Congrats Arlene!!

I just want to say CONGRATS to our DT Member Arlene Mobley for the safe birth of her newest grand daughter Addison!! Addison has some serious health problems so we pray for recovery and hope she does well in the coming weeks!! To learn more about Baby Girl Addison check our Arlenes FaceBook and Blog

Baby Addison was delivered at 3:34 am this morning

She weighed 6 lbs 9 oz and was 18 inches. Mom is doing good.

Flattened Bottle Caps - The Sizzix Way

Fast and Easy way to flatten your bottle caps to make charms and so much more...

When you flatten an unused bottle cap the outter edges curl back. When flattening with a sizzix you must use the Multi purpose platform that is the bigger piece that has the Tabs 1 and 2. You also need to use both of the cutting pads those are the clear large plastic pieces.

Step 1 Place your bottle caps on the sizzix like shown.

Step 2 Place the second cutting pad on top of the bottle caps.

Step 3 Turn the dial















Step 4 Remove top cutting pad and VOILA!! Flatten Bottle Caps!!

Here is my Bottle Cap Charm nothing to write home about and only took about 5 minutes !

How To: I used the outside of the bottle cap not the inside ... cut a one inch circle and hat from Wonderland ATCs, Small image from Charlottes Head, "Sweet" from Word Sheet - Mod Podged it all down on a PID BottleCap. I used stickles along the inside edges because I love glitter. That's it a 5 minute Bottle Cap Charm.

Any ideas on what to do with it next ??

More coming.....................

Technique Tuesday - Stamping without Stamps, Part 3

This week's challenge theme, "nature's beauty,"  inspired me to use this week's technique.....and it is so simple, I think I first did it in grade school!   Go to your garden (or in my case, my window sill where my houseplants are) and find a leaf or two, preferably with nice veining.  Now that you're back at the computer, here are all the supplies you'll need:

• cardstock
• acrylic paint
• paint brush
• leaf or leaves  (if you don't have a garden, a friendly neighbor with a garden, a tree in front of your house, or a houseplant, just so you know.....a leaf from artificial flowers works too)

That's right....we're stamping with leaves!

Apply paint to the leaf.  Notice, I'm working on a craft sheet.  Protect your work surface; this can be messy!  I'm also wearing gloves.  I don't normally mind getting my hands inky or full of paint, but I was trying to save a recent manicure!

Press the painted leaf onto the cardstock.  Before re-painting, stamp with it again.  The second impression will be lighter, and give nice depth to your background.  Another thing you can do (I didn't here) is to use a second shade of your paint color in some places.

Now, here is my first try, and I don't like it!  But it made me realize that I should be using the underside of the leaf.....that's where you can really see the veins.  Anyway, this is the stamped image I don't care for:

And here is a completed part of my page, where I've stamped with the underside of the leaf.  Much better!

Notice that I've overlapped my stamping.  This gives the background a looser, more natural look.

I was stamping on textured cardstock.  Smooth paper will have a different effect.  The amount of paint you use will also determine what your stamped image looks like.    As I always say, experiment!  It's only paper, after all.

Cover the whole sheet of paper with your stamped leaf collage.  Later on you can select the parts you like and cut them to the size you want.  I decided to do a jumbo ATC.  Regular ATCs are always 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" and the jumbos are just a bit larger, 3" x 4".

I used elements from PID collage sheet #756 (bird, nest, and egg), and #634 (Liselle).  The caption was done with a label maker.

You may not have done this technique since you were in kindergarten, but it's not just for kids!  Give it a try and show us what you've done.  What other elements from nature can you stamp with?  Has anyone ever tried a feather?

