Paper Towel and Reinkers experiment

How fun! I wish I had a rainbow of reinkers in my collection. (Time to save money to get more!)
This is a very easy technique, albeit messy. You will need the following:

*Plain (no patterns) 2 ply paper towels
*A bowl of water
*A 9 x 13 disposable cake baking dish
*A variety of reinkers
*Spritz bottle filled with water
*Brown paper bags
*Latex gloves

Tear about 8 sheets of paper towels and set aside. Put on your gloves. Drop three or four different colors of reinkers all over the bottom of your baking dish, taking care not to add the drops not TOO CLOSE to each other. Spritz with water. Your ink wil run together, and that's OK. Try to have a mix of light and dark colors. Soak one sheet of paper towel and lay nice and flat over the reinkers. Soak the next paper towel sheet and place over the first one. Press down to absorb some of the ink. Keep doing this until you've got all of your paper towels used up. Lay your paper bags flat on a surface where it won't be disturbed. Remove the inked paper towels, one at a time, and lay them over the paper bags. You'll notice that some sheets will be more vibrant than others. That's OK. As they dry, the vibrant colors will fade a little bit. It's neat to have a variety. In the picture below, you'll see a full sheet that's been allowed to dry overnight. I used versafine ink for stamping since it tends not to run. Your towels are porous, so you don't want to use ink that will run too much (if your stamp has fine lines). Also, since you've used 2 ply, you'll have double the number of sheets to work with.

To cut out your stamped image, try to use the sharpest scissors you have or even fabric scissors. To adhere to cardstock or a cardbase, place the adhesive on the caredstock itself, and not the back of the paper towel. You run the risk of tearing your towel if you try to run an adhesive runner or a glue stick on the back of it.

Chalk Resist Experiment

I experimented this afternoon with the Chalk Resist technique. You need Alabaster Chalk by Colorbox, a medium color chalk ink (preferably by Colorbox because this ink tends to stay wet longer), an "open" background stamp or stamps, and an "open" focal stamp. First, you ink up your background stamp with the Alabaster chalk ink and stamp on glossy cardstock (it has to be glossy). Then, you quickly dab your medium colored chalk ink over the spot where you stamped until you've saturated the area well. Taking a paper towel, quickly rub the ink over the alabaster ink until you have a nice, smooth surface. You'll see the Alabaster ink "resist" the medium ink. Ink you focal stamp with StazOn and stamp on the background paper. Voila!
The stamps I used for my experiment are PSX Calla Lilly and the background swirls are by Autumn Leaves (Rhonna Farrer stamps).

I've started a Circle Journal Swap on the Stamp-Shack

This is my Circle Journal for a swap I'm hosting on the Stamp Shack. There are six players in this swap. My journal is 6" x 5 1/2" and is made of chipboard. I'm holding it together using loose binder rings. I love participating in circle journals and collecting the creative input of other artists on one specific theme. My book (obviously) is on "quotes." Each player can interpret the theme however they wish, but they must include a quote on their pages. Since this swap is on the Stamp-Shack, each person is encouraged to use a rubber stamped image or quote in their pages.



This is the sign in page. The collage stamp is by Diffusion. I added alcohol inks to glossy cardstock and stamped the image using StazOn. The words "sign" and "in" are rub-on letters by Bohemia. I added loopy brads to keep the page closed so it doesn't get bent while it moves from one person to the next.



This is what the inside of the sign-in page looks like.



Dontcha just love this quote? It comes from one of my favorite John Hughes movies. The stamp of the boy is by Paper Artsy. I made the "frame" using chipboard and my Marvy Uchida Giga Square punch. It gives me a chance to use up the monumental amount of embellishments that I keep accumulating.



This is fun page. I really "dig" the Spike & Lucy stamp by Lost Coast Designs. It adds a good balance to this page. The smiling girl stamp is by Paperbag Studios (sorry for the blurry picture).



This is the third page and last input on my part until I get the book back in August. I love this quote and think the Marilyn Monroe stamp (Stampsmith) is perfect for it.

Glimmer Mist

I'm still trying to get used to this new product in my tool box called Glimmer Mist. Before I stamped the image, I colored the cardstock with Distress Inks (pink and blue) and some Pink Grapefruit Glimmer Mist. If you see the card in person, you'd notice some gold dust glimmering from the card. After stamping, I colored it with prismacolor pencils. Layered on Anna Griffin paper.