Night Skies

During last weekend's crafty play date, I did a lot of sitting around, wondering what to work on. We do that a lot when we get together. There was also a lot of "oooooh, I could maybe ...". Some of it even worked! :) Playing is good, and FUN, especially when the others are just playing, too. You learn by doing.

One of the things on my list to get better at (does that make sense? Let's try again ...) One of the techniques I've been meaning to work on (better?) is night skies. I've played a bit with the powdered pigments, but I'm still not feeling the love. I may be more of a Distress Ink person.

So I used a few Distress inks and blended two backgrounds on water color paper. Why water color? I dunno. Maybe since I had no plan, I thought I might flick it with water.

Here's one of the cards, then I'll explain:

I had the two colored backgrounds done, and was pondering what to do with them. My pal at the next table was squeeing, a lot. Turns out she was using Viva Glitter Paste, which is embossing paste with glitter in it. I'm not big on glitter, but I thought it would look cool for stars. I found my other pal's stencils, grabbed the Simon Says Stamp Falling Stars stencil, and applied the glitter paste. Very cool!

Here it is up close and personal:

I like that the ink colors show through the stars.

For the other background, I used plain old boring pearlescent embossing paste:

and a close-up, because I can:

It's still very cool, but in a different way. And they are opaque.

So I had two UFOs to take home with me. Earlier this week, I got a clue as to what to do with them. I thought a black cat on a wall, looking at the sky would be nice, so that's what I did. I used the Impression Obsession Distressed Brick background stamp and originally stamped it in Schoolhouse Red. Blech. So I cleaned the stamp and stamped it again in Simon Says Stamp Smoke ink. Apparently I hadn't cleaned off all the red ink (red is so pesky!), but I kinda like the result.

I cut the background into pieces and put a strip onto each of the sky panels.  I stamped the cats in black on a remnant of white card stock and cut them out. I sat them on top of the brick walls using foam tape.

You may notice the first card has a much smaller white border than the second one. That's because I suffered from a bit of "cut your own bangs" syndrome. Every time I trimmed  bit off one side of the panel, I'd notice the other side was still bigger, so I'd trim that one a bit. Repeat, over and over. Sigh.

I finally mounted the two panels onto Hero Arts note cards. One of the few times you'll see me use purple.

Wow, three total cards from an 8-hour stampy session. Kinda sad. I'll see if any of my other UFOs from the session are usable, and I'll be sure to share. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Stuff I used: I linked below to the Viva Decor Holo Iridescent paste, but I'm pretty sure my pal's paste was clear.

InLinkz.com

Using Paint To ... Paint

So I'm caught in a vortex of Color Burst pigment powders vs Brusho. And I don't even like to water color. It's crazy, I know.

I've played with tapping the powder onto both wet and dry surfaces, and various levels of spritzing, but I'm still not feeling the love.

Then a few of my bloggy peeps used the Color Burst to paint. Well duh, it's powdered paint. So I tried it. This is what came out:

I used the yellow, orange and red Color Burst pigment powders. I tapped some powder onto my craft sheet and added water to it, then used a brush to paint the colors onto some water color paper. It works the same as any other water color. Surprise! There is some red up in the yellow because I failed to rinse my brush well enough. There are also some random color splotches here and there; no idea how that happened, but I kinda like it. Oh, wait, I meant to do that. Right, I probably couldn't do it on purpose, though.

To make this background more interesting, after it dried I added some translucent embossing paste through a Hero Arts stencil and set it aside to dry. I only touched it five or six times before it dried. Sigh.

Here you can sorta see the shiny:

and the mystery color splotches...

Well, I'm glad I got that out of my system. If I'm going to water color, I'll use one of my six other options in my craft room. I don't need to collect any more stuff. Not that this isn't the right product for YOU. I'm just not a water colorer, and I don't need one more product to collect. I'm sure I'll find something else I NEED instead. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Stuff I used: SU Basic Black card stock, and the following:

InLinkz.com