Eileen

Paper Imagery Designs

Design Team

Weekly Challenge ~ April 26th

The Paper Imagery Designs Weekly Challenge Theme is...

~~~NATURE'S BEAUTY~~~

Hope you will play along with your Paper Imagery Design Images

and make a Nature's Beauty piece of your own.

Here's my piece..... ~~Angie

Technique Tuesday - Inlaid Embossing

Welcome to Technique Tuesday!  I've been away for nearly a week at a wonderful art retreat with friends, and really didn't think I'd have time to do TT this week.  But as luck would have it, I learned an easy and beautiful technique from my friend Val, and wanted to share it with you.   It is very similar to the faux batik technique, but as it stays shiny, no ironing is involved.   Here is what you'll need:

• chipboard or heavy weight paper
• clear embossing ink
• embossing powders (some dark, some light) that give opaque coverage
• stamp(s) of your choice 
• heat tool

This technique is usually done to create embellishments, but I thought it would also be a nice background for an ATC.  First, cover the paper or chipboard completely with the clear embossing ink, then cover that with embossing powder and heat set.

Then ink up your stamp with the clear ink and stamp over the previously embossed paper.  Important: make sure the first embossing is completely cooled before you do this step.

Then cover the newly stamped paper with a new color of embossing powder.  The beauty of this technique is in the contrast.  So, if your base color is dark (like mine), now use a light shade.  This is also striking if you begin with a light color and then stamp your image with a darker one.  You can stop at one color, or allow that to cool and then add a second and even third, as I did here:

I think it looks very much like the inlaid enamel you often see on metal pieces.

This week's PID challenge is "Celebrate A Mom," and here is the ATC I did using my inlaid embossing technique as a background:

I love this image....the hairdo and clothing kind of remind me of my own mother when she was young.

As I mentioned, this technique is very effective on embellishments, so I did a few circles to show you what I mean:

 

Eileen 

Paper Imagery Designs

Design Team

Weekly Challenge ~~April 19th

The Paper Imagery Design Weekly Challenge theme for this week is....

~~CELEBRATE MOM~~

Hope everyone will grab some PID Images and Play along.

I decided to make a pendant this week using the new Photo Booth sheet (#759)

http://www.paperimagerydesigns.com/item/Photobooth-759-627

It just says...make Jewelry, to me :) ~~Angie

Art Journal Cover and Pages

Here is a close up of an art journal cover that I arted up a few days ago. The butterfly lady at the bottom is a fabric transfer that I didn't use and was left over from my fabric atc's that can be seen here. Check out the Ning group for information on the fabric atc swap.

Here ia a picture of the entire cover. This is a handbound art journal I made last year. I bound it with a coptic stitch and used recycled paper for the pages.

This is a two page spread inside the journal.

Thanks for stopping by

Arlene

Technique Tuesday - Faux Batik

Welcome to Technique Tuesday......today I'm going to give you a good reason to haul out your iron, and no, we won't be pressing clothing!  We're going to make our own patterned paper.  This is what you'll need:

• cardstock
• inks you can emboss with, including clear
• clear embossing powder
• blending tool or cosmetic sponge (oops....left that out of the photo!)
• heat tool
• iron
• paper towel
• rubber stamps (another oops!  no stamps in the photo)

Using the clear ink, stamp an image randomly on the cardstock, cover with the clear embossing powder, and set with the heat tool.

Using a color of ink darker than your cardstock, apply all over the paper.

 

Now it's time to haul out the iron.  Cover the paper with the paper towel (you can also use a piece of copy paper) and using a dry iron on a high setting, iron over everything until the embossing powder melts into the towel.  You don't want any remaining.  The matte finish you'll have looks very much like batik fabric.

You can stop at this step or take it even further.  Here is a piece I did where I started with a lighter color cardstock:

 

I stamped with the clear ink on yellow cardstock, embossed, heat set, covered the paper with red ink, and removed the embossing powder with the iron.  Now, take a different stamp and repeat the process, hitting areas you didn't previously stamp, but it is fine to overlap onto the previously stamped images as well.

 

Now take another color ink and again, using your blending tool or cosmetic sponge, cover everything, and remove the embossing powder with the iron as before.

You can see I used green ink, apparent on the yellow images, but when applied over the red background, it looks brown!  Fun to experiment with different colors and see what you get.  This isn't the greatest photo; it really looks beautiful in person.

What did I do with this paper?  For once, I didn't use it in a background.  The challenge theme this week is "Tea Party," and I cut a teacup from this paper and used it in this ATC:

I LOVE the Alice images available at the PID shop!  If you look carefully, you might remember some previous Technique Tuesday backgrounds behind the cup.  Always save your scraps!

Eileen

Paper Imagery Designs

Design Team

WEEKLY CHALLENGE.....

The Paper Imagery Designs Weekly Challenge is....

~~TEA PARTY!!~~

I was really enjoying playing with some of the new Paper Imagery Designs Collage Sheets that just happened to be full of TEA images. I made a Tea Pot Hanger and a Greeting Card.

Hope you will play along with your Paper IMagery Design Images and join our TEA PARTY!!

My Spin on the Tuesday Technique....

I played with the FABULOUS Technique that Eileen shared this morning.

Seemed the magazine I picked up didn't have many full pages with text on them but lots of pretty pages...so decided to try the technique on colored/patterned pages.

I used an ink blending tool instead of a brayer. Worked great on my page of text....not so good on the other two. So then I tried sponging on a metallic paint and when it was almost dry I buffed it off the embossed image with a damp paper towel. Here are the three backgrounds I came up with. Then the cards I made with the backgrounds.

THANKS for the INSPIRATION, Eileen!!

What's New at the Shoppe of PID

Lots of goodies for you to play with in your ART!
How about a Spring Sale Take 15% Off your order use promo code SPRING (exp 4/13/10)
A new product here at PID are our SVG files. A SVG File is a Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG wiki) in more normal words its an image file that you can cut out with your Cricut Machine. The files come in .svg format and .jpg and can be imported into the Sure Cuts A Lot Program and cut with your Cricut. Use these files over and over again to make cuts in any size you want! Here is a sample of some of our SVG Files !!

If you don’t have a Cricut machine we do offer our SVG Files as a Die Cut plus many more to choose from.

 

New Collage Sheets have been added to the Shoppe as well they can be found under NEW

 

We also have some swaps that have been listed on Ning an Alice in Wonderland and a Fabric ATC Swap join us for some fun and ART Swapping!!

How about a Spring Sale Take 15% Off your order use promo code SPRING (exp 4/13/10)