Hi, Ruby Craft here. I’m so excited that Kim has invited me to be guest designer
for May. She asked me to share a little bit about myself. A little over 10
years ago I had taken early retirement but had a little too much time on my
hands. I decided I needed a hobby so I started Scrapbooking.
Then
I took a part time job at a local
scrapbook store and a co-worker showed me Tim Holtz and Alcohol Inks.
When Tim
started his blog with a tour of his workroom and then began posting 12
Tags of
Christmas I was hooked on inky fingers and multi media. I began blogging
so I
could post my tags for Tim’s challenges. I still scrapbook from time to
time
but enjoy challenges, making tags, cards and the occasional 3
dimensional project. I'll be here every Wednesday this month with something new
for you to see.
For my first project I looked through my stash and
found a naked spiral book I had bought a while back. I used 3
different stencils along with paints, so I worked on a non-stick craft
sheet. It made clean up easy and also made a great pallet. The first
thing I did was to carefully open the spiral and take out the covers. I
then laid them face up on my work surface and placed the first stencil,
Weaving for Prima Finnabair Elementals, on the front cover. I used
Prima's Color Bloom Spray Mist in Gold Foil. This was the first time I
used it and I loved working with it. It has a trigger sprayer which
allows you to get quick solid coverage but also allows you to get a
spatter effect if you want. I sprayed through the stencil onto the cover
front. Instead of wiping off the beautiful mist that had beaded up on
the stencil, I flipped it over and placed it on the back cover. This
gave me the same beautiful shimmery gold but a negative of the pattern
on the front.
I
used a fun stamp from Catherine Scanlon Designs
called
Catherine's Alphabet. This is a large one piece stamp that has
open letters that would be perfect for water coloring. I thought it
would make a terrific illustration for my cover. I used a brayer to
"inked it up" with some
Post Box Red Paint from Dylusions and stamped the front cover. I didn't
get a perfect impression but it was perfect for the look I was going
for.
I decided I wanted to add a Flower border along
the sides and bottom of the front
cover and along the bottom of the back one.
Tim Holtz
Wildflower Stencil was perfect for this and the second
stencil I used. I used a couple of mini blending tools to apply
the Post Box Red Paint to the stencil flowers and then
Cracked Pistachio Distress Paint for the stems and foliage. Distress Paints have a dauber
top but the paint is very
fluid and would run under the stencil if you tried to apply it
directly from the bottle. The mini blending tool works great with the
stencils and paints. The thin stems can be a little tricky with the
blending tool. Once I removed
the stencil I used a fine detail water brush to pick up some Cracked
Pistachio from my craft sheet to touch up the stems. The water brush
allow me to keep the color soft.
I also used the water brush to paint
the inside of the letters with Post Box Red at the top and
Abandoned Coral Distress Paint
from the bottom of the letters fading the color out before
reaching the middle of the letters. This allows the Gold Foil Spray to
peek through. Another thing I liked that the Gold Foil Spray as a
background is that once it was dry it was not disturbed by the water or
paint.
Along the very top and bottom of the front cover I used
the third stencil, the hearts from the
Love set of BoBunny Stickable
Stencils. Again using the blending tool and Dylusion's Post Box Red.
Once I finished the hearts I felt they needed something else.
BoBunny Glitter Paste in Sugar! I used a palette knife and the stencil to apply
it. These stencils are sticky and reposition-able making them easy to
use. I finished off the edges using the blending tool and some Vintage
Photo Distress Ink.
I decided I wanted to make a band to hold the
book closed. I painted a piece of white elastic with Cracked Pistachio
Distress Paint. Using the dauber top made it easy. Distress Paint does
not effect the elasticity or stiffen the elastic. Once dry I attached
the strip to the back cover with eyelets.
I
die cut a flower from
Wendy Vecchi's Clearly for Art Modeling Film
from Tim Holtz's Tattered Floral
die. Clearly for Art Modeling Film is
NOT shrink film. When you heat it you
can bend it to what ever shape you want and when it cools it will hold
the shape. It comes in clear, white or black. Before you mold it you can
paint it, stamp on it, or glue paper to it and then stamp on the paper
if you like. If you don't like the shape you can reheat it flatten it
and start all over again. I used clear and painted
one side red by simple spreading the Post Box Red paint on with my
fingertips. Once dry I flipped the flower over and used the spatter
stamp
from
Wendy's Faux Graniteware starter kit and some Jet Black Archival
ink to stamp the black spots. After the ink dried I attached the flower
to the elastic band with a black eyelet. Then I was able to heat the
flower with my heat tool and shape it. I just wanted the flower to have
some subtle
modeling since it was on the cover of the journal. I slipped a pencil
under some spots while heating to get a little lift and did the rest of
the modeling with my fingers. You don't have to heat the whole flower,
just a small section at a time. Once I had my
flower shaped the way I wanted it, my cover was
finished and I put everything back together.
I want to
thank Kim for inviting me to be the May Guest Designer. She generously
sent me quite a few fun products to use and she is wonderful to work
with. She has designers for June, July and August, but if you are
interested in being a guest designer in the future send her an email. I
included a little information about myself and a few links to projects
on
my blog that I thought she might like and she got right back to me.
Here are a few quick links to some of the products I used from eclectic Paperie.
Dylusion Paint,
Distress Paints,
Stencils,
BoBunny Glitter Paste,
Prima Color Bloom Spray Mist,
Tim Holtz Products,
Wendy Vecchi,
Catherine Scanlon Designs
I Hope you enjoyed seeing how I created my first project as guest designer and that you'll be back next Wednesday.
