ACP Week 3: Grey + C = Crowns

Its Week 3 of my Alphabet Colour Project, and is brought to you by the letter C and the colours Grey and Blue.
oh! I do love a bit of grey & bue - whether its a duck egg, powder or teal they all seem to look great with grey!

C = Crowns

I'm starting the week with a card (hhhmmm there's a pattern forming here...), the stamped image in the centre is letterpressed rather than stamped...

I like the impressed image that letterpressing creates - has such a traditional feel to it. Love muchly!  Well worth the time it takes to create the effect (don't get me wrong it doesn't take hours longer, just a bit longer to set up, position, print, clean up etc etc etc)

I hope you like today's project - if the design or colour combo has inspired you please leave a link to your blog in comments & I'll pop by and have a snoop at your creation :o)

Thanks for popping by!

more letterpress ......

I forgot to post this a while ago so here it is now...

I was experimenting with the letterpress inks to see if they woul blend and yes they will! You have to be a little careful about contaminating across and getting one big midway colour on the plate (1st couple of attempts) but I managed to get 2 colours on - but maybe all that is out wayed by the fact that this background plate just makes your eyes go a bit funny - it seems to move if you look at it too hard.. look away! look away!

colours I used were blue and green, maybe if I'd used more diverse colours it would have been more obvious but as I said I was just playing around and these were the colours I had to hand.

The other thing to note is that the big background plate (left) did not want to go all the way through the machine with a complete piece of card stock - I used a small postcard sized piece in the end... I'd hate to damage anything (lol).

tv versus craft...

I like watching TV as much as the next person - but I don't watch it until latish in the evening and then only certain programmes - Criminal Minds, Greys Anatomy (yay new series!), Brothers & Sisters (again: yay new series!), Big Bang Theory and a few others and I will just sit and watch those - full attention expected.  But if I'm just sitting with Matt in the evening watching something or other I like to be doing 'something', something constructive..... During the past week I've purged more than a couple of shelves of magazines from the dining room (very cathartic, and few inspirational finds too) (the shelves are a work in progress - 5+ years of craft magazines to be gone through... it could take a while!)
The other night I was bored of clearing magazines and because I'd been so excellent (even if I do say so myself, lol) in clearing so much I treated myself to some quick sewing projects - love making little things to be used on other things and so I made 6 of these:

The observant amoung you may notice there are only FIVE - thats because a small, black furry creature (aka Bertie) took it to play with (?) and its not been seen since! Gotta love him (sometimes!), aaaanyhoo its all part of his charm I suppose and if thats all he's wandered off with then I should be grateful shouldn't I .... lol

So I made the above with a view to adding them to cards as embellishments.  Cute.

Sitting in front of the TV and doing somthing constructive seems better than simply sitting and watching TV doesn't it?  To just sit and watch tv seems wasteful somehow (- unless its Greys Anatomy of course! lol)

Quickutz Letterpress Kit

I think I've made it quite clear that I luuuurrve my Cuttlebug - its true - such a great little machine! (though if anyone reading this has a communication line to the decision makers at ProvoCraft could you please put forward my request for a wider version - that would be great - thanks!)

Aaanyhoo back to the Cuttlebug - great little machine.  I didn't think it could get any better ..... AND THEN IT DID!  I treated myself to the Quickutz Letterpress kit.  Of course the Cuttlebug can't take the full glory for the Letterpress kit (obviously!) but that fact that it will work really well with another manufacturers product gets Brownie points & a big gold star from me.

Letterpress is the effect you see on quality letterheads (for example) when the design has been debossed and coloured.  Embossing with Cuttlebug embossing folders will give you that effect but its an all over pattern - the Letterpress has small motifs that you can combine to your bespoke design and repeat over and over again (because you can add blocks to define where the pieces fit and will print). It also give the embossed effect on the front and back of the piece of paper - Letterpress only affects the front (so the inside of a letterpressed card would be unaffected).

There are different sides to my crafting personality - I like the grungy distressed look but I also have quite a strong clean-simple-less-is-more side and the Letterpress ticks all the boxes for that. (must find a way to combine them - I have an idea brewing.. I'll let you know how that goes.....)

Here are the first samples I made - really simple - just getting used to it:

Plain uninked (really like the uninked version)

Inked (first generation)

Inked (second generation ie without reinking)

A few points I've noticed when using the Letterpress:

• The inks are thicker than normal stamping inks (probably more like printing inks) and stay wet longer - some people have commented that the ink can be hard to remove but I'm finding that basic baby wipes work really well (what is in those things - they get everything off everthing!! Frightening really! lol) - so I clean everything with the wipes and then wipe again with water and a cloth to remove any babywipe residue.
  
• Online people have commented that the letterpress plate doesn't go all the way through a Cuttlebug because of the extra width of the hinges but I found it went all the way through without any problem - but with anything - BE CAREFUL - IF IT WON'T GO THROUGH DON'T FORCE IT!
• You don't have to use the provided sticky tape sheets (to hold the embossing plates to the grid top panel of the block) - I found that Tombow glue works really well and washes off of everthing afterwards.  (another www user suggested double side tape - another good idea)

The four small black rectangles in the photo above (on the gridded panel) are foam and repositionable  - these are so you can place them so the paper/card can be butted up against them to ensure the same print position each time.

While I was playing around I used these to print the 2 opposite ends of the same piece of card - giving me a panel that I could then split:

Here are some of the cards I made with some further plate sets I bought and some really gentle ink colours.

I really like using kraft card stock and love how it sits against the plain card and pale blue ink.  This is whats nice about the letterpress effect - it can be elegant, or retro or really modern - really versatile. (I was really pleased with how these turned out - there may have be a slight squeal and a bit of happy clapping! lol)

Letterpress is so neat and tidy - I think I need to go and splash some ink now! lol