On the Eighth Day of Christmas my true love gave to my Eight Lords a Leaping... or was it Nine Ladies Dancing??? Oh dear, oh dear - it's a good thing I have an image today that can create either a masculine OR feminine creation Ü
I have SO much to share with you!!! You will notice the darling stamp images below - these are from the new Memory Box Sugardrop collection. Many of you have asked and we are listening... YES, we are carrying the new Memory Box stamps. You can view the complete Sugardrop line here! We will do our best to get in many of the new Memory Box images and then show you how we would use them. As soon as we can get our orders out and inventory count completed I will be working on getting these 15 new images up on our webstore. My goal is January 5th! This is also the day that I will be releasing Karen Lockhart's brand new images - 24 of them!!! I can hardly wait to share these with you - unfortunately we can't do any sneak peeks until then, but that day will be here soon! It is going to be an exciting day... IF I can get it all done Ü
Being a small business I do most of the website work myself. Malin helps me as well, but as you can well imagine it has been a true learning and teaching experience for me. Between the two of us we do our best to give accurate descriptions for each item. We appreciate when you notice our typos, etc. and notify us. So please do not hesitate to let us know if you see something that is amiss.
I would also like to thank those who have left suggestions in the comments of our blog candy. One of my goals for this new year is to hopefully have the funds to hire someone to help me add some bells and whistles to the design of our webstore. I apologize for the need to always hit next, next, next and scroll through the bajillion pages - unfortunately it is like this because I just don't have the knowledge or the time to teach myself how to make those necessary changes. I hope to be able to make these changes soon with the help of someone who truly knows what they are doing!
So without further ado I am going to share how this one little Memory Box image can be used in either a masculine or feminine way.
So many little things can help you present your stamps in different ways. The first and easiest is typically color. On the left I selected the Stone Gray Arturo card, making the feel of this card much more masculine. On the right I used the Pale Pink giving this card a feminine feel.
Not only does the color give it a masculine or feminie feel, but the Nestability shapes I selected lend themselves to pronouncing that feel even more. To create the embossed edge detail is extremely easy when using the Nestabilities. Simply layer your sandwich as shown above - Clear Acrylic Plate, Tan Embossing Pad, Arturo Notecard and then place your die in the location desired (note that the cutting blade is face down in this example.) Top this off with your other Clear Acrylic Plate and send it through your embossing machine.
To complete the image I stamped the chair on one of the new Memory Box Sugardrop papers, cut out the upholstered portion only and then affixed it to my card front. Next I stamped the tea cup on Chocolate Brown cardstock. To add emphasis and shape to the cup I used Prismacolor color pencils to add some highlights and round out the shape.
Tip: To reduce the attention a dimensional can draw when used behind a small shape I use my Copic Marker to add ink around the edges. These small pieces are hard to hold when you color them and so I use a pair of self-closing tweezers to hang on to it. As you can see the ink does get on the backing, but when this is removed the dimensional is still sticky, but not nearly as visible as the white would be to the viewers eye Ü
Be certain to note the embossed detail on the card above being I am going to show you a different version on the feminine chair below. Note how it has an extra line embossed in to the center of the debossed area. This is due to the fact that the cutting blade was facing in to the note card when I embossed it - see picture above.
Now notice how I have selected the Mega Curved Rectangle. It has a much more feminine feel than the Large and Small Labels. When sharing my ideas with Spellbinders last spring I shared a huge variety of wine labels to aid us in coming up with these new designs. Toni Kelly did a fabulous job converting those ideas in to the dies. I am guessing that Spellbinders next release will include more of these label ideas.
Also note that the die has the cutting surface face up as I positioned my project in the photo above. Rather than stamping the chair beforehand, as I had in the masculine version, I went ahead and embossed first. I did this so that I could share how easy it is to create a project two different ways:
- stamping first, then positioning the die and embossing,
- positioning the die and embossing, then using a stamp-a-ma-jig to precisely stamp the image in the center of the embossed area.
By positioning the die with the blade up you get a completely different look as shown above. Alli Miles discovered a way to get an even larger embossed area as I shared in an earlier blog post here. As you can also see in the photo above I began coloring the chair using R20 and then repeating it in the darker areas as shown.
One important tidbit to remember is when working on a porous paper such as Arturo or other watercolor-like papers be certain to color a greater distance from the edge of your stamped design. The porosity of these papers sucks the ink differently and so your "bleed area" is completely different than when coloring on a paper such as Neenah.
One of the pieces of art that Marianne has shared with me had this beautiful textural quality to it. She had created flowers on a kimono, so I decided it was about time I tried this technique. I have wanted to for such a long time and I thought wouldn't this make a delightful addition to "Grandma's old chair." First I used my Colorless Blender Sketch Marker. Using the brush tip end I first created the "flowers" by positioning the tip straight down. I then added the "leaves" by holding the brush tip at an angle. As you can see in this photo it pretty much looks like a bunch of polka dots - LOL. This would make a wonderful contemporary look, but I was still hoping to achieve the old "Grandma chair" look.
I have had the multiliners in the store for a long time and have shared how you can use them to "fix" a stamped mistake, as well as I have doodled with a variety of the black multiliners.
TIP: Karen Lockhart draws her images with a .03 tip (it appears that we are out of this tip and so I cannot link to at this time, sorry about that) - so if you are filling in Karen's images this is the multiliner I would recommend. Memory Box images are also quite delicate and so I would recommend the same tip for their images. Kim Hughes uses a larger drawing tip. To fill in details on Kim's images I recommend a .3 tip.
Today I am finally getting to share why it is that I have the Cool Gray multiliner in our store. Gray does not pop off the paper in the same manner that black would - it has a much softer appearance. At this time I only have the 0.3 tip which I found to be a little too heavy for this project, but with a little tweaking I was able to make it work.
As you can see in the image above I added a little detail to the "flowers" and the "leaves" to help define them. Being that the gray still popped off the paper more than I wanted, I then tweaked it by adding more Warm Gray to the upholstery surrounding the flowers.
FInally I used my Sakura glitter pen to add that final sparkley gold/silver "thread" to the upholstery on Grandma's Chair. I also have to point out the cute heart shaped handle on the tea cup - too cute! Add a little clear glaze and you have a beautiful little porcelain cup Ü
A few feminine accessories were added and I was able to use the identical image to create both a masculine and feminine card. I love when I can get some extra mileage out of an image!
My little recap for today is to remind you that you can use your dies to do more than cut and emboss. You can cut only, cut and emboss, AND emboss only in a number of different ways. As well, don't forget that you can use your dies as masks. So much in just one small package Ü
I challenge you to try your hand at creating patterns in your smooth Copic colored surfaces and exploring how you can emboss only with your dies!
