Embossing...with a twist!

So of course everyone knows how to do embossing with embossing ink pads and stamps but there are other things you can use as well! My upcoming Embossing classes at Scraptivate starting this Saturday will show the girls how to use another couple of products to create beautiful embossed elements on their atc's...or cards or layouts or whatever!

The first is a wonderful pen by Papermate called an Erasermax. It's an erasable pen that seems to stay wet longer than an ordinary pen so you can rub it out if you change your mind about what you've written, previously only able to be done with a pencil. This is a ball point pen so your embossed writing is very, very fine! You write with it like you normally would, and don't say "I don't like my handwriting!"...try it, embossed writing looks cool! You could always get someone else to write it for you if you REALLY don't like your writing, or try printing, or all capitals or add some dots to the ends of your letters. The trick is you need to emboss straight after you've written as I'm not sure if it'll stay wet indefinitely. I've never bothered to find out, just write and emboss....beautiful! So here's a couple of samples using this wonderful pen, which of course, we sell at Scraptivate as they are pretty hard to get hold of elsewhere.


"Gothstrasized"...(the very delectable Ville Valo from HIM).

Here's a taste of Ville with Natalie Avelon singing Summer Wine...an oldie but a goodie.

"Desolation"... the fine lines are on the angels wings as well as on the large Gothic writing, you may need to click on it to enlarge it to see them clearly.

The second embossing technique I'll be teaching is using Embossing Web Tape. This is a very fine web tape that melts when you heat it and once again, working quickly, you dump the embossing powder on, tip off the excess and heat. You can apply more of the tape if it's not looking how you'd like but this stuff is very unpredictable...you have to accept it's going to go exactly where it wants to! Also available at Scraptivate.

"Rapture"...

"Hushed casket"...

These are the 3 raffle atc's using the embossing web tape as well.
"Promise, Hope and Dream"...

In my next post I'll have another book page to show from the Book Challenge that I'm taking part in for the Creative Soul Retreat that's coming up in about 6 short weeks!!! So looking forward to meeting Bernie Berlin, DJ Pettit and Stephanie Lee and having some wonderful arty time with my talented pals. I was lucky enough to be drawn as the person to choose the last theme for the book, I pondered much about it and finally decided on "Inspired by Song". I thought this gave the girls a fairly broad range of things to choose from, besides....I chose one of my favourite The Rasmus songs..."Not like the other girls". Will see if I can do a link to it in the next post, if youtube has it available that is! lol (silly statement, they have EVERYTHING on there!)

More shrink plastic atc's & Tim's crackle paint!

Below are more of my shrink plastic atc's....

First up is the raffle one for the girls tomorrow at the atc class - canvas paper background (rinse-aid resist), plus one of Julie van Oosten's new houses (available here) - this I've coated with Ranger Spiced Marmalade Distress Ink then the Rust Antiquities embossing powder....gorgeous rusty colour and quite matte too...not shiny at all! The shrink plastic is white, coloured with alcohol inks (less is definitely more!) and then stamped with Timber Brown Stazon.

The reason I said earlier about going easy on the alcohol inks on shrink plastic is shown below! This atc is another ERROR ALERT!!! ERROR ALERT!!! If you use too much alcohol ink then the piece of shrink plastic is really, really, REALLY, dark when it shrinks down. I loved the colours in this piece with the words on it though, so I decided to cut a little window in the back of the mat board. So if you are looking at the atc in the palm of your hand you can see it fine, it just looks quite muted. But when you hold it up to the light...oh my!!!! Stained glass effects galore!!! I used the ruff'n'ready (pre-sanded) shrink plastic for this top piece with the word stamp and alcohol inked the back of it, then stamped in Timber Brown Stazon on the front. The bottom picture is another ink-jet printed image on shrink plastic. Yep, did a whole page of images!

Okay, we just got the new Ranger Crackle Paint in at Scraptivate and I decided to try out the Antique Linen on some chipboard. Can you say G O R G E O U S or what!!! I'm definitely going to be trying out the other colours, so simple to use, slap it on, walk away and come back amazed! I used Walnut Stain Distress Ink to further enhance the cracks. This piece also has an ink-jet printed shrink plastic picture (surprised???). We also have just got in store the Ranger Stickles, these have been around for a while and I've had Diamond (which I love) but I bought the Platinum and smeared it over the shrunk picture before doing a coat of Dimensional Magic. Turned out quite nicely. I'm happy with it anyway. A little more "glitzy" than I usually do but I AM a Gemini so I'm allowed to be change-able.

So the door bell rings at 8am this morning, a parcel is waiting. OH MY GOD!!!! The fabulous Belinda Schneider sent me some awesome stuff!!! A magazine with the very delectable Ville Valo (lead singer of HIM) on the cover - article inside. A whole book of that wonderful Germanic Script that I sooooo love (now I can stop photocopying the 6 pages I have!!! lol). Also, ta-da!!!!! I now OWN one of Belinda's amazing Gothic Icicle Dolls with the very cool bat stitched to her back.....I coveted these as soon as I saw them here.....might sleep with it tonight! Also included was a gift wrapping sheet with more script and Gothic-type pictures. Talk about spoilt!

Thank you Belinda....you're a......DOLL! ~groan~

chunky pages - Gothic & Forensics

Woo-hoo!!! I finally have something to add to Michelle Ward's Crusade....it WOULD be Crusade Number 13 too.....how....appropriate!!! lol
Here's the link to the awesome Michelle's Crusade blog (and you just KNOW how much I love her stamps by how often I use them!) HCIT!!! (Michelle-speak - how cool is that!)

It's Saturday afternoon and I've completed my set of Gothic chunky pages for our Altered Book Club.....finally! Now just need to get started on Art Deco, then next up we have Gods/Goddesses and then Chairs. Yep, chairs! Definitely going to have to keep my eye out for something strange to do with chairs....how boring to just have a picture of a dining chair or a lounge chair. So here is Gothic (front),

I've been listening to HIM's new cd, Venus Doom, there's a track on it called "Something Diabolical", hence the name of this chunky page...thought it kinda suited the image. Excellent cd by the way! I stamped the word onto shrink plastic and added it with jump rings for a more 3-d effect. I also used my new white webbing spray that we just got in at the shop, I already had black and gold and love it! It's a little hard to see the webbing spray in the scan as I'd sprayed the black cardstock first with Starburst Stain in Long John Silver (I LOVE those names!) and then the white webbing spray, certainly better irl (as usual).

Here's the back, quite plain but it just ties it in with the theme so it's not too boring when you flip the page to check out the next person's awesome piece of art!

I hadn't posted the images of the Forensics chunky swap from last month either so here's the front of that one...don't you just love the "dead man" stencil!!!

The back. The "Evidence" word is one of the 7 gypsies fabric gaffer tape that has all sorts of cool words on them, this roll particularly suited this theme. The image of Lucky Luciano is from here, a cool mobster generator.

Back to the studio...

a little music....

After doing a search on youtube for some HIM clips, think this'd have to be one of my favourites of theirs.




Fantastic song, great visuals (isn't he just!!!), love his tatts too!

It's early-ish Sunday morning and I'm going into my studio to have a play, just thought some of my pals might like a little tasty morsel to start their day.....mmmmmmmm. If I make anything worth a damn, might post later.