the pattern a little, but in an area that small, it doesnt really matter. I just kept inking that one corner and stamping over each dot and part of the bow.

 

Ink Tips with Katie!

September 27th, 2012

Good morning!

Katie Gehring here with a quick ink tip.  There are tons of ink available for stampers- from solvent to pigment to dye to chalk and those new hybrids….  Every ink has it’s applications that it is best suited for.

Last week, I created a card using Cheers which featured stamping green olives on light aqua cardstock.

Although I love dye ink and have 2 drawers full of dye inks spots, for stamping a with a color on light colored cardstock, I prefer to use pigment ink rather than dye ink.  Pigment ink seems to hold it’s color better and provide more solid coverage.
Here is a side by side comparison of pigment vs dye ink on the same color cardstock:
The top ink is Wasabi from Amuse Studio and the bottom is Memento Pear Tart.  Dye ink tends to be absorbed into whatever you are stamping on which can impact the color of the image, but also lends to the fast drying time.  Pigment ink, takes more time to dry, but seems to keep it’s color better when stamping on light colored paper.
Here is another look at my finished project:
I added the red at the center of the olives with a copic marker (R59).
Hope you find this ink tip helpful!  Have a great day and thank you for stopping by!
Katie

 

Spray Ink Tips with Cyndi!

September 20th, 2012
Good morning!  This is Cyndi and today I want to share with you some fun ways to use my favorite  ink sprays and a few other  techniques with your Skipping Stones Design sets.  For my tag today I used SSD sets Grunge 1 , Grunge 2, and Garden Stamp Kisses.
First I started by spraying water and then Dylusions ink sprays onto my tag.  (I used Cut Grass, Vibrant Turquoise, Fresh Lime, and Melted Chocolate)
Next I used a roll of paper towels to soak up the excess water then finished drying the tag with a heat gun.

This is what the tag looked like at this point.

Next I sprayed water onto one of the border stamps from Grunge 1 and then stamped that onto my tag.

Let the water set for a few seconds then dry to see the ghosting effect begin to show.

Then I wanted to add some random stamping in the background so I used another border from Grunge 1, inked it with Versafine Ink then rolled it onto the tag so I would only get partial images from the stamp.

This is what it looked like at this point.  (I also used the same technique to add the speckle border from Grunge 2 using Mowed Lawn Distress ink.

I then added a main sentiment from Grunge 2 and the crow from Garden Stamp Kisses in Versafine ink.  It was still a bit bare so I added some of the little Fleur de Lis stamp all over and doodled a bit around the edges.

My final step was to re-stamp the crow in Peacock Feathers Distress ink, cut him out and ink the edges in Brushed Corduroy and pop him up over the black shadow of the crow.

I hope you’ve enjoyed and been inspired by my inky post today!